Original Post Date: 3/5/09
I turned off my computer when I left for vacation. When I got back a week later, my computer wouldnt boot Windows XP. I opened up the case and I heard the infamous clicking sound that came from my Western Digital Raptor X hard drive. Definitely not a healthy sound, but at least I knew for sure that it was just the hard drive which should be fairly easy to replace.
Did I lose all of my data? No way. I had my "flawless" back up plan in place. Remember that I have 2 hard drives. I use the Raptor hard drive to hold just my Windows XP operating system. My 2nd hard drive has all my real data on it. So basically, I just lost all of my software applications and would just to have to reinstall them all over again. But wait...no I dont need to do that because I have kept a back up image of my Raptor drive. An image is like taking a snapshot of your current computer settings and applications. So all I need to do is restore the image and Im up and running again like nothing happened. So I had thought. More on this later.
I purchased the Raptor drive on 4/17/2007 (thank you gmail for keeping a record of all my purchases), so I was quite surprised that it only lasted under 2 years. Coincidentally, my brother's Raptor drive died recently as well and his Raptor was only a year old. Fortunately, there is a 5 year warranty on these drives.
To get the hard drive replaced, WD gave me 2 options. The website stated that they can immediately send me a replacement hard drive first, and then I can send in the broken hard drive afterwards. The only catch was that they required my credit card information and that they would charge me for the full retail price of the drive if they did not receive the broken one within 30 days. That sounded fair to me. The other option would have me send my broken drive first and once they received it, they would send me my replacement drive. Of course, I chose the 1st option because it was faster even though it still took about a week to get it.
I received the new hard drive and restored the image using Acronis True Image 11 which is a highly rated and very popular imaging software application. Wohooo...it worked! I didnt have to reinstall the 50 software applications I had. Wait a second...why did my computer just reboot all of a sudden? It turns out that the image was unstable and my computer kept rebooting by itself every so often. Unstable image!? Are you kidding me? Geez, after all that work and excitement of maintaining a backed up image. Maybe its because I had over 50 applications installed but that really shouldnt matter. That really chaps my hide.
The Bottom Line:
Did I lose all of my data? No way. I had my "flawless" back up plan in place. Remember that I have 2 hard drives. I use the Raptor hard drive to hold just my Windows XP operating system. My 2nd hard drive has all my real data on it. So basically, I just lost all of my software applications and would just to have to reinstall them all over again. But wait...no I dont need to do that because I have kept a back up image of my Raptor drive. An image is like taking a snapshot of your current computer settings and applications. So all I need to do is restore the image and Im up and running again like nothing happened. So I had thought. More on this later.
I purchased the Raptor drive on 4/17/2007 (thank you gmail for keeping a record of all my purchases), so I was quite surprised that it only lasted under 2 years. Coincidentally, my brother's Raptor drive died recently as well and his Raptor was only a year old. Fortunately, there is a 5 year warranty on these drives.
To get the hard drive replaced, WD gave me 2 options. The website stated that they can immediately send me a replacement hard drive first, and then I can send in the broken hard drive afterwards. The only catch was that they required my credit card information and that they would charge me for the full retail price of the drive if they did not receive the broken one within 30 days. That sounded fair to me. The other option would have me send my broken drive first and once they received it, they would send me my replacement drive. Of course, I chose the 1st option because it was faster even though it still took about a week to get it.
I received the new hard drive and restored the image using Acronis True Image 11 which is a highly rated and very popular imaging software application. Wohooo...it worked! I didnt have to reinstall the 50 software applications I had. Wait a second...why did my computer just reboot all of a sudden? It turns out that the image was unstable and my computer kept rebooting by itself every so often. Unstable image!? Are you kidding me? Geez, after all that work and excitement of maintaining a backed up image. Maybe its because I had over 50 applications installed but that really shouldnt matter. That really chaps my hide.
The Bottom Line:
- WD Raptor X drives dont last very long, so be prepared to have it replaced more often than you think. But man they are fast!
- Even though Acronis True Image failed me this time, I will still maintain a backup image and be confident (or hopeful) that it will work the next time.
- I dont use Carbonite to back up anything on my primary drive because all of my data is stored on my secondary drive. But the one set of data that my wife kindly reminded me about are the fonts. The fonts live in the Windows/Fonts folder and therefore it seems that Im unable to configure Carbonite to back up those files. I guess Carbonite cant touch Windows system files for obvious reasons. In any case, I was luckily able to retrieve my fonts directly from the image. And now I back them up on my secondary drive.
PLEASE NOTE: If you are using an imaging software and Carbonite, you will have to disable Carbonite BEFORE taking the drive's image. If you dont perform this step, then Carbonite may not work anymore when you restore the image. Carbonite did not work after my image restore. Booo!
This will be my 3rd hard drive within the 5 year warranty. Let's hope this will be the last one for a while.
Hard Drive Replacement dates
1. 4/17/07
2. 2/12/09
3. 10/14/10
