help, what's happening?

Four days ago my mom was put back in hospital to treat her kidneys (it's related to diabetes), and for some reason hospitals these days are terribly crowded, later she was moved to a better room with $20 daily. I'm ready to pay cause I just want my mom to get well soon. She had blood transfusion two days ago due to anemia, thankfully she's feeling better, I pray for her to get well soon 😔❤️‍🩹

So, other news is that at home I was trying to focus on art, and day before yesterday in the morning suddenly my computer froze, I restarted it and it took so long to boot... and when the PC could finally log in, what I saw absolutely shocked me!

The disk where I kept almost ALL of my data has died! My programs, my photos & videos, my music and most importantly my art archive - all of this is lost forever 😭😭😭😭💔💔

That day I tried to back up the files, it copied very slowly, but by the end the disk was showing the signs of complete damage and stopped copying anything - it was just empty folders. The computer froze again and after the restart it didn't even boot with the damaged disk connected.

That Hitachi hard disk is about 10 years old, yeah, it's old HDD but I did not expect it to be damaged so suddenly and so fast without any warning! My PC worked just fine all these days and one day - boom - the biggest disk just died 💀

Now I cannot retrieve ANY remaining files from it. All my videos - mostly screen records of my painting process and taekook compilation videos too, music - all my music library that is like over 13 years old, a lot of it is modified (sped up\slowed reverb) versions or, rare unreleased music that was deleted from internet, I stored it for personal listening. It's all gone. Now I have nothing on computer to listen to *sigh*

My photos too, all the personal photos of my lifetime (nature pics, travels, etc.) since I was teen till now are all gone. I don't know why I didn't back it up to multiple disks? Maybe because I trusted technologies too much and was also too busy making art and managing my adult life issues.

I'm a bit tech nerd, if possible I'm trying to fix the stuff on my own but I'm not a pro. One tech guy told me I won't probably be able to recover the files from disk even if I'd bring it to PC hardware repair shop (recovery will cost money too ofc, up to $100-300 😱 depending on the level of damage - recovery not fully guaranteed - because there's too many bad sectors in the drive, so even if I retrieve the some files they will come up partially and corrupted. For real, that's depressing...

What I will definitely do is buy more storage disks to back up the remaining important files.

• 1) Hard disk drives. They are large capacity and cheaper but I don't trust them anymore... They're for work, but not for storage. My only remaining HDD disk currently has only 91 days of life! It means it has only 3 months of life before it will die and take away all my files along.

  

  External HDD is better, but I can't use it often, it's only for storage.

• 2) Solid-state drive? SSD are more safe than HDD, but they're also like twice more expensive, and to the cons added: limited write endurance, data recovery limitations, compatibility issues, and lower storage capacities than HDDs. The problem is that I work on my newest internal SDD that I bought along with my current PC! 😓 It means I cannot work a lot on that disk because it risks to wear out! But at the moment it's the only storage I have that isn't in critical condition.

• 3) Online cloud. I heard it's safe and reliable, but first I'm not a crazy about the monthly/annual subscription - just for storage? Also it's being online - is it really secure from hacks and leakage? I didn't store much files on the online clouds except some art related files like Google drive free storage. There's 2 TB annual $88 plan, I'm still not sure if it's really safest way to keep my work files... Another con for me is the fact that I have to be always online to access my files and if the internet is slow they won't even load or download in case I want to modify them. Counting the fact that each of my art files is huge, like above 200GB it's all will be slow.

I keep all funds that I currently have for my mom's hospital bills, everyday there's more and more spending on treatment, that's why currently I won't spend much on my computer stuff. Plus I haven't cash out of Patreon yet, moving funds is unavailable on weekends and takes several business days, however I have to buy extra storage to back up my art and other files ASAP. That would certainly be external and internal disks just to keep multiple copies. So... If you'd like to donate for my new back up disks, here's my Paypal, just in case any of you are eager to help me (only if you can afford!) 👉👈 Thank you in advance 💜

Just today I spent $180 to buy two new storage disks, one an external SSD (Samsung 1TB T9 ✨) and ordered internal WD HDD 1TB for working, it will arrive in 3 days, I need to save my art files ❤️‍🩹

P.S. Yeah, I'm sad that I lost almost the entire library of my personal files, even my childhood pics that I took with my first phone... but at least my new digital art files are safe, so thinking in a positive light, it's more important to me than my past, because it's my efforts, my hard work, my joy.

UPDATE: Thank you all so much for your donations! 🙇‍♂️ Can't thank you enough for such a prompt support 🥺💞 It's definitely enough for new quality disk and recovery shop services 🙌 (even if my damaged disk is completely dead, I still have a glimpse of hope to recover the lost files...) Just wanted to give you head up so the rest of you won't have to worry 💜💜💜