posted
We had our Maxtor external hard drive crash, and we've been told they can retrieve jps and other image files, but not our plt files. Does anyone have any experience with this type of recovery? Is it possible?
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yes, the crash was hardware related - the maxtor drive....which was our backup drive! They say they can retrieve all the image files, but nothing else...no msword or plt files, which is really what we want to get back.
posted
hmmmmmmm If they can get one file they should be able to get others.
But there may be a partition problem,
I used to get 98% of the data back,, As long as the data headers were ok..
-------------------- Leaper of Tall buildings.. If you find my posts divisive or otherwise snarky please ignore them. If you do not know how then PM me about it and I will demonstrate. Posts: 5274 | From: Im a nowhere man | Registered: Jul 2001
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The 'Click of Death"! Hate it when that happens. I crashed three years ago from probably lightning. They managed to save about half of what I had. It cost dearly. I replaced it with a mirror drive unit and an external hard drive as a separate back up. I keep the external unplugged, unless I need it. It was a small price to pay for some good insurance against another disaster.
And we all need to remember to back up frequently!
-------------------- Preston McCall 112 Rim Road Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 text: 5056607370 Posts: 1552 | From: Santa Fe, New Mexico | Registered: Nov 1998
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If that was your backup drive doesn't that mean your regular drive has all the data? I despise Maxtor drives; no telling how many thousands of dollars I lost when my POS software drive went down. I sent it to some "pros" who claimed they could retrieve data even if it had been in a flood or fire. I guess because it had not been in a flood or fire they couldn't do it. Every other time a drive has gone down I've been able to install a new drive and slave the old drive and drag off my files.
-------------------- Ricky Jackson Signs Now 614 Russell Parkway Warner Robins, GA (478) 923-7722 signpimp50@hotmail.com
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Issac Newton Posts: 3528 | From: Warner Robins, GA | Registered: Oct 2004
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we used this maxtor as a network drive, and we had another maxtor that was 'supposed' to be the backup, but apparently it wasn't set up properly. Sooooo.....as the story goes, we've lost about a years worth of plt programming. Thankfully we have many pdf references saved in email or print to refer to. It's a very big drag.
I don't understand how it all works, but you'd think if they could see a jpg file, they should be able to see other file types as well. I'm wondering if they had our proprietary software on their system whether they'd be able to salvage the plot files too.
If anyone has any suggestions....please post them here.
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I have done redneck recovery with two IDE hard drives. The first was a friend's, had a virus, but mechanically was fine. The second one was my own, it was froze up. I'm going to put a link here to a page I made about it, but several warnings: 1 This was IDE which is older stuff, yours is probably newer, plus, I have NO idea what's inside an external unit. 2 The lower picture you see IS NOT part of the process, it's just for the curious to know what a hard drive looks like inside. See pretty chrome part??? Not what you want to happen. 3 This is last ditch, nothing to lose method. Try everything else first. You might BECOME a redneck...
-------------------- James Donahue Donahue Sign Arts 1851 E. Union Valley Rd. Seymour TN. (865) 577-3365 brushman@nxs.net
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for lunch, Benjamin Franklin Posts: 2057 | From: 1033 W. Union Valley Rd. | Registered: Feb 2003
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I always say a backup is only as good as it's restore. I highly recommend Acronis in the future. I have restored many a times flawlessly and use it religiously as a backup to a Wester Digital "my passport" external drive.
That drive is kept off site.
-------------------- Bob Rochon Creative Signworks Millbury, MA 508-865-7330
"Life is Like an Echo, what you put out, comes back to you." Posts: 5149 | From: Millbury, Mass. U.S. | Registered: Nov 1998
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I went through the same thing not too long ago. Who is telling you that they can only recover one type of file? I think I would take it somewhere else to get a second opinion.
My drive died, and I called Geek Squad 800 #, and they told me over the phone that they could do it for $150...so I drove about an hour, and when I carried it in the store told me that they would have to send it out, and it would start at $250...and could go as high as $1400...
So I called another computer guy that I had knew, and he quoted me $125 an hour...for how ever long it took... I tried another guy that my wife told me about, and he told me that he wanted to see it prior to quoting. I carried it into him late friday afternoon, he hooked it up to his "data recovery" PC, and it started to work...so he told me that he wanted to make sure that the PC would do it before making a price. He told me that it would be $375. I told him to go ahead with it, best price... Well he called me late saturday afternoon, and told me that it was done... total $300.
Now I don't even call around to find the best price on computer repair. I just call him, and drop it off to him...
-------------------- Mark Kottwitz Kottwitz Graphics Ridgely, MD www.SeeMySignWork.com -------------------------- Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein Posts: 746 | From: Ridgely, MD | Registered: Oct 2000
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they probably dont ever know what the hell a plt file is. if you can access some files why would you not access others because of their extension, that was a stupid commentmade by them. if this was your backup then I assume you have the same info on your original. trash it and forwet about it and dont waste any money on these guys.
some people are just not plt freindly, wonder what brings that on?
-------------------- You ever notice how easily accessible people are when they are requiring your services but once they get invoice you can't reach them anymore
posted
Nancy, when you converted all those files to PDF, did you select the graphic portions to convert to JPG or leave them as vectors? PDF files can be saved in both formats & if they still are vectors, you may be able to open them back up & save them as PLTs again. Good Luck, maybe!
-------------------- Bill Cosharek Bill Cosharek Signs N.Huntingdon,Pa
bcosharek@juno.com Posts: 703 | From: N.Huntingdon, Pa, USA | Registered: Dec 1999
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IN SUMMARY I think it best not only do we need to backup BUT we need to backup 3-4 times also. i know its a pain but you never know
-------------------- You ever notice how easily accessible people are when they are requiring your services but once they get invoice you can't reach them anymore
posted
IT doesn't matter what the file extension name is.. If the tech doing the restore knows anything he will be attempting a bit for bit transfer..
If the drive will spin and the head will read data,,, anything can be gotten back even if the files are corrupted. However if the file header is messed up the file may not open properly.. That is the only concern.
-------------------- Leaper of Tall buildings.. If you find my posts divisive or otherwise snarky please ignore them. If you do not know how then PM me about it and I will demonstrate. Posts: 5274 | From: Im a nowhere man | Registered: Jul 2001
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as Ricky hinted at... and Bruce.. clearing (or saving) files off a hard drive is not a backup... the SECOND copy is a "backup"... but I see how Nancy did have a second copy programed to be created... but done incorrectly...
I had my own "Crash of 05" which was a result of improper auto-backup programming. The saddest part was that I got the auto backup to clear off my hard drive, then I systematically threw away 20 gigs of stuff, file by file & folder by folder, carefully choosing what to delete over 3 hours time...
...well, my backup wasn't a "backup", it was just an "archive" because it was my only copy of files I wanted off my internal hard drive... and the external drive I moved it to (& checked) was fine... it never failed... but the backup was set to "sync" with the internal drive... so the next time it ran... it threw away the same 20 gigs of stuff, & by the time I realized it, the drive had been written to so many more times, many deleted files were corrupted!
The rest of my "Crash of 05" story is this... I recovered what there was to recover, which included seeing the directory structure again, and all the file names... but having somewhere around 60% corrupt files that wouldn't even open, & of the remaining 40%, a quarter of them would open, but were partially corrupt...
And the last interesting note: The .plt files were 100% corrupt!! No other file format was 100% corrupt, so contrary to the many comments above, I think the guy who warned you he can't recover those files, may just be bit more knowledgable than some of the armchair specialists.
Last note, I had 3 or 4 "WD My Book's" fail on me, and 2 or 3 Maxtor NAS drives..,. until I bought myself a 4TB "Buffalo Terra-Station" ..that thing is the bees knees for network storage devices!!
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oh, forgot to mention.. I sent some of my corrupted .plt files to Tony Tevaris, the lead developer of Gerber's Omega software... but he wasn't able to open them either.
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Doug, I don't use it as a network drive just a backup. Which is not in use everyday. The passbook ones are small notebook size hard drives. Not that any hard drive is fool proof just be proactive and duplicate back ups.
-------------------- Bob Rochon Creative Signworks Millbury, MA 508-865-7330
"Life is Like an Echo, what you put out, comes back to you." Posts: 5149 | From: Millbury, Mass. U.S. | Registered: Nov 1998
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Thanks for all your comments and suggestions. It is a hard lesson to learn. Many of us rely on 'computer guys' to recommend backup systems and then set them up for us. We are sign experts, not computer experts, but I guess we need to be more pro-active and really try to understand how this technology works. It just seems overwhelming at times....so much more to learn. Thankfully we have multiple backups of previous years, so we've only lost the last 12 months or so....only. Ouch.
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I had problems with a Dell machine here with a raid set up, where stuff was scattered over 2 drives, Dell said they would replace without problem, but we would lose all, I tried SpinRite as a last attempt to fix things, and saved all my files.
Had another precision workstation crash trie mounting the disc in a harddrive caddy with different settings wouldn't work, mounted it as a slave in an old computer here and saved everything.
We use NAS backups here with double hardrives 2TB mirroring each other.
Try SpinRite, that worked, and has worked on several occasions to save us a nightmare or two!
posted
doug I stand corrected on the PLT files maybe that guy did know what he was tlaking bout, i dont know anyone besides sign folks that know what a plt file is.
as far as crashes, they are gonna happen and I can tell you this i dont give adman if it is a $30 100gb hardrive or a $500 3 terrabyte drive its gonna happen. lightning (i think) took my last one out and it had been a couple weeks since i back ed up last, hard lesson learned.
my "back computer" has everyhting my main one does it IS a carbon copy. i will watse no more money on "file recovery" like I did the last time,another lesson learned. one program i downloaded found the files and i saw them listed. i got excited and paid fo rthe program and then come to find out they were all corrupt. WASTE OF MONEY, they dont tell you that when it finds them.
-------------------- You ever notice how easily accessible people are when they are requiring your services but once they get invoice you can't reach them anymore
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Liker the M'towny said.... they all can fail. Hard drives have very high speed moving parts in super close tolerances that operate endlessly, so problems will happen. It's not 'IF' it's 'WHEN'. And also the part about it happening to all brands is true too... when working at the computer store, we'd have a rash of failures in WD, so we'd start leaning towards Seagate... then we have a bunch of problems with them and we'd tilt back to WD... never was much a fan of Maxtor...
-------------------- Jon Jantz Snappysign.com jjantz21@gmail.com http://www.allcw.com Posts: 3395 | From: Atmore, AL | Registered: Nov 2005
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Glenn and Todd- I use Mozy.com- they saved me about 1500 photos that were irreplacable. $4.95/month for unlimited space, plus I also use a couple of backup drives and DVD Backups
-------------------- Michael Clanton Clanton Graphics/ Blackberry 19 Studio 1933 Blackberry Conway AR 72034 501-505-6794 clantongraphics@yahoo.com Posts: 1735 | From: Conway Arkansas | Registered: Oct 2001
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Try your local police department. They usually have some guys that are great at retrieving files from hard drives. Mine crashed and the local police department retrieved all of my graphics.
-------------------- Robert Richards Southern Ad Specialties Carrollton, GA 770-830-1501 sasga2000@a0l.com Posts: 138 | From: Carrollton, GA | Registered: Sep 2002
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our police dept is too busy out giving traffic tickets and busting prostitutes, they don't have time.How did you ever got your police dept to recover your files
-------------------- You ever notice how easily accessible people are when they are requiring your services but once they get invoice you can't reach them anymore
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