Man overboard.

Last week, my external 1TB hard drive fell from a table. It wasn't that much of a very hard fall so I didn't think it would matter as the casing seems to be sturdy. Little did I know how very wrong I was.

So I picked the thing up checked [it seemed nothing was wrong] and tried to access it but the HD wasn't lighting up and it wasn't detected by the PC. What happened next was frantic and nervous google searches and chats with my friends with regards to external drive troubles. I checked the thing again, made sure nothing was making noise or even moving inside. Then I noticed the usb port plug was a bit...skewed.

I plugged the usb back in, placed a small amount of pressure and the HD lit up and began doing the motions of booting up...or so I thought. Once I let the pressure off, the whole drive turned off and even if I did manage to let the power stay on for a bit, the drive itself wasn't detected by the PC. So I started fidgeting and fidgeting until the usb port plug broke off and fell inside the case.

With that came another round of frantic google searches and chats. Trying to solder the usb port plug back in wasn't possible...at least if I was the one to do it..then again, it would really take the hands of a pro to solder the damn thing on properly to make it to work [I read about this in a forum]. With soldering out of the equation, I resorted to removing the hard drive from the case and try running it via another enclosure and or just directly plug it inside my PC.

A friend let me borrow his own HD enclosure for testing and gave a few advice. The HD was running inside the enclosure and it seemed ok as my friend mentioned but it still wasn't detected by my friend's PC. He then said that his enclosure might be faulty and that it might need a few trues so he let me bring it back home with me. After a few more tries at home, the drive still wasn't detected.

However, I could see it in Disk Management as "not Initialized" and "unallocated". Another friend helped me go through the motions [via my bro's iPad Skype Vid chat] of putting it inside my PC [I am not a very hardware-type of guy] and then trying a few recovery programs to see if I can retrieve anything.

A few days and alot of recovery programs later, I still couldn't get any files from it.I have read from the official Western Digital forums that ALOT of other people has/had/have been experiencing the SAME troubles I have. Then a few admins stated that the data inside the HD are encrypted so it's really going to take some cash to get data back.....that or soldering the usb back on [I am entertaining the idea].

Prior to even trying to recover the files, I have surrendered to the fact that I have already lost everything. I don't care much for the music, videos, games in it. Those things can be easily re-acquired. I am most sad to lose four years worth of pictures from conventions, photo shoots, photo walks, vacations, events and daily life. I am sad to lose the written documents I have there as most of them were unfinished poems, stories and such. All those memories gone [or trapped until I get the drive decrypted]. The folly of not having a back-up of important things, I know now how important it should've been to find the time and made effort in backing-up files.

Nevertheless, people have helped me not think so much about such loss. I guess I can make new memories, take new pictures, write new things. I'm trying to see the positives and the silver linings from what happened...no matter how cliche it seems. I think it's better than dwelling on it and sulking.




~ Sailing forward ~
the alansong