TV-Nihon

Yup, the one that has all my scripts on it. Anyone deal with this sort of thing before?

It's a Kingston SSD. I tried putting it in an enclosure and that didn't work either.

I'm thinking about trying a data recovery site, but I'm not sure who's reliable and what's a good price. One site I saw listed SSD recoveries to be at least 1000 dollars.

I'm not surprised by the price of recovering the data. You need a special room for that (to stop static electricity among others things).

Did you have backups of them?

I spent $60 on iCare Data Recovery when one of my externals died. It took a long time to work, but it was able to recover almost everything and it was pretty easy to use. I ended up just re-downloading some of the stuff that was easy to find, since it took so long to work. You can download a free version of iCare, but it only lets you recover 100MB I think before you are required to upgrade to one of the full versions. 100MB isn't even one episode in SD, heh.

When connected to a computer does it even recognize the drive exists? If it does, SpinRite may do the trick, even though it's an SSD. This will be step 1 of any data recovery company you try to send it to. It may take hours to run through the drive but don't be discouraged.

I had this happen a few times in my life and nothing ever worked for me.
When a HDD died, it was gone.

I'm still not over losing all the pictures that I had of my dad. Both died in 2008. :'(

Takenko, SSD failures tend to be terminal. They're solid state devices; it's not like hard drives where large chunks of data are still on a platter somewhere. Data recovery services can take a crack at it, but their success rate isn't nearly as high as with HDDs.

I take it you haven't been keeping backups?

I probably should start backing up on the cloud.

I actually do back up stuff to an external, but I do it manually. So I'm not quite sure what I've lost. Definitely feel like those music videos I redid for The First and The Next will need to be redone. Probably some DVD stuff from the backlog?

It's just annoying since I've got personal stuff on the drive as well that I'd love to recover.

Should I even bother to try a data recovery center? Like I said, it's not recognized in the computer or in an enclosure.

It's up to you. If you don't try you'll never get it back. But the odds aren't good.

When I did my HD recovery earlier this year it wasn't recognized either. Try using a free program like iCare, and if they can at least LOCATE the HD and its data then consider upgrading to a full version to get it. Cheaper than spending hundreds of dollars to have a professional look at it.

I had something similar happen to me about a year ago. One of my hd's died with a lot of documents on it that I was pissed about losing. I looked into some data recovery sites and like you said they quoted me $800-$1,000 with no guarantees. I've gotten most of what I lost back, but now I back up everything on my cloud just in case.

The success rate on recovering a SSD isn't all that great.

It's been a very long time since I've had that problem. It was with a standard HD years ago, but I was able to track down a software program to do a recovery. It cost me about $50 to buy the software, and then all I had to do was mount the drive in another working machine and let it run. Was able to recoup about 95% of the content.

I can research the software again if you'd like. I have some equipment here for that purpose, but not bothered to find the software again. (it was DOS based back when I used it) SSD are a bit more difficult to recover and I have never tried as I only use them for OS setups.

Guys, I know you mean well. But could you please be sure to read Takenoko's post?

It's an Solid State Drive (SSD) that failed, not a Hard Dive (HDD). The "my hard drive failed and I did X to fix it" advice isn't going to help in this situation. Two different technologies.

I guess my next step is to replace my system. The thing that sucks is the hdd was only 3 years old.

Anyone have any good computer recommendations? I'm not really a PC gamer, but I'd like to be able to play the occasional game that I have on steam if I want to. I can add certain stuff, but I'm not comfortable with building a system from scratch.

Stuff I'd probably want:
-Should I jump into WIn 10? Anyone know if the current programs used by fansubbers have any conflicts with Win 10?
-SSD for the operating system. Maybe a Raid setup for the secondary drive just to avoid future disasters?
-Graphics card, I don't really know anything about this stuff, but I'm guessing it's safe to just google the card and see how it lines up?
-I don't know if Megui or Virtualdub really takes advantage of the multiple cores, so any recommendations on CPU? I'm guessing 8 gigs or ram is pretty standard now?

I'm using my Laptop has my Blu-ray ripper, so I probably won't need an optical drive now?

Do you guys think I should buy from a specialized computer site, or is amazon fine?

Any other things I should consider? Ideally, I'd like to budget 1000 to this, but I can go up to 1500. This is an expensive month for me since I'm picking up the G Gundam Blu-ray box on top of Jyuohger and Agito Blu-ray box 1

I asked a friend of mine who knows more about this stuff than I do, but this is what he said:
"SSDs tend to be lost causes, and HDD tend to be a 50/50 at best. Unfortunately this is why you make at least 2 back ups of anything personal/valuable. Recovery may work, but it's a crap shoot at best when the drive it's self fails/is broken. If it's worth 800-1000 dollars, try a recovery center, but even then, there is no promises they can get it for you."

This is what he had to say about your PC questions:
"Once we start getting into raid, you are either effectively looking at a machine built to be a small business server, or a high end pc that you'll need to set up raid for yourself, depending on which version of raid you are hoping to get. Sounds like they want raid 1, which means a pc with two, identical sized drives. I'd say bite the bullet and get windows 10, if you are not afraid to hop onto the latest/"greatest" and want more room for different pc specs. Most pc's you buy off the shelf have on board graphics, which will be more than enough unless you want to play skyrim or do video editing. Honestly, most on board cards will do just fine for light gaming and video watching, the only thing I'd be sure to check is that the ports align with the ports on your monitor. If you do more than that, start looking at nvidea, and I would recommend starting the search on newegg or tigerdirect.
8 gigs of ram will be plenty, perhaps even overkill, I would recommend looking at Intel i3 or high cpus or better, realistically, I wouldn't touch anything less than i5 personally. Most shelf pc's will have a form of optical drive, if we go back to servers, not so much. In terms of site to buy it from, I would recommend staying away from amazon unless you already know exactly what pc to buy and are checking for better deals, start with the manufacturer sites, like dell/toshiba/hp and then work your way to retailers, right now "back to school" sales are starting to end, so you may not want to delay (also Microsoft's website may be worth checking during the search on retailers).
To be completely fair though, we should be asking why the ssd failed, if it was a fluke power surge, invest in a surge protector, or a ups, and then buy a new ssd, replace the old one and grab a windows disc and start over with that machine. Moore's law suggests pcs should be replaced every 2-3 years, but if you care for them, clean them out, and buy high end stuff towards the start, they can last you 5+."