Bang goes the music

Here's a great idea I wish I'd never had. I was running out of space on my HD for music so I bought a Western Digital external drive. It was easy to use and I put all my music files on it, and ran iTunes using it with no problem.

Until a couple of days ago. The drive started whirring and sometimes would stall. So recognising a disaster in the making, I started pulling off the files onto a portable HD. I got a third of the way through before it stopped. It had got stuck on a bad sector.

So I was talking to P. and she suggested using XP to check the disk. Big mistake. Now I have a disk that says it has 120ish gigs used but won't tell me what's on it. The drive letter is there in My computer but there's no sign of any actual data.

So that's fucking great. The data's still there, obv. But I shudder to think how much it will cost to get it back.

***


Well, I found a piece of software that will let me copy stuff off the drive (which is just as well, because it also made it disappear from My computer. It's awesomely slow, but at least I can get some of the files off. When I say slow, I mean slow. It takes ages just to list the files. But it does see them, which is more than can be said for Windows.

***

Luckily, I got maybe a third of my music off before my external HD gave up the ghost, and my iPod has about two-thirds of my music on it, and I can use Sharepod to get that off, and of course, I have a lot of CDs full of a lot of the rest, so although it's a PITA, it's not a tragedy. A double PITA, actually, because my portable drive is only just big enough to carry my collection, and it's going to be a grind to figure out what I haven't rescued. Basically though, it's going to be stuff I don't listen to much (isn't on my iPod), although for some of that, that will be because I only acquired it recently. Boo.

But no one died, it was only a bunch of files, etc. I can get them again. My iTunes library is obviously fuxxored, but I can rebuild that easily enough. No need for tears. Except for those of frustration.

posted by Dr Zen @ 9:30 am