2 TB Lacie Big Disk Crash - Is All Lost?

[JCGamble]

My 2 TB Lacie Big Disk of barely four months decided to melt down today. Blue light is blinking and I heard a faint grinding. I have been waiting on my IT dept. for a server/tape back up now for several months but was closing in on set up by mid-March. Keeping approximately 400GB of photographic files on the machine has been a great risk and a life of danger that I am naturally regretting. Does anybody have any thoughts on data recovery given this situation?

My thanks in advance.

[peterkrogh]

JC (name, please),
Let me first say that I really feel for you.  I have been in the position of wondering if I have a big data loss, and it is a terrible feeling.

Sounds like maybe you will need to go to LaCie to have the unit looked at.  
Did you have it set to stripe, or mirror, or both?

In any case, as you see so clearly now, the best protection is to have an entirely different device backing up the photos.  I guess it won't be much comfort to you (but may be valuable to others) to know that 400 GB externals can be purchased for as little as $180 today at BestBuy.
Peter

[Niall Horley]

Sorry to hear you news, Its the thing I most dread loosing hard drives.

One possibility is to approach a data recovery company, depending upon how bad the damage is they may be able to recover the data. It happened to my brother in Law. I passed the disk on which was totally dead, and a few days later a disc came back with all the data recover along with  a very nasty looking bill. He did not care as it would have taken him weeks to re do all te drawings which he lost let alone the personnel data.

Niall

[JCGamble]

Thanks for the thoughts. Looking into data recovery at present. I reread chapter 4 of the Dam Book over the weekend and spent the rest of my time creating redundancy in all my personal and work archives. Any SPF is one too many.

Cheers,
Joseph Gamble