In the world of bad days, today must rank somewhere up there...
Last week, I had a HELL of a week. Come in at work at 5:00am, get out at 11:00pm (don't forget the 35-40 minutes drive to and from work). That was my week. As you can imagine, that means a LOT of data and hard work went into what I had to produce.
So, I come in this morning. I'm told there's a meeting in Toronto later this week, and I have to prepare some ducomentation about the company. Thing, is had to go dig into the past backups to find files from a guy that hasn't worked here for a few years. I find said backup files, proceed to extract them.
WHAM! Windows BSOD.
Slightly angry, I turn off the computer, turn it back on. NOTHING!
Unplug everything, let it rest a little. Replug it, reboot. NTOSKRNL corrupt!
Dig out my emergency CD, boot up a PE Windows environment to restore a working copy of the NTOSKRNL to the hard drive.... Hard drive not detected!
Run diagnostics. Short test: Error code 0007 (smart related). Long test: Error code 0226 (can't relocate bad sector - Replace drive).
Thing is.... And I'm not too proud of that, there was a problem with the backup procedure over the weekend (an offline computer without wake-on-lan would do that), so the backup is not done. No way to read the hard drive. Not in any software I tried at that time anyway.
So I call a few contacts, search the web, etc. Most people are telling I will need recovery services.
So I call OnTrack data recovery. The technician there (very helpful) tells me I should give their software a try before anything else. So I download EasyRecovery Pro trial, run that on the hard drive.
VICTORY! I guess it bypasses the faulty SMART logic and just reads the damn thing and sees my data! A few phone calls later, I reach a friend who has a licenced copy. Bring the hard drive over.
I now have a brand new hard drive with all my data intact!
SO lesson learned: Never turn off the computer, or at least, activate wake-on-lan! Or even better: both!
But I have to say, THANK YOU OnTrack!
