sata HDD drive(s) issue

[scubapantheist]

I have a 500 gig sata HDD that is used 100% for storage, music, movies etc. The power went out and as you can guess the battery on my UPS was dead. On reboot the drive did not show. I tried other jumpers, power cords etc. I listened carefully and the drive makes the 'initial' spin up, but does not make the spin to full speed. The drive has been used in this system for this use for over a year. I don't want to lose family pictures/movies. the music etc can be reinstalled but takes days to do. is there any other tests/options I can do to try to save the drive/data?

Also my "main" Sata HDD "200 gig" started making that click pause small thump sound about 6 months ago. My son dropped something on the desk and that's when it started, there has been zero performance issues, and if I shut the computer down and reboot it does not make the sound for a week or so. Should this drive also be replaced?

I will be replacing the UPS asap! but what else can I do or try?

 

[kjv1611]

Re: TigerDirect and NewEgg - what Ben said. I do personally prefer NewEgg above all else, but I do still buy from TigerDirect as well. One thing about TigerDirect for sure is - I don't think I've purchased anything from another site, and had it shipped to me faster with standard shipping. NewEgg is fast, but TD seems like I click "buy now", and hear my doorbell ring. NewEgg seems to have the best customer service/support, and generally they are the cheapest or else close enough to not matter.

As to your hard drives, if you are considering buying new ones, I'd go with at least 500GB each nowadays. They're so cheap compared to just a few years ago.

Also, from what it sounds like, it may be easiest/best for you to just not even worry about RAID. If you're not interested in the technical things, and you don't have someone else doing this for you, then it's much simpler to never touch RAID to begin with.

What you saw during Windows install, about RAID, was only related to drivers for RAID adapters/controllers. If you don't do RAID, then nothing to worry about here. The only other reason you'd need to do anything there is if your motherboard doesn't support the SATA controllers natively - without add-on drivers... if you do need them, you have to slipstream them into Windows, or use a floppy drive, hit F6 at the Windows install prompt, and go from there..

So, if you want to get new drives, not do raid for simplicity, but have a backup, here's something you can do... of course, any bit of it you can change:
[ol][li]Make sure you've got any important data backed up to at least one hard drive, currently.[/li]
[li]On a different hard drive - preferably the fastest, or next to fastest if possible - reinstall Windows. I'd suggest that if you want to look at replacing your drives, look into the Western Digital Black series - they are not necessarily the fastest anymore, but they get a 5 year warranty, and are pretty close to being fastest. The Samsung F3 is currently the fastest (aside from SSDs, for now).[/li]
[li]The drive you backed your data up to? That'll be your new "data" drive - change the drive letters if you want, and I'd even change the name of it under Disk Management to "data", personally, so it's easier to just glance at Windows Explorer and see - yep, there's the data drive.[/li]
[li]Buy an external hard drive, or put the other hard drive in a different computer, or put it in an enclosure - whatever you want to do, and have ability/access to do, and use that for your backup..[/li]
[li]One program I like better every time I use it is SyncBack - Install it (or the backup app of your choice), and set it up to back up as often as you like. Your needs will depend upon how often your data changes. You can do it manually, but the scheduler in that program works really well. Also, with it, you can back-up to practically any destination. I've even seen where you can use it and one other program to back-up to online storage services, such as Microsoft Skydrive. One thing, though, if you DO backup offsite - online particularly, I highly suggest you do NOT include the movies you mentioned, since that isn't particularly looked well upon. And I wouldn't ask much about it in any normal forum board, as it'd likely be against the rules to discuss such.[/li]
[li]Now get some coffee. [/li][/ol]

And a couple other alternatives - you're talking about setting up multiple PCs, there are some different back-up options you can look at.

If you're going to keep the main data store on one PC, and will have enough storage space on the others, here's a really easy back-up solution:
1. Install each machine, of course.
2. Use Syncback to backup the data from the main data store machine to each of the other computers on a regular basis. 3. Have the other machines point to the main system's data drive for any such files desired to open on those machines.

Another option: Install a Linux distro on the machines for which you don't have Windows licenses for.. some Linux distros can make good back-up machines or file servers. One that's really easy to use, requires very minimal hardware, and I think is good for just a file server is SME Linux. I started to use it a few years ago, but it didn't support my RAID hardware. If no RAID, then you probably don't have to worry about that. Of course SME has a more recent version than when I tried... so, MAYBE I'll try it again sometime. Once it's setup (very quick), you can actually control most if not everything on it from a web interface, just like you would do for your router.

And one other option, if you're going to have Windows on all the machines, and can afford it, you can get a Windows Home Server. I've not tried it yet, but supposedly, it has a really nice backup system to back-up other Windows-based PCs. Also, it backs its own self up as well. If you did this route, I'd suggest getting no less than 2 or 3 1TB drives for that one, to be sure you don't run out of space, and that you have plenty of duplication space on the Home Server - I'll skip further detail for now.

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"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me