Hard drive died

You shouldn't need to worry about anything beyond the connector (SATA) and the physical size of the drive - i.e. you don't want to get a laptop drive by mistake.

WD Caviar and Seagate Barracuda drives are pretty inexpensive and are fairly reliable.

You can get something cheaper, but it's seldom a good idea. A hard drive is a poor place to compromise, and I think it's wise to get the best possible hard drive you can find.

When I buy a computer, I buy it based on getting the best components, and when I guild one I do the same. I'm one of the very few people I know who has never had a hard drive crash in all the years I've used computers.

Also, is your old hard drive definitely dead? Always worth checking - a format can sometimes ressurect it ready for use again... I have several old hard drives in use as portable media thanks to adapters which can connect them to a USB port.

areteus said:

I have several old hard drives in use as portable media thanks to adapters which can connect them to a USB port.

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These are like the screwdrivers of the computer world - no home should be without one. Or many.

Chances are if the drive is recoverable the data on it isn't so don't expect to get everything on there back. Best thing to hope for is a freshly wiped drive ready to use as extra storage.

You need to look for something called a 'drive enclosure' which is basically a case with the correct cables inside it. You screw the drive in, connect up the cables and it should work. Some of them need an additional power supply.

If the disc problem you have is mechanical then this won't work but it is always worth a try.

Make sure you get the right version - most older drives are IDE but anything from the last few years or so is more likely to be a SATA connector.

That darned cat knocked an external hard drive on the floor. It won't work.

I'm screwed, right?

There's a well-known saying in computing circles, which is that "data only exists when it's in more than two places".

Amos Gunner - when you plug it in to the computer, does it make any noises at all?

Imagine a vinyl record player - there's a rotating disc with a "read" head that tracks across the surface of the disc. Minaturise that a few dozen times and make it work on magnetism and that's a rough idea of what a hard drive is. The platters (the vinyl record in the comparison above) are incredibly thin and fragile - from memory I think they are many times thinner than a human hair. When you drop or knock a hard drive, the risk is that you make the read arm "jump" and bash into the platter. If that happens, it could damage the platter so whenever the read head passes over that point it skips and further damages the platter. Eventually the platter will be unreadable - it can be repaired at huge expense but usually there's no point. This is called a "head crash" ('cos the read head is literally crashing into the platter). The most usual symptom is a rhythmic ticking or clicking noise (the "click of death"). If you ever hear this, BACK UP YOUR FILES NOW! Of course, you've all been good and taken regular back ups, right?

Anyway, back to the point - if it's clicking you are probably screwed, but there are some things you can try, none of which I will recommend here as I've never tried them myself and they probably don't work. Just google "click of death" and go nuts with sticking it in the freezer and other improbable fixes.

If it is completely silent then it might be as simple as the USB connector or power cable being broken. Again, a drive enclosure will be useful to test this. Inside the plastic case of the drive will be the hard drive itself, usually in a self-contained metal case. Remove this from the plastic shell, plug it into the enclosure, plug that into your computer, and see if it works.

Unfortunately hard drive costs are higher right now (partly due to flooding in Asia as I'm told by my IT brother). If it was your main OS hard drive, I'd opt for a more dependable/better warrantied option so if it goes down you can get a replacement fast. I had my OS drive go down and it was in warranty and I did the option where they send out a new drive first (you have to put a deposit down which will be refunded once they get the faulty one).

I don't see anything here mentioning that this was or wasn't a laptop.

On a laptop, if you buy a drive, watch the platter speed. The slowest speed is 5400 RPM. The faster you go, you get a performance bump (If you do lots of hard drive work), but it can have a small (though significant) effect on time between needing to charge the battery.

Your operating system (or utilities from the computer manufacturer) might have power settings that offset this, but a less expensive drive might not support the software.

shadowwalker said:

I'm currently using an old pc with Windows95...

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Might want to think about whether spending money to revive a dinosaur is worth it versus a shiny new laptop with Windows 7 for not a whole lot more.

Jeff

QuantumMechanic said:

On a laptop, if you buy a drive, watch the platter speed. The slowest speed is 5400 RPM. The faster you go, you get a performance bump (If you do lots of hard drive work), but it can have a small (though significant) effect on time between needing to charge the battery.

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I wouldn't really worry about that these days. They're all pretty efficient now. I'd be surprised if it's more than a couple minutes difference. The only reason not to go 7200 RPM is if you can afford an SSD. (Any more than that and the prices start to look like rip-offs to me and you might as well get an SSD.)

WeaselFire said:

Might want to think about whether spending money to revive a dinosaur is worth it versus a shiny new laptop with Windows 7 for not a whole lot more.

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Sounded like the Win 95 computer was a temporary solution while fixing the one with the conked out HDD.

Hmmm. Just make sure you get help installing the hard drive. If you need to install the operating system from scratch, it can be a bit tricky.

Jeff's advice is good - a new pc does not have to be expensive. The bare-minimum pcs (and I'm talking laptop or desktop) are cheap and perfect for authors. You only need an expensive machine if you are into gaming. Using word - not so much

Windows 7 is also more stable - less crashes, which means less opportunity for your work to blow-up in your face. Backing-up is second nature to me - Mozy is a good option, but you should also try dropbox (at dropbox.com), which takes the hassle out of backing your stuff up. Although, I dont know it it works on Windows 95

In addition to file backups I would strongly recommend image backups - these are like photographs of your hard drive. In the scenario above you would then restore the image backup to your new drive and it would be exactly as it was when you took the backup - right down to history files and recent items. The OS will be installed just as you left it, along with all your programs and files. It's particularly useful when you have licensed software that requires a key to activate it - you don't need to re-install and re-enter keys because it is, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as it was before, just on a different physical drive.

Acronis TrueImage and Norton Ghost are good apps for imaging and are inexpensive. I take an image every time I change something software or OS-wise - such as downloading a Windows Update - and take file backups after every writing session. If ever anything goes wrong I can restore the image and then the files and be back up and running in just a few hours.

I use TrueImage myself - I can't bring myself to trust Norton again after enduring their antivirus software...

shadowwalker said:

Jeff - I'm just using the dinosaur until I get the new hard drive - which will go into my fairly new pc (with W7). I admit, I tend to use up pcs to the last drop of blood (the one between this one and the dinosaur lasted nearly 12 years!), but even I have to draw the line somewhere.

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have you looked at installing linux on your 95 system? you should see a speed increase on your older boxes with all the benefits that come with a modern os- like built in cloud storage support etc. check out this online demo if you're interested.

My OS drive that I replaced (the one mentioned above) just went down last week. Thank goodness all my important documents were cloud-saved. I should mention, this time Windows 7 had a popup that said my drive was failing and to back up everything. I was able to get everything I needed off of it.

I still find the best tool for hard drive recovery and maintenance is SpinRite. If you aren't on a SSD, SpinRite will add years to your drive, or save you when you need to get your data off it.