Make me feel better - boot disk failure

Obviously you had a backup to restore from…

You'll be able to install a nice new fast SSD and have a clean OS install. The old disk might show up afterwards.

At least it's not a MS surface laptop. It's not is it?

Please give me your encouraging tales of data recovery

Obviously you had a backup to restore from…

My work here is done. Backup is cheap and easy (doubly so in the era of cloud sync), recovery from failed media is expensive and difficult.

Your data might be intact and it's just a failure of the booty part of the drive. But with modern hardware it's increasingly unlikely.

I've had a few laptops where it was enough to open it and reseat the connector for the hard drive and it worked again.  I've had dead drives as well of course but you might get lucky

A friend had a drive fail, they sent it to a recovery company and got all the data back. So there is definitely good news there. However I don't think it was cheap as they wouldn't tell us.

If you do really need the data and decide to send it away do not try and fix it yourself first.

Good luck

If you do really need the data and decide to send it away do not try and fix it yourself first.

If not, will it boot to a Linux "live" USB drive?
e.g. https://mxlinux.org/

nothing I’m doing can find the disk.

Does that include checking if it appears in the BIOS? If it's an older laptop the CMOS battery may have expired, resulting in the BIOS forgetting its settings.

Sorry for your loss etc, it's bloody annoying when it all goes ffffft...

Quick segue if I may. Backups. I'm out of touch with what people are doing. I sync my data to cloud storage but if I lose my machine, it's still mucho aggro. Can I/should I have a machine snapshot saved in the Cumulus or...? What's the bestist approach please oh wise ones?

probably wont be all that difficult to recover.

Do you want to repair the computer, or is it time it was replaced and you just want to recover your stuff?
Do you have access to another computer?

I’m out of touch with what people are doing. I sync my data to cloud storage but if I lose my machine, it’s still mucho aggro.

It really isn't much aggro any longer (I'm on a Mac, but can't imagine Windows is much different). I've got different bits of my data on 3 different services (which I could probably clean up but reflects where I was collaborating when it was created) - Apple iCloud syncs photos and documents, Dropbox still has some stuff on it, Google Drive has more. I think the only thing I actually rely on disc backups for is my mp3 collection (which doesn't get much added to it any longer and at 160Gb odd I could stick it on an SD card for £25 now)

I've set up or re-built a few new machines in the last couple of years and it makes little difference in workload whether you
1) direct Mac-mac transfer via cable
2) restore from disc back up
3) set up as completely new user. Log into a couple of 'internet' accounts (a couple of gmail, iCloud) then install Drive and Dropbox and leave it all to sync.

Yes, if you've got a load of unusual apps downloading and installing them takes a bit of time in v3 but you don't have to do that until you need to use them (and it means you don't fill a new machine with crap you never use).

The 'data' bit is the easiest to move now - its the apps and customisation that takes the time.

This happened to me, once, a good few years back. Downloaded some images to the HDD that had commercial value. Went to bed, got up in the morning to a DOS screen and boot disk failure message.

I had to go away that night so missed the deadline for the images. On my trip I met someone, did them a good turn and somehow explained my data story. Turned out he worked for Intel and told me he'd get my data back as a thanks!

Step one was to buy a caddy, remove the disk, mount it in the caddy and see if it would read without needing to boot from it.

A new SSD, clean install, old disk in caddy - and bingo, read and retrieved everything shortly before total failure.

As per Cougar, not sure if that's still as valid on a more modern drive.

I now have a fairly robust backup system in place for when (not if) it happens again.

I’m out of touch with what people are doing. I sync my data to cloud storage but if I lose my machine, it’s still mucho aggro.

I sync everything to Dropbox. If my laptop dies, I can borrow another one etc and still access all my work whilst I either repair or install a new one. Once the new one is up and running it just downloads everything from Dropbox.

Still have to re-install and re-license dozens of applications, so not hassle free.

Plus the reconfigure Windows via the registry to be half usable....

All apple here. Time Machine to a local NAS for my 'main' Mac. iCloud for all documents, photos, etc. OneDrive for when I'm sharing with non apple users.  Fast SSD 1 TB drive for any quick storage I need and a couple of cheap 5 TB non SSD externals for video archiving.

When (FINALLY) we get a proper internet connection, I'll connect my NAS to the Syntology cloud service and do live syncs. Plus all GoPro stuff into the cloud. At the moment that's just not feasible with the connection we have.

Good luck getting your files back!

A friend had a drive fail, they sent it to a recovery company and got all the data back. So there is definitely good news there. However I don’t think it was cheap as they wouldn’t tell us.

If it's professional recovery at somewhere like OnTrack rather than some oik in PC World with a copy of Recuva or a Linux pendrive then I'd guess not much change out of a grand.

Does that include checking if it appears in the BIOS? If it’s an older laptop the CMOS battery may have expired, resulting in the BIOS forgetting its settings.

Maybe if by "older" you mean "from the 1990s." Modern systems will autodetect.

What’s the bestist approach please oh wise ones?

I would suggest a combination of cloud and local storage. Or if you like, 'online' and 'offline'.

What I do is use OneDrive as a redirect for the artist formerly known as My Documents. This is exceptionally good on a number of levels; aside from the inherent backupiness™ it also means I've got seamless access to my data from multiple devices. For larger stuff I periodically mirror a data drive to an external hard disk which lives at my mum's. In the event of catastrophic failure it's likely quicker to drive to hers to snag the drive than it is to sync ~1TB of data over the air.

What works for me may not work for you. Consider "what if?" What if your hard disk fails; what if your Internet connection is down; what if you're burgled or have a house fire; what if your backup drive fails; what if you get ransomware which actively seeks to infect backups; etc etc.

Still have to re-install and re-license dozens of applications, so not hassle free.

Win10 still has the old Win7 system image tool. You can use this to create a system image that you can save to an external disk and use to recover the system and installed apps. Obviously, you need to make a new image every time you install or update any important app. If you use this, plus Dropbox or similar for your data, you can have everything back up and running in a couple of hours even if your disk totally dies. No idea if it's still there in Win11.

Win10 still has the old Win7 system image tool.

Never used this. To be fair, I've never had a HD die and just have the App installation hassle every time I get a new work laptop - every few years.

Hm. Is the licensing thing a big deal for most users?

The Windows license is associated with the machine and with your Microsoft account. Office, again tied to your MS account. What other licensed software do 'regular' people use? Adobe suite?

It used to be a pain in the arse but going from bare metal to a useable system today is, what, an hour's work?

What other licensed software do ‘regular’ people use? Adobe suite?

Adobe Suite for me.
Work stuff gets backed up to an external server at a friends place.
It also exists in 2 separate places in my house.
Not fireproof but covers against corrupt media.

What works for me may not work for you. Consider “what if?” What if your hard disk fails; what if your Internet connection is down; what if you’re burgled or have a house fire; what if your backup drive fails; what if you get ransomware which actively seeks to infect backups; etc etc.

This is soooo true. My what ifs, were;
1) "What if Dropbox do planned maintenance for a whole weekend at the critical moment in the project and you can't access your data for the whole time"
2) "What if the sales guy completing the proposal deletes the individual dropbox folders once he has added the relevant numbers in to his proposal, neglecting that I had spent many hours prepping the dropbox folder contents for him and the tech support team"

What other licensed software do ‘regular’ people use?

I use some specialist software that is expensive and must be deactivated on one machine before transferring to a new one. I also have a bunch of other stuff that is a PITA to reinstall. Having a system image is a nice bit of insurance. Only had to restore from it once (since 2008), but that really was a lifesaver.

“What if the sales guy completing the proposal deletes the individual dropbox folders once he has added the relevant numbers in to his proposal, neglecting that I had spent many hours prepping the dropbox folder contents for him and the tech support team”

If you created the folder and shared it with others, you can prevent others from deleting them.

I ran our corporate backup software for years. About 2 weeks ago I uninstalled it, to see if it was the cause of my laptop running hot. It was. Then I dropped my laptop in a stream. Fortunately I've not lost much.. but still. D'oh.

I've an image of Moly furiously key bashing whilst white water rafting...

So, my data is both local and auto synced to One Bolleaux. I have it if they play silly buggers or my connection fails locally (within my bit) or outside of my bit.

I like the idea of the image/snapshot wotsit in W10 but presumably if my drive fails, there'll be differences in the new one that I recover to. Will the snapshot deal with that or will I get some unhelpful error messages ie if I install a 1TB SSD in place of the current 500gb SSD or different manufacturer/speed etc? Obviously if the machine goes kaput, same question? Presumably a clean install then data recovery is betterer than recovering from the snapshot?

Looks like I'm mebbies OK ATM but I hate changing machines whether by forced necessity or choice.

What other licensed software do ‘regular’ people use?

I use some specialist software that is expensive and must be deactivated on one machine before transferring to a new one. I also have a bunch of other stuff that is a PITA to reinstall.

Oh, sure, of course. As do I. But I said "regular" for a reason, there are always going to be extraordinary cases.

I’ve an image of Moly furiously key bashing whilst white water rafting…

No kink shaming.

For the hard drive, try reseating the connectors first.  If that doesn't work then shove it into a drive caddy or a spare slot in an desktop and see if that can read it.  That usually does it for me.  If not then you are probably a bit stuck.  Drive recovery can be seriously expensive

. I’m out of touch with what people are doing. I sync my data to cloud storage

OneDrive for me.  It's 1TB so it covers pretty much everything I have.  Audio stuff I tend to keep the working files off of OneDrive to prevent it spending it's whole life syncing but I'm  happy to copy stuff up to the cloud from time to time.

Almost all licences you can find the keys in your email and can easily download the install files from the web these days.

It is soooo much easier than it ever used to be.  If a machine properly dies you can usually be up and running again in a few hours (as long as you keep checking that OneDrive is still syncing of course)

Still have to re-install and re-license dozens of applications, so not hassle free.

Make me feel better

The crypto you had stored on the drive is worth f all now anyway. Hope this helps.

I like the idea of the image/snapshot wotsit in W10 but presumably if my drive fails, there’ll be differences in the new one that I recover to. Will the snapshot deal with that or will I get some unhelpful error messages ie if I install a 1TB SSD in place of the current 500gb SSD or different manufacturer/speed etc? Obviously if the machine goes kaput, same question? Presumably a clean install then data recovery is betterer than recovering from the snapshot?

As I understand it, your new disk must be the same size or larger than the old system partitions (not physical disk). It will create partitions that are functionally identical to the ones you included in the system image. You will be able to create new partitions on the unused parts of the physical disk. That's my understanding, happy to be corrected.

Probably not too expensive to buy a secondhand disk identical your existing one and put your system image on that if you need to.

It'll probably work. But these days it's probably more hassle than just reinstalling from scratch.

I just use one drive in the same way I used to use the hard drive. Can access files from anywhere then. Office docs auto backup as you work on them.