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Magnet cleaner nightmare

JAR

JAR

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Most of us have a magnet cleaner.
Well, my 4 year old daughter has been around the tank her whole life and she know better than to play around with the magnet cleaner.
Usually it's the first thing another kid grabs when they come over for a visit.
I usually just put it away or I keep an eye on things when other kids are around.
So.... today I was gone.
A new kid came over and played with the magnet.
Luckily the tank is fine. Glass not scratched, no corals or livestock damaged.
Her is the kicker. My wife told our 4 year old to put the now loose magnet on my desk.
She put it right on top of my laptop.
Right over the hard drive.
Bummer for me is she put it on my old laptop.
I got a new one about two weeks ago and have not transferred my files to the new one yet.
Old laptop seems to be void of files and will not boot up.



Lesson for all. Don't get your tank cleaning magnet ( or any other magnet) near your computer.
 
anyone out there know anything about data recovery?
I have a feeling I am gonna have trouble here. It was a very strong magnet. :(
 
Jon - I've done some minor/simple data recovery before but nothing caused by magnets yet. When you say "seems to be void of files..." is that only because it won't boot up? Have you tried to pull the drive out and hook it up via an external USB device yet to see what might still be there? Does the laptop POST and give you errors about no OS or does it just beep at you when you power on?

~Charlie
 
this is what I get.
I guess there could be files but it wont boot up.
error code 1000-0141 "no hard drive detected"
photobucket-4043-1330215335303.jpg
 
Arrow up to "Device Info" or "System Info" and see if that shows you anything about the HDD. If the BIOS is not seeing the HDD, which is most likely what you have here, a recovery disk won't do you much good.

At this point I'd pull the drive and hook it up to an external USB enclosure/adapter and plug it into another computer and see if I could get to anything that way. If you have a Fry's close you can pick an adapter for relatively cheap. If you don't know if you have a PATA or SATA drive pull it out and take it with you to make sure you get something compatible. A quick search at Fry's brought up this:

http://www.frys.com/product/5710852?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

If you can monkey around with the BIOS and get it to recognize the HDD again you can download a bootable CD/DVD that will help you get to and recover the data.

Ultimate Boot CD
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Knoppix
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html

~Charlie
 
Sorry to hear about that but it's not just kids. I had adults dragged the magnets and made some nice deep cuts on the tanks. Hope the data recovery coming along.
 
Sorry to hear about this.

As an ex-tech support person I have to remind EVERYONE to make sure they have back-ups! I'm sure JAR will never forget! I don't mean to jump on JAR's misfortune. We all learn the hard way.

If you are a Mac user, the built in 'TimeMachine' does a great job. It's painless, just a few $$ for external HD.

If you are a Windows user, well I'm a Mac guy so have no recommendation. PC folks chime in here.

There is also online services like 'Carbonite'.

Once again, sorry about the loss and GOOD LUCK with recovery.
 
Jon, just an fyi, you can also take your HD to Fry's and ask them to try and recover any data from it. We had a mix up at my house and a factory restore was done my mistake and they were able to recover almost all of the data that we lost. I've never seen the damage from a magnet on an HD so I don't know what you are up against but good luck and let us know how it turns out.
 
What a nightmare indeed. We should all just get in the habit of removing our magnet cleaners when not in use. I certainly have at least one scratch form youngins playing with the magnet. Best of luck with the computer.
 
aqua-nut said:
If you are a Windows user, well I'm a Mac guy so have no recommendation. PC folks chime in here.
Click to expand...
As a windows users, my recommendation is just to put the files that are important on CDs, no need to back up the entire hard drive. Programs/Operating Systems can be reinstalled, you own them even if you don't have a physical copy of the discs (the trend in computers today). While CDs do not last forever, as long as you don't leave them sitting in the sun they'll provide ample time for what they're designed for which is protection in case something goes wrong (hell make a back up copy of your CD too, blank CD media is dirt cheap).

I've pulled a few boners in my life too, worst one was reformatting a hard drive, grabbing every file I needed then remembering... I forgot to grab a copy of my grade sheets for my classes!!! Luckily I emailed myself a copy a couple weeks prior, so it was on my work email account, and I just fudged a couple weeks worth of grades (gave them the benefit of the doubt and everyone got 100%), but if I didn't do that... hoyboy!

Another instance was on an old laptop and my wife's papers she typed up during school were all on there, I basically removed her account from the computer and away they went, I tried to recover the data but most of it was scrambled, of course it was "my fault" that she left her papers on a laptop no one used any more!
 
If you aren't successful and decide to go with outside help, our IT guy is pretty darned good and can give it a go. His rates are very reasonable compared with others we've used and he works quickly.
 
I have tried most everything for backups over the years.
From standard cassette tapes (long long ago), online, CDs, DVDs, and NAS systems.

After all that, I went with the cheap and simple:
Bought a cheap terabyte external USB drive, and basically copy everything.
As a bonus, you can keep it in a fire safe when not in use.
(But I have to admit that I forget)
 
Thanks guys! I had nothing work related lost. Only a few hundred random unorganized pictures. Many of which I found on the original camera memory cards. I'm sure I lost a few videos and pics. I was sharing because I was frustrated with the chain of events that led to the magnet being put on my laptop and for the benefit of others as a reminder to back your stuff up!
I was very aware that a strong magnet can erase a hard drive and have always been careful not to get one near my computer or back ups.
Apparently not everyone is aware of this. :)
 
aqua-nut said:
If you are a Mac user, the built in 'TimeMachine' does a great job. It's painless, just a few $$ for external HD.

If you are a Windows user, well I'm a Mac guy so have no recommendation. PC folks chime in here.
Click to expand...

I use time machine on my mac (have timecapsule as well).
On my PCs at work, I use GRBackPro and it works really well
For critical information at work, we use Autonomy's (Formerly Iron Mountain) DirectPC for automated remote backup via internet.
 
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