The Slate Wiped Clean

derek Nov 20th, 2005 Link

“My condolences”, Gabe.

You’ll be back stronger than ever, I’m sure!

Derek

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Barry / 10 Ball Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Gabe,

So sorry to hear about your drive crashing. Over the last ten years or so, I’ve had this happen two times to computers that I rely on at work. I guess we can tack HD failure onto the Inevitable List after taxes and death [I start getting nervous after about 2-1/2 years into a hard drive's life]. Reloading an OS and software is one thing — retrieving lost data is impossible. The Big Lesson I’ve learned — all data religiously gets backed-up onto removable media. I’ve evolved thru the days of unreliable mini-tape drives, Jaz / Zip drives, CDs, and currently DVDs. I’ve also been burned by the [PC] backup programs, which promise an easy 3-step process to rebuild your system. In practice they don’t seem to function as advertised. As a reaction to that, I only archive actual data/information. If you’ve been burned enough times, you might even tend towards a ‘Scorched Earth’ maintenance policy every 2-3 years — blow away the OS, replace the HD, then reinstall the OS and software. In a love-hate relationship with all computers, -B

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KE3VP Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Wow, Gabe, I KNOW what you feel! I was in PC field service for about 17 years. I always told my customers hard drive failure is not a question of if, it’s a question of WHEN. Good luck on finding the new employment – nothing like heaping the stress on all at once. :o) If it’s any consolation, I don’t believe you will lose any following. MotoringFile is THE place to go to keep up with all things MINI, and quite frankly, you’re worth waiting for! Hang tough, Gabe, Bob/KE3VP

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Philip Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Outsh. Sorry to hear this Gabe.

A crash reduces Your expensive computer To a simple stone.

@Barry Three things are certain: Death, taxes and lost data. Guess which has occurred.

Love these Haiku error messages. They bring back a smile when s**t happens. Good luck with the job search!

Cheers Philip

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GMINI Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Sorry to hear it, gabe. Especially of an Apple product. I hope you are able retrieve most, if not all, the post-August MFs and your personal data.

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Ken Nov 20th, 2005 Link

This means you’re going to hear about it on the next WFR podcast! Be prepared!

Sorry to hear, a friend of mine just had her powerbook get fried recently. She was told she shut it down too much, just “sleeping” it is better for it.

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FH Nov 20th, 2005 Link

It’s not really an Apple product, but an IBM. I’ve had a large number of IBM drives die on me in the past, so I’ve gotten wary of them along with the new Hitachi drives, since Hitachi bought IBM several years back.

Sorry to hear about this.

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Gabe Nov 20th, 2005 Link

I’ve had a large number of IBM drives die on me in the past, so I’ve gotten wary of them along with the new Hitachi drives, since Hitachi bought IBM several years back.

Well I’ve got a new 100GB Hitachi drive on the way. Hopefully I can get more than 18 months out of it!

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rB Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Wow, I’m surprised on a few levels. Good luck with the job search.

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Ian C. Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Sorry Gabe … if there’s any help I can provide …

A lesson for all: backup, backup, backup … at work I have five development PCs; each 1/4 hour all data is updated between all five, once a day all data is also copied to another backup machine (with DVD drive that I use to burn copies a few times a month) and also to yet another machine with a five-day-rolling backup … storage is cheap, data is expensive!

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Giacomo Nov 20th, 2005 Link

The only Apple hard drive I’ve had die, a few years back, was an old G3 that was 6 years old. From that point on I have all my data go through a nitely, 3 am, backup. I also learned the hard way.

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Gabe Nov 20th, 2005 Link

A lesson for all: backup, backup, backup

Absolutely. And don’t be lazy with your backups either. I used to back my machine up every two weeks. Then it became every two months. Now I’m forced to try and remember what has happened in my life since that random day in August when I backed up.

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Giacomo Nov 20th, 2005 Link

“My comment is waiting moderation.”

What does that mean?

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Gabe Nov 20th, 2005 Link

“My comment is waiting moderation.” What does that mean?

WordPress does that automatically for any number of reasons. Multiple URLs, new users, specific lanugage or sentence structures. It’s all meant as a way to cut down on potential spam.

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ANTSMINI Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Im on my second Powerbook hard drive as well. Now I back up with a firewire drive often.

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Steve Nov 20th, 2005 Link

My clients ask, “How often should I backup”. My answer is “just before you know the computer is going to crash”.

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Timothy Sipples Nov 20th, 2005 Link

…Hitachi bought IBM several years back.

FWIW, Hitachi bought IBM’s hard drive business in December, 2002. An 18 month old Powerbook would contain a Hitachi-built drive, almost certainly built in Asia, although I believe Hitachi had time-limited rights to put the IBM name on the label.

If you’re buying a new Hitachi 100 GB drive then you may want to look at the drives with the “E” prefix (e.g. E7K100). They are slightly beefed up over the standard drives to handle more continuous operations (E for “Extended power on”).

IBM got out of the “spindle” business — a business it invented in the 1950s with the IBM RAMAC — in part because the company is working on breakthrough solid state storage technologies, e.g. Millipede storage. IBM still makes server-class storage frames (such as their top-of-the-line DS8000, which is what doesn’t lose your personal financial data at your bank and on Wall Street), but IBM no longer manufactures any individual hard disks and hasn’t for 35 months now.

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Chris M Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Gabe,

Sorry to hear that–it must be a huge hassle. So much of my life now resides on my Powerbook that I’ve been backing it up regularly and have an iBook as a backup computer.

Could you tell us which model Powerbook it was? 12″, 15″ or 17″? Just curious; Brian Tiemann says that every owner of a 12″ Powerbook he knows has had the hard drive die.

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Gabe Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Great info Timothy. Thanks as always. The Hitachi drive I have on order is model #: HTS541010G9AT00

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Gabe Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Could you tell us which model Powerbook it was? 12″, 15″ or 17″? Just curious; Brian Tiemann says that every owner of a 12″ Powerbook he knows has had the hard drive die.

It was a 1.5 Ghz 15″ Powerbook. I’m currently writing this on my wife’s 867mhz 12″ Powerbook with original hard drive ;)

Huh… just realized I used the past tense when describing my dead computer. Seems sort of apt.

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Timothy Sipples Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Great info Timothy. Thanks as always. The Hitachi drive I have on order is model #: HTS541010G9AT00

That’s the 5K100, 100 GB version. The E7K100 100 GB version would set you back about $80 more from what I can tell (check Froogle), and it would be improved in two respects: (1) the “E” extended power-on ruggedizing feature (couldn’t hurt); (2) 7200 RPM instead of 5400 RPM (i.e. faster operation). The 7200 RPM speed increase is quite enjoyable on notebook computers and really peps them up, so I think it’s money well spent on both counts. (Backups run faster, too.)

I’m assuming there are no unique peculiarities to Powerbooks. (Apple used to put signature ROMs in their drives that their systems would check to prevent third-party drive replacement. I assume that’s not still true if you’re ordering outside Apple channels.)

If you want to go in the other direction then there’s the Hitachi Endurastar J4K30. It’s only up to 30 GB, but it’s designed to operate (!) in temperatures from -20 degrees to +85 degrees Celsius. (That’d be great for that winter MINI drive to Churchill. :-)) It also has a built-in moisture control system. To keep this slightly on topic, the Endurastar is intended for unforgiving automotive applications among others (e.g. navigation systems). But, it’s “only” 30 GB, and it costs as much (or more) as the E7K100.

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Giacomo Nov 20th, 2005 Link

I was rB.

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Grumpy Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Gabe,

I had this happen and used these folks: http://www.drivesavers.com/

Three days and $2,800 later I had 21 dvd’s that were a perfect back up of my failed, dead drive. A little costly to be sure but the recovery of the data was worth it. Now I back up everyday – a hard and costly lesson learned :)

=Grumpy=

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Timothy Sipples Nov 20th, 2005 Link

I should also say that Hitachi purchased rights to the relevant IBM patents, and a lot of smart former IBM researchers in San Jose now work for Hitachi. Hitachi created an amusing Flash animation, “Get Perpendicular,” that describes what some of those patents (and researchers) cover.

“Schoolhouse Rock,” ain’t it? :-)

Digression: Would you believe IBM kept its tape business (i.e. the Tucson labs)? Yes indeed. Ever since an IBM scientist hooked a vacuum cleaner to a prototype drive back in the 1950s to pioneer vacuum loading (which reduced tape breakage at high speeds), IBM has been making lots of money on tape with no end in sight because the technology keeps getting better. All your credit card purchase records (among other things) have to go somewhere, right? (The world’s rate of data production continues to accelerate.) One IBM 3592-class tape cartridge can now hold up to half a terabyte uncompressed, and the drive pulls tape through at up to 10 meters per second (~60 seconds for the whole tape) without snapping. These tapes are designed to sit on the shelf up to 30 years and still be readable.

Don’t work for Hitachi, do work for IBM (but not in storage).

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Josh Wardell Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Never trust your data to a laptop drive. I’ve seen so many die. There’s no need for a super backup regimen, but every month or so I burn any new documents, photos, music, etc and bring it in to my work machine, so at least I have not only another copy, but it is in another location. There are several companies like drivesavers that can restore your data for a steep fee, if it is important enough to you. Is the drive completely unresponsive or is it just too damaged to boot from? Try booting in firewire target disk mode and connecting it to another mac and see if you can pull at least some files off of it. Email me if you want. I usually find that only rarely are drives completely dead and usually you can wrestle some stuff off.

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Josh Wardell Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Let me know if you need installation instructions too. The aluminum PBs aren’t so simple to open.

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Chris M Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Gabe,

I use a shareware program, SuperDuper, to create a complete disk image of my Powerbook hard drive every week or so. It’s a wonderful program and it’s compatible with 10.4.

I know you’ve ordered a drive already, but since Timothy mentioned the Hitachi E7K100: John Gruber at daringfireball.net quotes users who claim that the E7K100 has one big drawback: it’s very noisy in operation. See

http://daringfireball.net/2005/11/fmj_addenda

and scroll down to “Seagate and Hitachi Drives.”

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Nathaniel Salzman Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Good luck with the job change, Gabe. I feel ya there for sure.

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Gabe Nov 20th, 2005 Link

“I know you’ve ordered a drive already, but since Timothy mentioned the Hitachi E7K100: John Gruber at daringfireball.net quotes users who claim that the E7K100 has one big drawback: it’s very noisy in operation.”

Yeah I read that as well. That and the $100 difference made the 5400rpm an easy choice. However Timothy’s info is pretty interesting.

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O(=^=)O Capn Nov 20th, 2005 Link

no, I was rB.

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O(=^=)O Capn Nov 20th, 2005 Link

So, new job?

Lets get some specifics. Hopefully it was your choice. If not, I completely understand. I lost mine Dec 15 (a week b4 Christmas)last year and now I lost my replacemant last monday. (a week b4 Tthanksgiving) But that’s okay, I got another job the same day and a better one on Friday.

Gabe, in short, you’re an asset. Don’t forget that, and anyone that doesn’t see that, blow off. You don’t need to surround yourself with renobs. and I suspect that is possibly why you may be “looking”. I would however encourage you to wait if you can to get a new job until the first of the year. Most companies hold back hiring until then.

When you look for a job, let them feel a sense of loss if they don’t hire you immediatly.

I’ve also got a great brochure on interview techniques and answers for questions that they may ask you.

email me if you want it.

this is a great no, awesome site for tips on writing resumes

Rockport Institute

of course, they are trying to get you to allow them help you in the job search process, but they give you more than I was expecting for free, in short Awesome site for resumes.

ps, yeah hard drive deaths suck, mine died 6 months ago. I feel for you brother.

Josh~

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Gabe Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Thanks Josh. Feel free to email it to my personal account (gabriel at motoringfile dot com )

Job loss specifics:

Actually the company I work for is having some funding issues and is unsure what lies ahead in 2006. They desterpately want to keep me on but at this point can’t afford me for at least the first couple of months of 2006 full time. While I appreciate their openess and honesty about the situation, it’s hard for me to work at a place that has suddenly become so volatile. To be frank, I just don’t know if I can mentally take it any more. I’ve been down the road too many times. Thus (assuming nothing changes) I’ll probably be leaving soon.

Ideally I want to find a great place that is stable and ready for some serious contributions from a designer that is dying to design. Anyone with suggestions feel free to send them in :)

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GSKChicago Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Have you considered any of the online back-up services that charge you per Gig backed up? You can set it up to backup via broadband nightly if you so desire, etc. Many options. Not cheap, but not expensive either, in the scheme of things.

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PK Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Backing up is smart. Even smarter is keeping your backup off-site. My business was destroyed by fire years ago and all the records I’d backed up 3 feet away from my work computer.

Yeah, I was dumb.

That said, if you want to pay the price there are ways to get data off a fried computer. Used to be that putting it in the freezer for an hour or so would help.

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Vanwall Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Ack! What stinkin’ luck! We’ll be patient, and good hunting!

          BCNU,
         Rob in Dago

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ToplessRed Nov 20th, 2005 Link

RAID1 folks. Hard drive is cheap nowadays. Get 2 and be backed up against hardware failure. (Won’t help you with user error though.)

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O(=^=)O Capn Nov 20th, 2005 Link

I suggest that your Resume should be linked on the site somewhere.

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Allan Nov 20th, 2005 Link

I bet a nice long drive in your MINI is exactly what you need.

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Giacomo Nov 20th, 2005 Link

NO I’m Sparticus!

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marcr Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Here’s a story about my sister-in-law’s HD

http://thedailycurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2005/11/prayers-for-1s-and-0s.html

The end result was that http://www.datarecoverygroup.com/ save the data

With this omen, I then did a backup of my Powerbook, and after 3 hours of cleaning arranging and backing up, my little one tripped over the power cord of the firewire drive, sending it’s poorly designed vertical standing housing crashing to the table top – killing it.

I went out and bought 2 additional ones – always have more than one backup.

With the Mac you can clone the HD and boot from your backup if you need to. Also, if you have old HD’s around the house you can buy a housing for $40 and have a firewire/USB backup drive, or go all out and spend $150 for the complete package

Addtionally, Mac owners can use the rsync command to make efficient (incremental) backups.

Final note – keep a backup in a remote location , you never know when a hurricane is going to hit…

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Gabe Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Just to specifics on the attempted recovery. I immediately tried putting my machine into Firewire disk mode using my wife’s Powerbook. No dice. I then used my trusty Disk Warrior bootable CD (3.03) and it detected no hard drive in the machine at all!

Thanks for all the suggestions btw guys. I hope others (and me!) get a good lesson from this.

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blalor Nov 20th, 2005 Link

• check out pbfixit.com for free instructions (and pretty damn good ones) on how to disassemble your PB. It’s what I’ve used all three (!) times on my 12″ 867MHz PB G4. Doing it the first time is really unnerving

• Tim, great info on the “ruggedized” drives. Unfortunately, I’ve got a hunch that the 7200 RPM drive would be too hot (and as others said too noisy) for the PowerBook enclosure. The 4200 RPM drive that came with my ‘Book was hot (and is now dead) and the 5400 RPM drive that I put in before that died worked great, was noticeably faster, not too much hotter, and is now also dead.

• I’m on my 3rd hard drive in this puppy, the 2nd in as many months. Blech.

• I had a great drive today. :-)

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Timothy Sipples Nov 20th, 2005 Link

The Hitachi 7200 doesn’t generate any more heat than the 5400 according to the specs, so no problem there. The extra speed does produce a little more noise, yes, so that’s a trade-off.

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John P. Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Grumpy,

Thanks for the info! I’ve always wondered how much those services cost.

Gabe,

This is one of those risky procedures, but one possibly thing to try, if you are not going the Drive Savers route.

Find the exact same hard drive. Specifically, you want the same firmware. Difficult, but perhaps possible to get. (ask around here if anyone can lend you one?). Make sure it works.

Swap circuit boards. This should not require disassembly of the HD internals (ie, platters). (this tip was from Engadget or Gizmodo)

The other thing, much more risky, was recently posted on Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000883068489/

Did you get ANY S.M.A.R.T. status warnings? Clicking? Is the HD still under warranty (soem HD’s have a 3 year warranty, even if the laptop is out of warranty)?

Oh, also, I’m assuming you know all this stuff, but did you:

Try the HD in a desktop mac? Disconnect/connect the cables? Pray to Steve Jobs?

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Gabe Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Hmm… good suggestions. Now that i think about it, my drive probably does have a 3 year warranty on it. I suppose I should give Hitachi a call once I get the thing out of my machine.

I don’t think I’m going to try the circuit idea. To be honest I think there is physically something very wrong with the drive. The noise it made as it was crashing sounded sort of like a torturing a cat. …Not that I would know of course.

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John P. Nov 20th, 2005 Link

Just remember – once you send it in to em, you can never get your data back. (one of those, “Yeah, I know” statements)

That does sound pretty bad, but I don’t think there is enough information to figure out the problem.

When you went to boot up after the crash, did it continue to make this noise? If so, then do not stick it in a desktop mac like I suggested. (You’d have to have an adapter anyhow.)

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Gabe Nov 20th, 2005 Link

When you went to boot up after the crash, did it continue to make this noise?

No. It just made a very slight noise and I got the flashing folder with the question mark. It continues to do that even now when I go to start it up. I’ve fixed lots of drives over the years and I’ve never seen something act like this.

I don’t have an 2.5 enclosure… I gave it to a friend awhile back who had this very issue.

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O(=^=)O Capn Nov 21st, 2005 Link

NO I am Sparticus!

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Trick Nov 21st, 2005 Link

Why not work for yourself? I’m a graphic designer and I’m wrapping up my first year as freelance. (Cut the cord from my employer last January.)

One of the best decisions of my life. And one of the scariest. But in hindsight, it’s not. I have 9-12 employers. Barring something ridiculous happening, all 9-12 aren’t going to lay me off. . . . I’ve been too busy to finish my site and do the personal projects I want to do.

You obviously have the skill set, motivation and talent. I spent a couple of years developing a client base before I left, so that helped. But it sounds like you’re in a similar situation: If your current employer can’t give you full time hours, I’d start moonlighting.

Web? Print? Whaddya want to work on?

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O(=^=)O Capn Nov 21st, 2005 Link

Hey Trick, can you hand Gabe a bone and an employer? After all 9-12 you could spare one right?

Pretty please?

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blalor Nov 21st, 2005 Link

Did you get ANY S.M.A.R.T. status warnings? Clicking? Is the HD still under warranty (soem HD’s have a 3 year warranty, even if the laptop is out of warranty)?

Neither of my drives that failed threw any D.U.M.B. warnings; pretty disappointing. I don’t know what’s warranted by the drive manufacturers, but I doubt recovery of your data is included. The first drive that went bad was purchased through OWC; they seem like a good company, but would only replace the drive, and would do nothing to help get my data back.

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Tim in MD Nov 21st, 2005 Link

My condolences on the data…Two weeks ago the hard drive failed in my IBM Thinkpad T40 (employer-supplied). Wiped out two years of my work as a strategic communications consultant. Fortunately they picked up the tab for $1500 worth of data recovery and believe it or not everything was there. Apparently the Hitachi 40GB drive had a mechanical failure but the data itself was fine. My firm supplies nothing but ThinkPad laptops and our local tech guru says we’ve lost an unusual number of hard drives out of the T40s.

Good luck on the job search…

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Pipe Nov 21st, 2005 Link

Tim in MD – IBM no longer manufactures computers. Lenovo makes all of their products – and has crappy quality checks which could explain a higher number of dead drives in the T40’s.

Gabe – sorry to hear about the HD dying. Give DriveSavers a shot at recovering your data like Grumpy suggested. I’ve used them in the past and had good luck with them.

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Trick Nov 21st, 2005 Link

Capn, I’d like to offer Gabe something, but it would be second quarter next year before I could.

By employers, I meant clients/companies I work with. One isn’t going to cut it, well. . . unless you’re a huge fan of Ramen Pride.

My more important point is that Gabe’s resume (and from what I’ve seen of his book) is solid across different fields. I think he could make a go of it, if he’s interestd in being self-employed. Some people aren’t and that’s fine too and I can see that it might be difficult to go on your own once you’ve hit the Creative Director mark.

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Gabe Nov 21st, 2005 Link

Thanks for the knd words Trick. Unfortunately most of my recent work has been either for very large (non-local) companies or in house. I really don’t have the contacts that could lead me into a full time freelance gig right now.

I have actually done the freelance thing for about 18 months 3-4 years ago. It was not bad really. Pay turned out to be fairly good and obviously the hours were cool. But I feel that I thrive on interaction with people and working towards a common goal with others. Call my old fashion, but I just love the idea of being a part of something bigger than myself.

Thanks for the suggestions though. Definitely food for thought.

One other thing… in some ways the creative director title is meaningless to me. Granted, I do want to carry on that path managing clients and people if needed. However I’d hate to move further away from actual design at this point in my life. The past two places I’ve been able to do it all so to speak. I’d love to find something like this again. If it means the title is Senior Designer (or whatever), so be it.

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Patrick Nov 21st, 2005 Link

Gabe, you have gone through all the steps to try and save the data? I had my drive crash on me while abroad and my copy of disk warrior saved me from disaster. let me suggest .Mac service which includes the application “Backup.”

it will let you archive to an external disk, online (2 gigs of online space) or to dvds/cds. i use it with my powerbook and it is well worth the 100$/year just for the remote backup space / email services alone… its something to look into.

Patrick

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KE3VP Nov 21st, 2005 Link

Hey, Gabe, Just a thought… Does MINIusa or another MINI related company have any openings that would fill the bill. How great would THAT be. They would certainly already know your credentials! Bob/KE3VP

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hugh Nov 22nd, 2005 Link

Gabe: Sorry to hear about the crash. I also do not back up as frequently as I should.

Good luck on the job search. I was riffed at age 55, and let me tell you, it was not easy. Hopefully you won’t have age-ism to deal with.

O-Capn has lots of good advice, but I have a different view about just one thing…some companies will give hiring approval for a position that, for budgetary reasons, must be filled during this calandar year. Otherwise, they lose approval and have to re-request it in next years budget. So don’t be entirely pessamistic about getting hired at this time of year!!!

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Deborah / NekoWoman Nov 23rd, 2005 Link

Gabe — There are places out there that will try to recover data from crashed/erased drives FBI style… by taking the thing apart in a clean room and rebuilding the pieces into a good drive, etc. Not cheap (i.e., starting around $200) but then your data could be priceless… I just lost a hard drive and all the pictures on it. Kicking myself for not doing a backup – my only excuse was that I didn’t have a CD writer in the system, only floppy (yes, it was a really old Windows 95 system being forced to run 98). If I can’t get my data off, I’m going to send it out for retrieval.

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MotoringFile » Archive » MotoringFile 2005 Holiday Gift Guide Nov 28th, 2005 Link

[...] Despite a few delays, The Gift Guide is indeed back just in time for the holidays. The 2005 MotoringFile Holiday MINI Gift Guide packs all of our old favorites plus a few new ones. From apparel to armrests, we’ve tried to include a cross section of accessories available for the MINI and the MINI enthusiast. Like last year we’ve created the gift guide as a downloadable PDF for easy off-line viewing and printing. It’s also easier this way to print out slip to someone for gift ideas. [...]

death2all Dec 29th, 2005 Link

any1 know which is the better drive for a laptop because i keep seeing conflicting responses all over the net. the E7K100 is designed for 24/7 operation (blade servers, POS vs laptops), so supposedly it operateds at a lower temperature range then the 7K100, but power performance suffers?!?!?! thanx in advance

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