Finally happened-Hard drive failed

crazypj

crazypj

Split personality, I fake being smart
Finally had a hard drive fail without warning, first time ever.
Western Digital 'Caviar' 160gb e-ide (yep it's an oldie)
I had it sitting in packaging for about 4 yrs, only fitted it in computer about a year ago to run OS
I have a backup but it's a few months old, need to do it more regular
Ho hum, such is life.
I'll get a new 500Gig and backup laptop as well as it gets a lot more use than the desktop
 
Not a big deal, though, 'cause you have everything backed up. Right?

RIGHT? :)
 
Course not, no one runs regular backups until this happens :(
BTW, have a starter plug done for you
 
Re: Re: Finally happened-Hard drive failed

crazypj said:
Course not, no one runs regular backups until this happens :(
BTW, have a starter plug done for you
Click to expand...

Let me know where to send money :)
 
Hey Rich, PJ just got done massaging a set of 450k carbs for me. I will let you know how they turn out so you can send him yours.
 
Re: Re: Finally happened-Hard drive failed

lingo said:
Hey Rich, PJ just got done massaging a set of 450k carbs for me. I will let you know how they turn out so you can send him yours.
Click to expand...

Stop tugging on my wallet you scoundrels
 
Synology DS212 in my basement with 2 x 1.5TB drives mirrored. Best thing in the world. Gigabit ethernet, runs Linux, has its own torrent client etc.
 
given the type of work I do (commercial photography and cinematography) i have a constantly redundant series of RAID drives. Internal and external. When I leave the office, the external comes with me. I'm sure i'm paranoid, but hey, paranoia may eventually save my ass.

I hope you didn't loose anything you can't find.

It may be worth it to look into a service that can cover your butt between backups. There are a number of cloud-based backup systems that are cheap, or offer a free version if your data growth is small enough.
 
Hey PJ, what is the drive doing? Sometimes if it is clicking you can get a few more minutes of life by putting it in the freezer. You would then hook one of these things up through the freezer door to a working computer and go crazy and copy your data off of it.

Let me know if I can help - computers are what I do for a living, and I'd be glad to help out someone who has helped me so much with my 360 build.
 
I've read about that, don't know if I should try that first?
I have a couple of different drive converters like the on on Amazon (paid a lot more than that though :( ) plus a few external drive enclosures I've bought over the years to use spare E-IDE drives from old computers
It doesn't 'boot' but does spin up, then, does 8 fast clicks, one CLICK, repeats 3 times then shuts down.
I was looking for a circuit board first, saw a video of a 'hot swap', put good drive in sleep mode for 5 mins, swap good board to bad drive, it bypasses the boot sectors as chip thinks its the 'old' drive when it 'wakes'.
Also read up on head and platter changes, you don't need a 1-100 clean room for a drive to work long enough for data recovery (as long as your not pouring sand in it ;D )
 
I think the freezer thing is the least damaging to try - if it doesn't work, you still have all the other options to try. It sounds like the read/write head stepper motor is dead / on its way out. Here's a decent article about the freezing process:

http://www.lancelhoff.com/freeze-a-clicking-hard-drive-to-recover-data/

The main point is that you should zip loc bag the drive to prevent condensation. I'd just freeze the whole thing in an IDE enclosure with the USB and power wires coming out the freezer door, but your milage may vary.

I've once been able to recover data from a drive by swapping the circuit board, but that drive had a fried circuit board, not a "clicking" mechanical failure.
 
I'll try freezing first, it looked the easiest thing to do as I don't need to find a donor drive for parts
 
crazypj said:
I'll try freezing first, it looked the easiest thing to do as I don't need to find a donor drive for parts
Click to expand...

I don't think it can make it more broken :) Good luck!
 
Try just giving it a nice firm slam down on a work bench. Not too hard and make sure it's label side up. Sometimes that works. I had a drive in a Designjet plotter fail on me yesterday. I tried freezing it as that had worked for me in the past, but no luck this time. If there's any data that you absolutely need off the drive, there are companies out there that can retrieve data off the drive. They aren't cheap so it's cost is relative to the data you're missing. We've used them before and had good results.

http://support.wdc.com/recovery/partner.asp?p=ontrack

In the future, you should look into Carbonite. $50/yr and it's pretty much just set it and forget it. The initial seed backup will take a while to run depending on your Internet bandwidth, but afterwards it only has to backup changes. I am the senior systems admin at our company and we don't backup our desktops and laptops except for C level execs. Those systems have Carbonite installed and it works great. External USB/Firewire/eSATA drives are fine, but usually they sit right next to the computer most of the time. That doesn't really help most people if there's a fire.
 
I keep copies of most stuff on the 2 500gig SATA drives, the E-IDE just worked better as a boot drive for some reason?
I was running JBOD ;D
I don't think there is anything that justifies professional recovery, probably just the OS and various other programs I have discs for, a few games and some paypal statements
It's also the first drive I've ever had fail, never got noisy or anything weird
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

DTT Light or Dark

  • DTT Light
    • www.jadusmotorcycleparts.com
    www.lostapostle.ca/
    www.sparckmoto.com

    Spread the Love

    Back
    Top Bottom