Re: Maxtor external hard drive no longer recognized by My Computer

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Today =?Utf-8?B?SGFydHNWaWRlbw==?= commented courteously on
the subject at hand

Thanks for your input Jerry.

glad it was of use to you, Denise.

Someone else here mentioned
the triple whammy also. I know I have to do something
(it's the reason for the purchase of the additional drive)
but I was so busy trying to crank out the work that I let
backing it up go, always thinking that I'd do it properly
when I had the chance.

Sadly, most of us "old hands" at computing all learned the
same "school of hard knocks" way of backing up - right /after/
we had a disaster (I've been doing this one way or another for
40 years). I remember in my early mainframe programming days
in the mid-1970s I asked a more experienced programmer how
often I should save - and to a different name. He said "how
many minutes/hours/days of your work can you afford to lose?
whatever the answer, back up more often than that!" Good
advice.

And, when I managed a CAD and PC support group later in my
career, you have no idea how many frantic calls I got from
some executive asking if my people could rescue some important
document his admin worked on all day and lost when her PC
crashed. I said "just reload the last saved copy". Answer?
"she didn't save it at all, she edited all day long and sent
it right to her printer". Well, his report was toast. The
/single/ biggest cause of a PC lockup or crash is trying to
print, particularly a big job.

When I'm working on a long, involved, important job, I'll
periodically save to a series of different file names and copy
them off to off-line storage before going home. My sanity is
more "expensive" than a DVD so I don't mind blowing a buck on
a quickie burn.

I knew a guy someplace else on Usenet that actually went away
for a month-long trip to China and left his PC running! Of
course, somewhere along the line, his HD died. He may have
gotten some warning signs if he'd been home. And, no, he had
zero backups.

I don't like to give Murphy an even break in anything I do.
That isn't always possible by the very definition of Murphy's
Law, but taking a logical approach to your data management can
at least delay visits. It's like people that leave M$ Auto
Update on full auto and also schedule a nightly HD defrag.
And, they are actually surprised to find in the morning that
their system is destroyed one way or another!

For the past few days, I've been
looking for cheaper external hd's so I'll look into the
Hammers.

Don't necessarily take my comments as any kinda testimonial,
just a data point. I just shopped around locally for a few
days comparing prices and specs and bought them from a store
that gives me 21 days to return it no questions asked. One of
mine is now vibrating some. I did a file system and bad block
scan with no errors found but it may be dying. Or, it may be
nothing at all...

Shortly, I'm going to be looking into the feasibility of
removing the case from the failed Maxtor and connecting the
drive internally.

I know zero.zero about HD forensics so best of luck with that.

--
ATM, aka Jerry

"Whether You Think You CAN Or CAN'T, You're Right." ? Henry
Ford
.

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