How NOT To Install A New Hard Drive

Late last year Angel presented to me a problem. She was out of hard drive space. She was working on school projects, transporting them to and fro and since her projects are audio related (some of them video too) they take up some serious space.

When I built her computer, I had taken this possibility into consideration. I got her a 75G SATA hard drive for nothing but project work. Well, it just so happened that when she moved to GA before me, I was having difficulty with my rigs at that time. I took the liberty of using some of her project drive as a backup location. Even after I moved down to join her, there wasn't much motivation to get that data off of her machine. Well, at this time it was needed. I took my files back to my computer and uninstalled some games from her computer. Between these two activities, I managed to free up somewhere in the neighborhood of 15G of space. Well, it wasn't but moments later that she consumed a good portion that space.

This all took place right before the wedding. We really didn't have the money to be spending on either of our machines and time was a premium too. Even while we were on our honeymoon, we had discussed buying her a new hard drive shortly after we got home. Ironically, this didn't happen. It became a low priority and all but forgotten.

It is pretty well known that as a couple, I'm the big spender of the two of us. That's saying something significant. I'm pretty conservative with what I'll spend money on and she's even more so. Amazing, how did I find a woman that doesn't like to shop? Anyway, since I am the spender and I know how to curb my spending (by not going to stores or temping myself), it took quite a while for me to be in a place to peruse the prices of hard drives.

Then, before we knew it, it was Christmas shopping season again. In our shopping, we visited Fry's a couple of times. I even managed to go alone. Well, on my solo trip to Fry's I took an opportunity to check out their hard drive selection. I was amazed. I was able to find a .5 Terabyte (Western Digital 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 16MB buffer) hard drive for a mere $100. That was a deal I was not willing to walk away from.

I initially had intentions of giving it to Angel as a Christmas gift. However, once she caught wind that I "might" have bought her a piece of computer hardware as a gift she wasn't happy. After some additional consideration, since we'd already discussed the purchase, it wouldn't have been much of a gift. We both knew she needed more space and the purchase was already consented, so, as a gift, it would not have been fair. Anyway, it wasn't like it was going to be her only gift. So I broke down and told her what I had found.

Well, part of the low cost of the drive was that it was an OEM model. It didn't come with the data or power cables included. I wasn't concerned about this because I knew that the motherboard for Angel's computer came with two sets. Well, after a few weeks of the drive sitting on the desk, Angel began to question when it was going to be completed. Well, once I found the motivation to search for the cables amongst my collection of parts, I came up dry. To get this guy installed, I would have to return to Fry's again.

Saturday, when we got out of bed, we went shopping. Of course, one of the places on the list was Fry's. The rest of the shopping was unexciting unless you want to hear about the snow and lack of eggs at the grocery store, but that's a completely different story.

Once we get home, Angel throws the bag with the cables in it and says to get to work. She didn't want me to help with the groceries, she wanted me to get it installed. I see her resolve to get it done was much bigger than mine. One of the additional tasks I had to do was swap our video cards because apparently Pro Tools does not like the g-force line or needed a driver update or something. Since I was tearing into the computer, swapping the video cards was easier since I knew that the ATI card that was in my PC worked like a charm.

Back to the hard drive.

Well, the SATA controller in the computer is configured to be a hardware RAID. With all of my experience with RAID on SCSI, I made an assumption regarding how this was supposed to proceed. When I booted the computer, I immediately jumped into the controller BIOS application. Since I didn't want the two SATA drives to be in a single RAID array, I thought I would have to create a new RAID 0 specification for the new hard drive. As I immediately found out, this was not the case. When I selected the RAID 0 option and said, "Yes, I am sure", the controller placed the two drives into a single RAID 0 array. This is so not what I wanted. I removed the RAID 0 definition from the two drives, but the damage was already done. Assigning them into a single container blew away the MBR on the existing drive.

I booted the computer and initially discovered that the drive letter definition for the old drive was gone. When I opened the Disk Manager, it immediately prompted me to initialize both drives. I knew I had trouble at this point. I don't know what the initialize command would do to the existing drive so I didn't do it. At this point I also wasn't about to play with the new drive so I canceled out of the process completely.

Now that I have definitive knowledge that I trashed the drive, my options have become quite limited. The phone was my only line of attack left. They typical sources (Exile & Darkace) were scouted first to no avail (no answer). Then I gave FloydMonk a call. He was available, but after I explained the situation, he didn't have any direct answers to provide. HOWEVER, he did make the recommendation to talk to his dad.

That idea was a sunbeam that shattered my black cloud. Ever since we were in high school, I have had tons of respect for his dad. Thankfully, I was able to reach his dad. Once I was able to accurately portray what had gone down, he was immediately able to point me in the right direction. He sent me to download GetDataBack. This is not a free product, but was the one that carried his highest recommendation. There was a free alternative, but in this situation, better was better than free.

Once I got the application downloaded, installed and fired up, it was the time of reckoning. Will the application find my data (well, Angel's data)? This was very important. Three plus years of data to include all of her AI school work was on this drive. If I lost the data, she would have strung me up in the backyard from a tree by my balls, naked and lord only knows what else.

Well, immediately the application was able to find the MFR (Master File Record) and started to spew out filenames and sector locations. We're in business. So, I let the application run for an hour or so. When it was complete, it said that it had found 64G of data on the drive. According to Angel, this was right on the money. Speaking of money, it was also time to spend some. Granted, this was ultimately my fault, but I was both relieved and frustrated that I had to spend $80 to restore the data.

Much of that data was literally irreplaceable, eighty dollars is nothing in comparison to the value that Angel placed on her work. And rightly so. I would be crushed if I were to loose a hard drive, but life would go on. Conversely, Angel still needs all of that data to complete her degree and to have a portfolio to assist her with getting a job. The damage would have been immense.

To shorten the remainder of the story, I setup the new hard drive wrong the first time. Avid software is very particular about the setup of the equipment it is to use. Pro Tools will NOT use a dynamic drive in windows. So, even after I finished the data restoration, I had to format the drive again and re-restore it to a basic drive configuration. As it turned out, I didn't want a dynamic drive anyway, but I didn't clearly understand what a dynamic drive was. Dynamic drives are a software RAID. Clearly not what I wanted. I was glad the software stopped me from moving forward.

So, in summary, boot your OS after installing a drive before thinking you know what to do. Wait to see if the OS acknowledges the new hardware before trying to take lower level configuration steps. I honestly don't think I would be here today if I had irreparably lost that data. The good news is, the new drive is configured correctly, Pro Tools is working beautify (even better now that it has its video card back) and the data that was on the damaged drive was restored without issue. All is good in the world again.