A Close Call

Fortunately, I'm not talking about a medical close call, though I probably have dodged a few bullets from time to time.  I am referring to some computer-related close calls.  I was working on cleaning up some PDFs, and I noticed that one of the larger files was quite corrupted.  I tried all sorts of things to split it, to copy it over using xcopy, etc.  Nothing worked, and I started getting the cyclical redundancy error, which is pretty serious.

I finally shut down the computer and moved the external hard drive to my laptop (where I have an upgraded version of Abode Reader).  I was able to see the majority of the PDF, though the last few pages were a bit garbled.  It allowed me to split the document towards the end, though the last pages were still garbage.  Then when I moved it back to my main computer, there was still an error (so I thought I might have accidentally copied over the bad file again).  But when I moved the external drive back again, the laptop couldn't recognize it at all!  A very bad scene, which was multiplied ten-fold when the main computer wouldn't recognize the drive either!

I'm reasonably good about backing up photos (they pretty much are all on two external drives, plus burned to DVDs), and most of my music (at least the stuff I listen to frequently) is in two places (and of course nearly all of it can be streamed now).  And taxes are in two or three locations plus typically a hard copy back-up.  But a lot of the files I have been digitizing are only in one location.

After some major panicking and some internet sleuthing, I was finally able to use the chkdsk /f command, and it actually worked.  The external drive seems to be back in working order.

However, I don't really trust it any longer.  Fortunately, I recently bought another external drive, and I am copying over 50% or so of the old drive's folders to the new one.*  After this, I think I'll unplug the drive that is starting to act up and let it rest for a while, and use the new one as the work horse for a while.  When I am ready to deal with the files I can't copy over now (mostly due to space issues), I'll plug the old one back in.

So not a perfect solution, but things could have been so much worse for me last night.  Take my advice that it really is critical to back up core files in two or three locations when feasible.  (Personally I don't really trust that "the cloud" is going to be around when I really need it, but I suppose that's another option as well.)


* During this process, I found two or three other PDFs that had been badly corrupted, plus one photo that wouldn't copy over and 3 photos that copied over but without their information (presumably when I took the photo).  That's not too bad in the grand scheme of things, particularly when I think of a few of the other things (mostly music) that I have lost over the years when a hard drive failed.