And another HDD died!!!

[Harrison]

Yeah I know I've told that story a few times but it still amazes me to have gotten two HDs from it.

And no, I didn't manage to get any of the data back from the dead A1200 HD. The drive head had collided with the surface of the disk so had damaged it. They just binned the drive and gave me a new one.

I did manage to restore much of the data on the Archon drive though once I realised what had happened. I just used an HD recovery utility. It recovered around 85% of the data I think. I then backed up the important stuff and then did a format and clean install of Workbench and everything else.

And yes, that is very true. When you do a quick HD format it just wipes the table of contents (TOC) from the HD so the OS thinks that drive is empty. So you can recover data as long as new files haven't been written over the same areas of the disk after this. Also when you delete files from a HD they are not actually physically deleted from the HD and are just removed from the TOC and are still actually on the drive until new files a written to the same area on the disk then they are replaced permanently.

It is also possible even when an HD has had a complete full format to recover data from the drive with specialist tools, which is why companies with sensitive data pay companies to professionally wipe the drives prior to selling them on, or destroy them.

[Submeg]

Nasty! Yes I must add disclaimers I feel, otherwise Im going to be burned some more :P question! I am considering buying a 500 GB external (or 750 GB) and I want to know, how stable are they? I have heard stories from people that they have just nudged them and they have corrupted etc....I would be keeping it on my desk while in use, never on an uneven surface.

[Harrison]

I've been using external harddrives for a long time, in fact even on the Amiga, and never had a problem with them being less stable than an internal harddrive.

For my PC external drives I do have them on a shelf just above the main desk so they don't get jogged and knocked, but that is just to keep them tidy and easy to get at.

For an external drive I would recommend you take a look at going for an external enclosure that you can place an internal harddrive into, rather than going for a premade external drive. You can save a lot going this route, plus you have direct access to the drive and enclosure so if either fail you can open it up and replace either the enclosure or harddrive at a later date.

[Demon Cleaner]

For an external drive I would recommend you take a look at going for an external enclosure that you can place an internal harddrive into, rather than going for a premade external drive.

I will give this a look I think. Just noticed that all my fruit machine stuff was also on that disk. I will send my HD back to Maxtor this week.

[Submeg]

Cool, sounds good.

[Harrison]

For external HD enclosures I recommend you look at the Icy Box range as they keep winning awards and their enclosures look nice too.

There are also a couple of external NAS solutions where you add your own drives to the external enclosure and then connect them to the network.

There is one from Netgear that allows two drives to be installed up to 800GB each giving a maximum external storage space of 1.6 TB. A friend has been using this Netgear unit for over a year without any problems.

Another I've seen recently that looks good but I don't know much about is the Icy Box NAS 1000. This allows an HD of any size and has both Ethernet and USB2 connections so you can copy all of the files to the drive faster using USB2, and then connect it up to the network for sharing the files. It is quite expensive for the unit but this seems the best solution for a NAS unit on a LAN.

[Submeg]

What I am looking for is just for an external storage that I can store emulation stuff as backup. Thats it. Just backup space considering my laptop HD is not that large.

[Harrison]

Then one of the Icy Box external enclosures would be ideal. You could by a normal internal Harddrive of any size and install it inside one of these enclosures and then connect it to your laptop via USB.

If you decide to do this make sure you get the Harddrive and Enclosure to match as you can get enclosures for the older style IDE (PATA) drives and for the newer SATA drives. At the moment it will be cheaper to stick with the older IDE (PATA) drives and enclosures.

The other advantage of using an external enclosure is that if anything goes wrong with the enclosure itself it is quite cheap to relocate the drive in a new enclosure.