Failed hard drive, any hope?

rclarke80

rclarke80

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Had a hard drive fail on me the other week, plug it in and Windows wants to format it. Yet it won't format when try to. I've not lost anything really but is the hard drive gone for good?

Any help or experience appreciated.
 
In my time in computers I must have formatted thousands of hard drives, saved or recovered data from a fair few too.

Depending on what the fault is (corruption or a hardware fault) there are many packages that may be able to recover the drive or at least something on it and doubtless your local repair shop will have a few too but my advice is to forget it if you have the data elsewhere as even if a fix is possible the drive will possibly always have a question mark over it at least in your mind. If you want to have a go at it you could Google to some relatively inexpensive software or give your local repair shop a call as they might give some hope over the phone or they might just tell you it isn't worth it.

Personally I'd forget it as even if you get it going the failure may be a pointer to it being on its last legs and it may go again and for good and take some valuable data with it.
 
As Alan says, I wouldn't trust a drive that was playing up. I would write it off and simply replace it.
 
Might be worth putting this in the computers forum. You might get more help there.
 
Yes a external drive but as suggested I may just get rid to be on safe side. Consider I've had a lucky escape this time.
 
Drives are cheap to replace, was it old, what capacity was it?

I wouldn't trust it.
 
At least once or twice I've been able to mount an NTFS partition that Windows has wanted to format on a 'nix box. Try creating an Ubuntu Live CD, boot your computer from it and then attach the disk.

But yes, this is way external hard disks are poor as a storage/backup medium.
 
As Neil says it may just be the electronics. I've had a couple of drives fail and it was the box electronics that failed. Putting them in a new box and all works well. You can get a "toaster" which will allow you to put the bare drive in.
 
I'm not very good with computers and just reading some of that advice confused me, let alone trying it. Was only a 1tb and few years old. Have wrote it off and replaced with a 2tb so gives me a bit more room for the future too.

Thanks again for all the advice, even if it has reinforced the thought that technology has left me behind. I must be getting old!
 
rclarke80 said:
I'm not very good with computers and just reading some of that advice confused me, let alone trying it. Was only a 1tb and few years old. Have wrote it off and replaced with a 2tb so gives me a bit more room for the future too.

Thanks again for all the advice, even if it has reinforced the thought that technology has left me behind. I must be getting old!
Click to expand...

Just as a thought before you bin it get on to the manufactures website and see if they have a warranty section.
Some drives have 5 year warranties with them direct and you may get a replacement.
 
Haha I generally have at least 2 copies of anything important so things could've been worse.
 
rclarke80 said:
Thanks again for all the advice, even if it has reinforced the thought that technology has left me behind. I must be getting old!
Click to expand...

Don't worry - technology is now moving so fast that we are all being left behind.

The secret is to find something that works for you and stick to it until it's replaced by something which is better FOR YOU.
.
 
afasoas said:
But yes, this is way external hard disks are poor as a storage/backup medium.
Click to expand...
What backup method would you recommend?
 
NAS with at least two disks in RAID1 (mirrored) as primary backup. Then external hard disks on rotation to backup the NAS and/or a cloudy/remote backup.
 
As a retired computer network manager I am paranoid about backups....... I have seen far too many dead hard drives........

At least two backup copies is wise, even better if they are on different technologies, I use a server running Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011 as my prime backup & a NAS as a secondary. I periodically offload really important stuff to an external HDD which is kept 'offsite'.

If you are using mirrored drives in a NAS, try & buy them at different times/different suppliers to avoid them being from the same batch of drives.... I have seen a number of occasions where multiple hard drive failures have occurred almost simultaneously in RAID arrays where drives were from the same batches.
 
I have used one of the bootable Linux distros to get access to a failed drive to be able to copy off files even after windows kept asking to format
 
Holy moley never heard so much tosh about multiple nas and san server solutions,
get a decent but basic NAS and subscribe to a top quality cloud backup solution like hubic.

then get on with taking pictures.
 
After much head scratching and learning I eventually tried the Linux unbuntu thing I think it was called. Didn't recognise the drive so it's back on the scrap heap.

Now simply using two different make hard drives to backup everything twice. Maybe not the most technical way but I've two copies should ever something happen again, and that will suit my basic needs.
 
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