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IceEnclosure · Nov 29, 2007, 10:41 PM

My friend, a working dj, called me up to tell me he lost his entire music collection, which was on a WD MyBook 250GB external drive. Most of his music is digitized as he uses Serato when performing a live dj set, allowing him to keep the record bags at home. This is his life, and yes it should have been backed up since it's so important to him, but here's the story..

He said something happened when plugging in the power adapter, and then the drive ceased to work. He took it to Best Buy(where he purchased it) and he wound up talking to the Geek Squad people and left his MyBook with them, along with a new external drive he just purchased. He asked them to recover the data from the MyBook and transfer it to his new drive.

When he went back to pick it up, they said sorry, that they couldn't recover his data, which was about 92GB of music files. They also informed him that the work they had performed trying to get his data off had voided whatever Western Digital warranty may have remained.(I think the drive is not under warranty though, but wtf)

So they couldn't get the data, and they had no suggestions. He drove outta there, called me, came over, I pulled the bare drive out from inside the MyBook, plugged it into my G4 and it landed on the desktop, all files intact. It was fine.

He just left to go punch them in the face.

brassplayersrock² · Nov 29, 2007, 10:59 PM

good job mr. IceEclosure

Hopefully your friend didn't have to pay them any money, and if he did that he gets it back.

imitchellg5 · Nov 29, 2007, 11:01 PM

That really doesn't surprise me. I've heard nothing but crap about them.

mdc · Nov 29, 2007, 11:10 PM

Inform us how the face punching goes.
Good job getting all of his files. I hope he'll be very diligent when it comes to backups from now on.

- - e r i k - - · Nov 29, 2007, 11:21 PM

I hear that Time Machine is pretty good

IceEnclosure · Nov 29, 2007, 11:43 PM

Time Machine sucks in Tiger.

James L · Nov 30, 2007, 01:40 AM

I definitely need to hear the follow up to this story!

I loves a good nerd beating.

C.A.T.S. CEO · Nov 30, 2007, 01:49 AM

Originally Posted by IceEnclosure

He just left to go punch them in the face.

Did he really? If so he is awesome.

Edit: Does he use a Mac and have that drive formated HFS+? I hate to be the devils advocate, but if so that might be why they couldn't recover the data.

IceEnclosure · Nov 30, 2007, 02:03 AM

negative it was MS-DOS or FAT or whatever.

King Bob On The Cob · Nov 30, 2007, 06:09 AM

LOL, yea, the drive was probably too big for their DOS boot disks that run ScanDisk, so they gave up. I could totally see that happening.

MacosNerd · Nov 30, 2007, 08:53 AM

Originally Posted by King Bob On The Cob

LOL, yea, the drive was probably too big for their DOS boot disks that run ScanDisk, so they gave up. I could totally see that happening.

That's because they could only dig up DOS 2.11 boot disks

ghporter · Nov 30, 2007, 10:05 AM

Geek Squad was worthwhile for about three months. Then Best Buy started thinking that "interesting" looking people in black and white clothes would be a selling point, whether they had any technical skills or not, so they went crazy and destroyed both the concept and the value in their "technicians." Firedog, on the other hand, has been played in an understated way, so they have neither a reputation as being odd nor an image to live up to. So far, that's a good thing.

I spent a LONG time as an electronics technician-I fixed anything people brought in. And I NEVER touched something without some sort of tech data on it. I don't think Geek Squad has ever heard of tech data. Or anything like "knowing what you're doing."