Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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My 8 year old HDD died (alien.top)

submitted 2 years ago by M3M3-@alien.top to c/datahoarder@selfhosted.forum

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Title says it all. Most of the stuff I had no backup for. It sucks but I'm trying to take it in stride. Time will tell if I actually needed any of that data or if I was just hoarding it with no actual use.

I'm still trying to recover the data with pros, and in any case I'll find a cost-efficient way to keep backups from now (any suggestions? One drive? External SSD?)

Have any of you experienced this? How do you feel or how would you feel? Is this your worst nightmare? Let's discuss

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[–] ByWillAlone@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Depends on what caused the hdd to fail. If it was the PCB, for example - that would have been 100% recoverable 20 years ago, but for the past couple decades the interleave/alignment data is stored on the pcb and without the original, a drive just looks blank to a new PCB. If the drive supported on-device encryption, and the pcb failed, you can eventually put the drive back in service but your data is gone.

Motors, bearings, and head actuators can usually be repaired enough to salvage data in a competent lab. Also certain failures caused by firmware flaws can be recovered from (I have done this myself).