????

I have a Western Digital 250GB hard drive, I bought it off a friend
about a year ago. It WAS working just find until a couple of months ago.
For some strange reason it started acting up. Things like when I power
down my Netbook, the power light on it would still be lit. So I would un
plug it, plug it back in and power up my netbook. Then the NB would do a
drive check that would take about 2 hours to check for problems. This
was signs that it was about to go bad...... so I thought.

All the articles, magazines state that you should always back things up
to an external hard drive or to some type of storage, like online
storage. I figured this external drive was good enough, so I delt with
it. Then it crashed last week. I never understood when people got all
crazy when their drives crashed, now I do. I HAD about 2GB of pictures,
about 10GB of programs and other notes that I saved in NotePad stored on
that drive. So, I went online to try and find ways to recover what was
on the drive.

I Googled my question and was directed to a video. This video said
wrapped the drive in a cloth, then store it in the freezer for a couple
of hours. Then let it get to room temp, then plug it in. I didn't try
that method, but there was some information about a website. It has all
the makers external and internal drives solutions. I clicked on Western
Digital, found my model number. I downloaded a program that had four
drive checks in one. The last one after fours hours of scanning, said
that I had bad sectors. That didn't stop me though. Another program,
which formatted the drive was listed too. I debated on this program
because this would erase everything on the drive. But since I couldn't
access the files on it, I went ahead and downlaoded and installed the
format utility.

When the drive crashed, it only showed the drive letter in windows
explorer and not a WD like it use to. But once I formatted it, the icon
can back, and I was able to save and access files on the drive. But now
I sketchy about this drive now. Am I gonna have more problems with it in
the future? Should I just go ahead and get another external drive? For
right now it works.

This little problem had me thinking though. We store everything on hard
drives and at any time, they can crash and burn wiping out all of your
hard earned work. There are countless online storage sites, some are
free, and some you pay for. I'm not too hot on the matter that my stuff
being stores in some bug beige warehouse, out in the middle of no where.
I want to access it with it right besides me. I signed up for one of the
free ones which has 2GB of storage. Only using it for pictures though. I
went from storing my info on to my computer, to floppy, to cd's, to
dvd's, and now to external drives. My last stop is online storage. There
is no other method after online storage. All I do know is that nothing
is forever. Shit happens.
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