My hard dive is stuck trying to boot up, won't ht past progress bar.hoping I can salvage my photos. Need recommendations for a new tower. What is recommended memory requirements for good photo processing speed? Anything in particular to shop for to make sure it will work wih my pictures? I knew I should've had online back-up:(. Any help with suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Don- Wish you luck here. You have two priorities but one comes before the other. Top is to recover your images which are irreplaceable. Work on that first, then consider a new system and along with it a way to backup so this does not happen again.
Don,
Do you have a backup? Everyone should have multiple backups of any digital data they hope never to lose. At least some of those backups should be stored off site.
Here is what I would do. Buy a usb disk housing where you can put the hard drive from your computer in it and then plug that in to another computer and 1st run a disk check. Then copy what files you can to another drive. Then make multiple backups. I have a minimum of 4 backups, 3 of which are off site. I alternately bring one home and update the backup.
If you are unable to read any data off the drive, then the only alternative is to send it to a good data recovery service. It will likely cost a couple of thousand to recover any data, if it is at all possible.
Once you recover your files you need a back-up plan. I prefer two external HDs, one local and the other offsite (my office). I VPN into my office network and sync the two drives using a synch program. If you don't have too many files, then online backup might be ok. Once you get above 500GB, that might not be cost effective.
For your next computer, consider at least 8GB or RAM and a solid state HD. Go for smaller size there and back up to a combination of an external HD and online backup, or an offsite HD.
Unfortunately I kept adding photos and because I was foolish thinking my system was less than 3 yrs old, I kept telling myself I'd get around to a back up plan. Well my nightmare just came true:( I just ran CCleaner on Friday as recommended on another posting about computer running slowly. Not sure if it's even related, as the system ran for about another 6 hrs after running the CCleaner. I feel like an idiot not having had a backup plan. Even knowing my system was not too old, I know they always seem to fail when we least expect it, like now. I'm sick thinking about all of my photos being potentially lost. Especially since my wife regularly bugged me about backing them up, yikes. I'll never hear the end of this one.
Don't beat yourself up Don. Most people don't back up so you are in the majority. Most get away with it because modern computer and HD technology is amazingly reliable, but every now and then something like this happens to remind yourself that you should.
Good advice from Roger. Do not write ANYTHING to the offending disk. Try to boot from another disk and then mount the offending disk and see if it can be read. As Roger mentioned, this may mean installing the disk in a USB enclosure. Often a disk that won't boot can still be read and the data taken off. What system are you using (Windows or Mac). If the later I can provide more specific information. There are many file rescue programs out there and I have had good success with Sandisk Rescue Pro which works well on hard disks.
Good luck recovering your data. you have received great advice on how to best accomplish this task. RE the other part of your post - computer memory - I would, on a PC platform, look at an i7 processor and 16 GB of RAM. An SSD drive for your C drive (OS and Software) will also be an option that allows fast operation.
Hard drive crashed, need advice!
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