When I woke up Friday morning, May 27, 2022, I thought I was dreaming when suddenly, I heard it! My samples hard drive, the one with all my virtual instruments on it, suddenly started flashing on and off, and after a few repetitions of that cycle, it shut off completely! Now the samples drive isn't even connecting to my machine. Stranger still, the model number, which I don't remember all of it, but it usually starts with "ST31000", now displays as a number that starts with "STM13". How did this happen? We actually lost power in my apartment complex that day, so I wonder if that may have shorted out the power in this hard drive. I'm hoping I can still retrieve the samples off of there before it possibly goes belly up! It's amazing that that particular hard drive has been with me since the day I got my music machine, September 2, 2011! I've just recently purchased a new 6 TB Western Digital Black hard drive from B&H Photo And Video in New York City for $159.99! Now all I have to do is wait for my sighted friend, Markus (Yes, that's "Markus" with a "K", not a "C"), to come over and help me with makin' the switcharoo when the time comes that he's available to help me put it in. If I can't retrieve the samples myself, which I'm sure most folks will say is not a good idea if there's possible mechanical failure, I'm sendin' the drive in to Drivesavers! Mark gave me a quote that the price will be between $700 and $3900! Sure that's spendy, but it's worth it for me, as a few of the samples on there are ones I've made, and some of the instruments are ones I customized. Drivesavers did say that they could recover .wav files, which are also included on this drive, but they tell me that things like .nki, .nkb, .nks, and .nkx files are of a proprietary format. Now I'm confused!
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If Drivesavers can save an entire series of episodes of "The Simpsons" as well as an entire series of raw sessions from an album by The Rolling Stones, surely they can help to save my precious files, some of which aren't exactly replaceable! I hope the noises my hard drives make are not a sign of data damage or mechanical failure. If they are, what shall I do next? If the folks at Drivesavers are able to save every single "lost" file I have, for the love of San Francisco that will be my dancin' day! Then I'll be makin' music like never before! My sight challenged friend, Glenn, who actually builds computers (I know, you might say that's impossible when you can't see), says that the sound my hard drive is making, from the attachment I'm providing you in this email, is the sound of stuck heads. He tried to suggest that I put it in the freezer, but I don't think that's a good idea, as it could possibly introduce condensation in the machine, even if it's in an antistatic bag. What shall I do next? Here's an example of the actual sound from my actual hard drive. I recorded this with my Olympus LS100 field recorder next to my computer, while restarting the machine from a shutoff state. Listen to this and tell me if you think this is mechanical failure that could lead to data loss.
