[OT] my hard drive was murdered!

[volvoguy]

Frank & Mark,

That's interesting. I wouldn't have considered that. The powersupply
came with the case and it's a 500W Antec (which I've had good luck
with in the past). I don't have a power hungry video card (an ATI
Radeon 7500), or a lot of devices attached (1 CD burner and two hard
drives). The hard drive in question is a Western Digital 160Gb - not
the mega expensive versions, but not the budget line either. Since the
BIOS sees the drive, I could probably write down the info for it if it
would be beneficial at all.

I have a friend that works in a high-level IT position at one of the
big 3 automakers. He has suggested I put the drive in a working
computer and try to run Norton disk doctor on it. If there are any
utilities I might be able to run off the Ubuntu live disc, let me
know. If all else fails, my friend has some forensic software at work,
but he said that really only works when you know exactly what files
and types of files you're looking for - and the drive has two OS's and
a big partition for data - tens of thousands of files - so the
forensic thing may not work.

Since we're already having an off-topic conversation already, I would
also be interested in what other people do to protect (ie. backup)
large amounts of data like this - either with Ubuntu or Windows. Even
backing up to DVD means a LOT of blank media for that much data. Do
people still use tape? RAID? Backup duplicate hard drives that stay
disconnected most of the time? That's the main reason I haven't done
any backups lately - I just don't know HOW to back up that much data.

I'd also like to publicly thank this community for being so patient
with the occasional off-topic messages that have come up here.
Everyone tries to be helpful and I've never seen anyone get angry and
act rudely. It's a refreshing change from other "community" lists I've
been on in the past! I use this list as one of the major selling
points for using Ubuntu! :-)

Aaron