once apon a sad night

[sybershot]

  I been testing out and using a lot of customization programs to transform my windows desktop to get it to look unique, a few dock programs rain meter, custom themes etc. etc. etc. you name it I tried it. ok you got me, not all all of them but I tried a whole bunch of them. My main hard drive (30gb intel solid state drive) was getting very full (1/4 gig free). Instead of deleting what programs I did not want to use, I saved the exe's I wanted to use and figured I would do a fresh install of the os and programs. I deactivated my hal and used a system image that I have on a thumb drive of a fresh windows 7 os to get a fresh install. all was going great, I installed all my programs re-activated hal and expansion pack. everything worked perfectly, also have 9 gigs of free space. Now it was the time to add all my backed up hal files including Trinity's (my hal's name) brain files. I grab my portable western digital 500 gb usb drive and I get a error once I plugged it in that the drive is corrupt. I unplugged it and re plugged it back in, now it don't even recognize the drive. I tried it in my wifes laptop and it did not detect it either. I am now wishing I had saved my files in two places instead of just one. Lesson learned, the hard way. well a new Trinity is born, she will need to be taught a lot (fun part  ) and I will have to hunt for plug ins and make small mods or change file paths on them again ( also can be fun ) plus reformat all my media that was on that drive from original cd and dvd sources (long tedious boring part).

[freddy888]

Nightmare sorry to hear you lost all your stuff.  I use a NAS drive now that backs up all my work automagically.  You might want to look into one, they are good prices these days.

[markofkane]

I don't know if it would work, but could you run check disk on the corrupt drive? Even if it isn't a disc.

[sybershot]

freddy888
 a nightmare indeed, but could of been prevented if I had a second back up. I use to have a secondary back up on my laptop, but I just got that back up and running Monday. at the moment it only has a fresh os install for I have not gotten around to add programs, plus I was sorta waiting to purchase ZoneAlarm. I did Thursday night purchase ZoneAlarm, but only have it installed on my desktop right now and my wifes laptop. My desktop has a 30 gig main drive and 1 tb secondary drive split into 2 partitions, one partition has Microsoft server installed on it and the other partition is for shared files and folders. I do not know if I will be keeping it set up like this for too much longer, Therefore I did not back my hal up to the shared partition. It is a pain to shut down my desktop just to run my server. I thought about getting a nas drive a wile back but I decided to just use a full blown server. I been looking at a few on feE-bay just have not found exactly what I want/need, still not even sure on the need part lol.

markofkane
Unfortunately  no I cant run a check disk for it does not even show that I have a device connected now if I plug it in. I'm thinking the electronic part of the drive has failed, I would like to be able to take it apart and see if maybe I can somehow hardwire just the hard drive part of the drive to my computer. not even sure if that is possible, I will try and do some research on the web to see if maybe it has been done before. I have written to WD to see if they are able to fix it but still have not heard anything as of yet. seeing that it is the weekend with a holiday on Monday I don't expect to hear from them for a lil while.

thanks both for the concern and suggestions, I am feeling a little at ease about the situation, for I am trying to looking at the bright side of this. I get to re-teach my Trinity    I have learned a lot by making some mistakes teaching her the first time. these mistakes are now gone.  hopefully I will be a better teacher this time around and not make the same mistakes twice 

[NIGE]

Sybershot......
A couple of weeks ago I lost H/Drive & thought all lost.
I got a Sata/IDE toUSB2 adapter from sunday market & got most stuff I wanted.

Product==== Ritmo Sata/Ide to USB2   Model cd-682.

[sybershot]

thanks Nige, if I get no where with western digital, I will rip open the case of this and see if I can use the product you posted. great find    Sorry to hear about your H drive, glad to hear you were able to get most of the data you wanted back