Hey, gang.
So, I haven't been posting here much. Right now, I'm on my netbook, and probably will be for a while yet. My main rig's currently unusable due to some unfortunate circumstances. I've got a question for the tech-savvy about that at the end of my post, but first, I need to vent.
I mentioned it before in a previous thread days after CoH ended for good, but out of the three months we had left I only got maybe six days out of it. I hadn't been able to play games since June due to my video card acting blooey (BSoDs and artifacts). Shortly after Thanksgiving I fixed the issue, but my OS drive (where most of my personal and project files are) promptly died on me, all data permanently gone as far as I know.
Thankfully I had spent the time just prior to that backing everything I cared about on that drive to a series of blu-ray discs, but I still had to spend several days installing my OS on a new drive, reinstalling all programs, drivers, and then copying those files back over to the new drive, which left me less time to play than I had hoped.
CoH and most of my other games were installed on a secondary drive, though. One that was also relatively new, bought to replace an older drive that started to fail earlier this year.
Well, just recently, that secondary drive also died on me. That would be dead drive #3 for 2012.
It happened rather suddenly, and SMART data didn't report any pending problems ... but the buzz-like series of clicks I'd heard was alarm enough to try and back up what I could. Not the usual "Click of Death" I've heard about. The second time it happened, the drive disconnected with a Delayed Write Failure, and that was it. I've tried hooking the drive up externally to another machine via USB adapter; at first, in Windows, it reported that the drive was unformatted. After that, I hooked it up while the machine was running a boot disc with partition and file recovery programs on it. The programs wouldn't launch if the drive was plugged in, and if plugged in after the programs were launched and refreshed, couldn't see the drive at all.
Backing up files on that secondary drive was a lesser concern for me, although I do have a USB external that does have a copy of the CoH folder as it was just prior to the final six days, as well as copies of other game folders I'd recently played. Combined with my previous secondary drive (if I can still access it) I might be able to reconstitute most of the drive data I've lost ...
But it still means I've probably permanently lost all the screenshots, logs, and demo recordings I took during the final six days of City of Heroes.
I want to feel like it's a cruel joke, but ... I feel horribly selfish thinking that in light of recent events. That and if it weren't for my paranoia over losing data, by now I wouldn't have anything left after three hard drive failures.
I don't know of anything else I can do to try and recover data from the drive (for example, I'm a bit wary of using the freezer trick on this drive since I don't know for sure how it failed), but I'm going to hang on to it in case an option presents itself at a later date. If anyone knows what may have caused the failure and if it's still possible to retrieve data from the drive, let me know.
I've never had drive failures as bad as I have this year. Prior to this I only experienced two drive failures in the past decade or so. The only thing I can think of that's responsible is waste heat from the video card that wasn't properly carried out of the case. The card sat below the installed drives, and card's fans pointed waste heat down at the bottom of the case, which has no vents or air to let the heat out. The secondary drive was pretty warm when I removed it (but not uncomfortably so).
The case was a mid tower, and had poor airflow all around; there were three case fans, one in front, one on top, and one on the side ... the top fan was blocked by cables and the front fan hasn't been working for a while (nor has the front USB hub). When I was taking my drives out of the case I'd noticed that a cable leading to the front panel was loose and frayed, so I think I may have found part of the reason ... and reason enough to get a new case (which I'm working on).
Venting out of the way now ... For any tech-savvy people here, which brands and models of hard drive have you had the best luck with? I want to get a replacement for my dead secondary, especially since I don't fully trust this Western Digital Caviar Green I'm using as a replacement for the dead OS drive.