I could *SCREAM* - another failed HDD

Wee Hels

Wee Hels

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Helen Forlow
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I can't believe it!

I've had about 3 external HDDs in as many as same years due to failure!

1st one was cheapo - died after 1 yr.

2nd HDD was middle of the road - died just past the year

3rd drive - Buffalo - thought it was a decent manufact. - played up towards the year out then clicky noises and slow but still worked. Have wanted to sort out files and images for a while only to get round to it and the flippin thing is failing to do anything!!

My PC recognises is as an additional drive - there's no more clicky noises. After a while, I get the windows prompt "Drive not formatted, reformat now?"

*****AAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH*****

Can any of you recommend a program that can recover such files/jpegs and docs that you have tried?

I know it'll probs cost me dosh but hopefully not too much!

PLEASE HELP!!

TIA

Helen
 
Oh, I've only just bought a buffalo, 1Tb , as a backup for my mybook which is a backup for my PC. I hope it lasts longer than a year.

I've use a free program to recover corrupted CF cards. I don't know if that would help? If you want I'll see if I can track it down.
 
That doesn't sound good...

I'm not sure if this'll help, and there are probably more techy people out there than I, but...

First step is to search against that model of HD in Google and check out forums to see if anyone else has had the same problem. Chances are they have unless you've dropped it, kicked it, or given it a bath. This has always yielded good results for me when things go south.

If it's an external HD, it might be a power supply issue. Can you get the casing off and mount it inside your PC case as an additional HD? (The answer is likely to be "no" due to different types of connectors) Or even order a new power supply? Or take it back to the shop and try it with a known working power supply?

Electronics shops (Maplins comes to mind) also sell exernal HD "shells" that allow you to mount a hard drive and connect it via USB. You could try getting one of those and swapping the guts of the broken HD.

If it's a softare/operating system problem, I have been rescued twice now by Knoppix. It's a LINUX boot CD, which means that you download it, burn it onto a CD, boot your PC up and run LINUX instead of Windows. The great thing about Knoppix is that it doesn't download anything onto your PC and runs the operating system directly from the CD. It also allows you to access NTFS disk partitions (My Documents, My Pictures etc) without touching your (possibly) corrupt Windows OS. You open the "My Pictures" folder and drag the jpegs (as well as anything else of value) off onto a working external HD with consumate ease. Then you can re-install Windows without losing data. It might seem daunting at first, but there's tons of info on the web about recovering data using Knoppix, and all you really need to know is how to burn a CD, and how to tell your computer to start up using the CD instead of Windows. You can download Knoppix free on the web. PM me if you want to go down this route and need some help.

Good luck!

-H
 
Sorry to hear of your mis-fortune.. I have some recovery software if your interested. First things first though.. don't plug the drive into any computers until your ready for recovery.
 
It's almost certainly the USB controller in the external enclosure that has died, rather than the drive itself. Your data is *probably* safe.

As Harlequin said, take it apart, and inside, there's a large silver box, that you can't really open with a screwdriver if you tried (very hard). If the back is a big connector with loads and loads of pins on, it's an IDE hard drive. If not, it's SATA. go to maplin or somewhere, and get a new 'shell' for that type of hard drive. Install it, and it *should* be ok.

If that doesn't work, the use the program 'photorec' to attempt photo recovery.

I dread to think how many millions of photos and files have been lost because external hard drives died on people and they had lost their files completely. In most cases, it is the cheap circuitry that connects it up by USB.
 
If it is a SATA drive Maplin have a simple plug in drive adapter to take the bare drive. From memory it's about £29
 
you can get those adapters for IDE too, but a) £30 for that sounds overpriced (but knowing maplin, about right...), if you're willing to wait, dealextreme have a usb-> sata adapter for $7 shipped and b) if it's only the usb controller that's died, there's no reason you'd want to stop using the drive, so it makes sense to buy an enclosure for it.
 
Trouble is - clicky noises usually means the head is seeking, so treat it as a warning the disk is on the way out.

I use File Scavenger at work. It outperforms some of the more expensive recovery programs.
http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm
 
Thanks for your help folks!

The 'clicky' sounds were happening around 8 months or so after purchase - what a b*mmer!! :bang:

When I switch the gadget on, the green light [power obviously!] is on and the red light [data] is continuously on - the data light only used to illuminate whenever I was opening files on the HDD.

Is it really worth my while opening it up to see what kinda drive it is +/- new casing? I would hate to think opening up the casing would jeopardise my retrieval even more than it is already! If that is the case, I will have to wait until the weekend when hubby is around - I am not to be trusted on being too explorative technically with electrical items!! :exit: :lol:

Thanks again!

Hels
 
do you get a poor power supply to your area? I'm amazed you have had so many drives go wrong, I can't remember the last time me or any of my mates had a drive problem.
 
ppp said:
do you get a poor power supply to your area? I'm amazed you have had so many drives go wrong, I can't remember the last time me or any of my mates had a drive problem.
Click to expand...

to be honest i was thinking the same thing, its too much of a coincidence that all 3 have failed (and quickly too).

either that or do they get knocked at all? hard drives arent designed to withstand even small knocks.
 
this is not going to help with the situation now, but let's look forward :-) and what to do so that this does not happen again . . .

you have one drive, IMHO that's an issue, two is better. To use two, buy something like a network attached storage (NAS) box, or a Freecom datatank. Here's how they work.

The box looks like a brick, inside is a linux computer plus two hard discs. It formats the drives to use RAID 1, then every time you write something it is written to both drives in parallel, so they are identical. If one of the drives goes down you pull it out and replace it, then the linux bit copies everything across automatically so you still have two identical copies. The NAS box (something like the D-Link DNS323) is the same, but it connects to a router which means you can access it from all the computers on your home network.
 
however DO NOT use raid devices as a single point of backup. the control devices in the enclosures are not indestructible and they will nuke all attached drives when they fail. i have seen it in several servers.
 
Get a surge protector if you're having that many fail.

If a HDD exhibits ANY odd behaviour, assume it's going to die. If I ever hear a funny noise from a HDD I back everything up off it immediately, there and then. Once it's started playing up it's only good for the bin.

If the drive is still recognised in Windows then you should be able to recover the majority of the data with Easy Recovery Pro or a similar data recovery program.
 
mid_gen said:
If the drive is still recognised in Windows then you should be able to recover the majority of the data with Easy Recovery Pro or a similar data recovery program.
Click to expand...

not necessarily, the controller on the drive may still respond but if the head and/or platter is screwed then its time to get the pros involved at a price..
 
neil_g said:
not necessarily, the controller on the drive may still respond but if the head and/or platter is screwed then its time to get the pros involved at a price..
Click to expand...

Unless the drive has been subject to a physical shock it's unlikely the heads/platters are damaged to the point where it can no longer read any data. If the drive electronics have failed and it isn't even recognised by the BIOS then you're out of luck, but I've never seen a drive that is recognised by the OS and then NOT able to recover 90% of the contents.

You're looking at the wrong side of £500 for data recovery by a professional lab last time I enquired.

But as I said, if Windows sees the drive, I think you'll have a good chance using a data recovery program.
 
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