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Bend The Light

Bend The Light

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Craig
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Hard drive failure!
2 years of photos lost.
Including all the ones of my 2 kids. :'(

Might just be power failure. Here's hoping!

But if it's not said once...it's said a hundred times!

BACK UP!

:'(:'(:'(
 
What's the symptoms? Does it clank, rattle, click, or just report the drive needs formatting before use?

If the latter you should be able to use recovery software.
 
Byker28i said:
What's the symptoms? Does it clank, rattle, click, or just report the drive needs formatting before use?

If the latter you should be able to use recovery software.
Click to expand...

Upon first copnnecting up, it makes noises (sound like beeps, but they're not...probably the discs moving"

It goes Du...du...du...du...du and then stops. Light is lit, but dim. The light doesn't flicker as if data is read or writing.

Some of my friends are suggesting power problems, and one or two suggest changing the controller board (?)...I have a couple of avenues to try.

But first job is buying a couple of Terabyte drives and setting up a new workflow with redundancy built in!

Cheers
 
There are companies who can recover data off dead hard drives. Might not be cheap, but worth enquiring if you can't fix it yourself.
 
StewartR said:
There are companies who can recover data off dead hard drives. Might not be cheap, but worth enquiring if you can't fix it yourself.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I have a couple of friends having a look, so hopefully we'll sort it. Cheers
 
This happened to me on my mac a few years ago. It was more user error though! I spilt a load of booze over it by accident and killed the hard drive loosing lots of music sessions i had engineered and ideas and just too much stuff! Lesson now learn t that i back everything up at least once a week on to a portable harddrive!
 
drummerkev said:
This happened to me on my mac a few years ago. It was more user error though! I spilt a load of booze over it by accident and killed the hard drive loosing lots of music sessions i had engineered and ideas and just too much stuff! Lesson now learn t that i back everything up at least once a week on to a portable harddrive!
Click to expand...

Always lessons to be learned, eh? I've learned mine!

Cheers
 
Bend The Light said:
Thanks. I have a couple of friends having a look, so hopefully we'll sort it. Cheers
Click to expand...

If you are thinking of sending it off to a data recovery company don't let your friends try for too long. If the head is hitting the platters then there is real danger that the longer it is powered up the more damage will be done and less chance of getting all your files off of it.
 
If it's clicking (your 'du du du' description) then it's probably the HDD head mechanism is broken ,(click of death as it's known!)..

I have left drives to cool down (even freezered them before) and if I can get them to just catch once on powering up, have used drive recovery software to recover 99% of my images..

I back mine up to a NAS (networked attached storage), on two drives, and offsite to Crashplan.. it costs me, but everything is backed up, and if the house burnt down, I'm still covered..

The cheap way is get a cheap Network external drive, and backup between PC and that, and upload to photobucket or similar (any free storage option)..
 
phil-t said:
If it's clicking (your 'du du du' description) then it's probably the HDD head mechanism is broken ,(click of death as it's known!)..

I have left drives to cool down (even freezered them before) and if I can get them to just catch once on powering up, have used drive recovery software to recover 99% of my images..

I back mine up to a NAS (networked attached storage), on two drives, and offsite to Crashplan.. it costs me, but everything is backed up, and if the house burnt down, I'm still covered..

The cheap way is get a cheap Network external drive, and backup between PC and that, and upload to photobucket or similar (any free storage option)..
Click to expand...

not necessarily. we had a lacie that was making all sorts of noises but out of the enclosure the disk was perfect. if the controller is sending rubbish information to the disk then it may make some odd noises.
 
Ploddles said:
If you are thinking of sending it off to a data recovery company don't let your friends try for too long. If the head is hitting the platters then there is real danger that the longer it is powered up the more damage will be done and less chance of getting all your files off of it.
Click to expand...

nikonal said:
Hopefully it's just a PSU issue.

Before you send it off to a data recovery expert and pay through the nose, you should try a Magic Bridge II

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Max-Value-eSATA-SATA-Adapter/dp/B001E47ONW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335608165&sr=8-1
Might just save you a few hundred quid.

I did it recently and salvaged a hard drive that I thought was a goner!
Click to expand...

neil_g said:
presuming its an external drive first thing to do is open the plastic case up and get the hard drive plugged in inside a PC. 9/10 its just the case thats failed.
Click to expand...

phil-t said:
If it's clicking (your 'du du du' description) then it's probably the HDD head mechanism is broken ,(click of death as it's known!)..

I have left drives to cool down (even freezered them before) and if I can get them to just catch once on powering up, have used drive recovery software to recover 99% of my images..

I back mine up to a NAS (networked attached storage), on two drives, and offsite to Crashplan.. it costs me, but everything is backed up, and if the house burnt down, I'm still covered..

The cheap way is get a cheap Network external drive, and backup between PC and that, and upload to photobucket or similar (any free storage option)..
Click to expand...

neil_g said:
not necessarily. we had a lacie that was making all sorts of noises but out of the enclosure the disk was perfect. if the controller is sending rubbish information to the disk then it may make some odd noises.
Click to expand...

Thanks all. The friends are not just "tinkerers"...I am sending it to a friend in the data business (actually friend of a friend, but same thing). Not going to mess with it. I might get it into the father in law's computer before that, though, just to see. But I won't be tinkering further.

I listened to several sounds on t'interwebs, but this soes not sound like C.O.D. :)

Fingers crossed. ;)
 
simonblue said:
A bit over the top,but all my photos are backed up to 5 hard drive.
Click to expand...

It depends...how important are they to you? I am gutted that I "may" have lost all mine...I am backing up now on to 2 hard drives other than the one in the computer. Only backing up RAW files, I can always re-edit them if I lose the JPG copies.

Cheers
 
5 is a little excessive, wow!

and remember that RAID won't save you from your self, if you delete a file by mistake it's gone from both drives, so I use time machine as a delayed RAID


i've killed 2 drives by dropping them and 3 have died from natural causes
recently I had a freecom mobile drive stop working (problem with the usb plug I suspect) which was under warrantee but I can't send it off to them without never seeing the drive again, so i'm going to have to saw the case open and remove the drive :bang:

I have had possitive experiences with putting drives in the freezer and the software I use has always recovered all the data, although sometimes without the file structure intact so I had to sort it all out again manually.
 
i have 2 iomega 1tb external drives that both power supplies have failed but the drives themselves are fine with an alternative power supply
symptoms are the drives power up but will not calibrate ( the series of clicks you hear when the drives spin up ) and when plugged into a pc via usb they don't show up

if you have a 12 volt power supply rated at at least 1 amp with centre pin positive ( needs checking to make sure the original power supply is the same ) it might be worth trying it

both mine are working fine on alternative power supplies but MAKE SURE THE POLARITY AND VOLTAGE IS THE SAME or unrecoverable damage could occur
saying all that my experience of external drive enclosures all i have come across that use the typical round plug have all been positive inner pin but there might be ones out there with the polarity reversed ( positive outer pin ) so make sure before you go plugging an alternative power supply into the external drive

if you don't understand or a bit nervous about doing this then the best advice i can give you is DON'T
 
simonblue said:
A bit over the top,but all my photos are backed up to 5 hard drive.
Click to expand...

That makes me feel better I only have mine on 4 drives 2 internal and 2 external. I use a prog called Allway Sync to do my backups and it works great for me.
Wonder how many people are doing a backup today after reading this thread, I know I am :)
 
Last edited:
neil_g said:
not necessarily. we had a lacie that was making all sorts of noises but out of the enclosure the disk was perfect. if the controller is sending rubbish information to the disk then it may make some odd noises.
Click to expand...

True.
I can make external drives 'click' simply by connecting them to the USB ports on the front of one of my cases. The ports are cabled using really thin cables causing the drive to have enough power to start spinning up. The current to spin up is too great causing the voltage to drop so the controller resets. On restart it begins to spin up again .... rinse and repeat :)
 
stormcrow said:
I use a prog called Allway Sync to do my backups and it works great for me.
Click to expand...

Great program. I use that to do regular syncs between my main HDD, the NAS and the second HDD. Then then the weekly full system backup using Retrospect.... and I still worry.
 
mrjames said:
5 is a little excessive, wow!

and remember that RAID won't save you from your self, if you delete a file by mistake it's gone from both drives, so I use time machine as a delayed RAID


i've killed 2 drives by dropping them and 3 have died from natural causes
recently I had a freecom mobile drive stop working (problem with the usb plug I suspect) which was under warrantee but I can't send it off to them without never seeing the drive again, so i'm going to have to saw the case open and remove the drive :bang:

I have had possitive experiences with putting drives in the freezer and the software I use has always recovered all the data, although sometimes without the file structure intact so I had to sort it all out again manually.
Click to expand...

cosmicma said:
i have 2 iomega 1tb external drives that both power supplies have failed but the drives themselves are fine with an alternative power supply
symptoms are the drives power up but will not calibrate ( the series of clicks you hear when the drives spin up ) and when plugged into a pc via usb they don't show up

if you have a 12 volt power supply rated at at least 1 amp with centre pin positive ( needs checking to make sure the original power supply is the same ) it might be worth trying it

both mine are working fine on alternative power supplies but MAKE SURE THE POLARITY AND VOLTAGE IS THE SAME or unrecoverable damage could occur
saying all that my experience of external drive enclosures all i have come across that use the typical round plug have all been positive inner pin but there might be ones out there with the polarity reversed ( positive outer pin ) so make sure before you go plugging an alternative power supply into the external drive

if you don't understand or a bit nervous about doing this then the best advice i can give you is DON'T
Click to expand...

stormcrow said:
That makes me feel better I only have mine on 4 drives 2 internal and 2 external. I use a prog called Allway Sync to do my backups and it works great for me.
Wonder how many people are doing a backup today after reading this thread, I know I am :)
Click to expand...

Almost_Invisible said:
True.
I can make external drives 'click' simply by connecting them to the USB ports on the front of one of my cases. The ports are cabled using really thin cables causing the drive to have enough power to start spinning up. The current to spin up is too great causing the voltage to drop so the controller resets. On restart it begins to spin up again .... rinse and repeat :)
Click to expand...

WilliamC said:
Great program. I use that to do regular syncs between my main HDD, the NAS and the second HDD. Then then the weekly full system backup using Retrospect.... and I still worry.
Click to expand...

Not sure I have an alternative power supply, but I will look...I understand polarity and power etc. I was gonna try a desktop with the drive installed...
Got a mate on another forum checking out his box of dead drives for the bits to try with mine...

I hope with this thread I HAVE saved someone losing their data...but then we will never know because you HAVE backed it up it probably won't fail...Sod's law! :)

Got 2x 1TB hard drives today to start my back ups and so on. Need to look at automation of backups and so on.

Cheers all.
 
know how you feel i moved all my pics on to my work laptop while i sorted out my nas drive to make room for them went to work one morning as normal set laptop up made a coffee then dropped said coffee on laptop and the drive just clicks so its in a draw until i get the money to send it off about 7 years worth of pics inc all the kids wife was not to cuffed to say the least now i have 3 copys laptop , nas drive and a portable hard drive
 
bigtodski said:
know how you feel i moved all my pics on to my work laptop while i sorted out my nas drive to make room for them went to work one morning as normal set laptop up made a coffee then dropped said coffee on laptop and the drive just clicks so its in a draw until i get the money to send it off about 7 years worth of pics inc all the kids wife was not to cuffed to say the least now i have 3 copys laptop , nas drive and a portable hard drive
Click to expand...

Ouch! I'm not in the doghouse, as it wasn't my fault (mind you, I say that...I probably AM in the doghouse, and it's ALWAYS my fault!). but it's a horrid feeling to think that those memories have been erased...:(
 
stormcrow said:
That makes me feel better I only have mine on 4 drives 2 internal and 2 external. I use a prog called Allway Sync to do my backups and it works great for me.
Wonder how many people are doing a backup today after reading this thread, I know I am :)
Click to expand...

May backup to 6 :D
 
I'm paranoid about this and probably a little anal! As I see it, the critical elements in any backup scheme are:
(1) automation - you will forget / get complacent, so automate it!
(2) get something off site - while having two or more copies in your house / flat is great in case of drive failure, but when some sod robs you blind, that pretty stream at the end of your garden turns into a raging river or some higher deity decides its time to rain down fire from above on your abode, it's not going to help.


My own scheme is:

Main copy - Boot disk
Backup No. 1 - an Internal Disk
Backup No. 2 - External disk permanently attached to the Computer
Backup No. 3 - External portable disk stored away from the Computer, but not always
Backup No. 4 - Amazon S3 Cloud; offsite and allegedly highly redundant.

Backups No. 1,2 & 4 are on scheduled jobs, so it's not a case of remembering myself - that said these jobs balls up from time to time, so you do still need to check! Backup No. 3 depends on me remembering to grab the disk from it's hiding place in its waterproof Peli case, so is more ad-hoc.

All disks are replaced every couple of years for new ones and the old ones archived, so typically a full backup is permanently archived every 6 months or so.

I've ended up doing all this on standalone disks - I have used external RAID disks before, but the RAID controller board failed stuffing up one of the disks, so I decided to keep it simple. I also have a NAS lying around, again fully RAID redundant, but the thing is sooo slow on my network, I just gave up.

I don't know where you are based, but I have external hot plug connector and power kits for IDE / SATA drives of all physical sizes if you wanted to borrow them to try to get your current drive powered up correctly, but as others have said, if you suspect any physical damage to the drive, or the possibility of physical damage though use, stop and get it off to the experts. It's been around 5 years since I last had cause to use such a company, and it was around £300 for their services, but they got 90% plus back.
 
simonblue said:
May backup to 6 :D
Click to expand...

You could even "Go all the way up to 11! That's like 10, but one more!"

Furtim said:
I'm paranoid about this and probably a little anal! As I see it, the critical elements in any backup scheme are:
(1) automation - you will forget / get complacent, so automate it!
(2) get something off site - while having two or more copies in your house / flat is great in case of drive failure, but when some sod robs you blind, that pretty stream at the end of your garden turns into a raging river or some higher deity decides its time to rain down fire from above on your abode, it's not going to help.


My own scheme is:

Main copy - Boot disk
Backup No. 1 - an Internal Disk
Backup No. 2 - External disk permanently attached to the Computer
Backup No. 3 - External portable disk stored away from the Computer, but not always
Backup No. 4 - Amazon S3 Cloud; offsite and allegedly highly redundant.

Backups No. 1,2 & 4 are on scheduled jobs, so it's not a case of remembering myself - that said these jobs balls up from time to time, so you do still need to check! Backup No. 3 depends on me remembering to grab the disk from it's hiding place in its waterproof Peli case, so is more ad-hoc.

All disks are replaced every couple of years for new ones and the old ones archived, so typically a full backup is permanently archived every 6 months or so.

I've ended up doing all this on standalone disks - I have used external RAID disks before, but the RAID controller board failed stuffing up one of the disks, so I decided to keep it simple. I also have a NAS lying around, again fully RAID redundant, but the thing is sooo slow on my network, I just gave up.

I don't know where you are based, but I have external hot plug connector and power kits for IDE / SATA drives of all physical sizes if you wanted to borrow them to try to get your current drive powered up correctly, but as others have said, if you suspect any physical damage to the drive, or the possibility of physical damage though use, stop and get it off to the experts. It's been around 5 years since I last had cause to use such a company, and it was around £300 for their services, but they got 90% plus back.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I'm up north. :)
I have ordered a kit for connecting bare drives, so will be able to connect it next week and see if it works. If it does, I may be able to do it myself. If not, I do have 4 smaller sized HDD which I can use for backups and so on using this connector...so it won't be wasted. :)
 
Bend The Light said:
You could even "Go all the way up to 11! That's like 10, but one more!"


Thanks. I'm up north. :)
I have ordered a kit for connecting bare drives, so will be able to connect it next week and see if it works. If it does, I may be able to do it myself. If not, I do have 4 smaller sized HDD which I can use for backups and so on using this connector...so it won't be wasted. :)
Click to expand...

I had a USB external drive fail on me a few years ago. To be more precise it turned out to be the USB to SATA controller card, a bug in the firmware destroyed the FAT table so it ended up looking like it needed formatting.

To cut a long story short, I was able to connect it directly to the motherboards controller and the used some software called Recover My Files to search the disk for the shadow file table. From memory this took ages, more than a day, but once it found it I was able to recover everything off the disk, which also took ages. But it worked.

Needless to say, I have a very robust back up scheme now for anything that isn't easily replaced.

Good luck with your effort and don't despair. Even if you have to send the drive to the professional recovery service it sounds like the cost will be worth it if there were images of your kids on there.
 
Many Thanks for the link to the program 'Allway Sync' in the past I have always use copy and paste of everything onto individual external hard drives once a month. But I have just downloaded this program and done a few test runs on small folders and it works great.
 
ChrisJ_SLH said:
I had a USB external drive fail on me a few years ago. To be more precise it turned out to be the USB to SATA controller card, a bug in the firmware destroyed the FAT table so it ended up looking like it needed formatting.

To cut a long story short, I was able to connect it directly to the motherboards controller and the used some software called Recover My Files to search the disk for the shadow file table. From memory this took ages, more than a day, but once it found it I was able to recover everything off the disk, which also took ages. But it worked.

Needless to say, I have a very robust back up scheme now for anything that isn't easily replaced.

Good luck with your effort and don't despair. Even if you have to send the drive to the professional recovery service it sounds like the cost will be worth it if there were images of your kids on there.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I have plans to try those things...I do have the images of the kids as large JPG now, though...I sent most over to the father ion law a couple of weeks back, so that's ok. :)

Cheers
 
I got home 5 hours ago to find we'd been burgled and the scum had taken the laptop (and the wifes car, games consoles etc)Thank god for livedrive! All my pics backed up.
 
I have time machine to back up to a time capsule and periodically back up what I feel is important to a portable drive. I also have some of my better photographs in the cloud. I personally feel that is enough, if everything failed/stolen/destroyed it wouldn't matter cos I would probably have been hit by a bus on the way home :lol:

Steve
 
Bend The Light said:
You could even "Go all the way up to 11! That's like 10, but one more!"



Thanks. I'm up north. :)
I have ordered a kit for connecting bare drives, so will be able to connect it next week and see if it works. If it does, I may be able to do it myself. If not, I do have 4 smaller sized HDD which I can use for backups and so on using this connector...so it won't be wasted. :)
Click to expand...

What kit have you ordered? Link?
 
Hi

I just thought I would share what I do, also fingers crossed that your data can be saved.

I have a synology Nas drive with two 500 Gb drives set to raid 1 (thus two copies of the data, this is also connected to a 500 Gb WD passport drive (and automatically backed up weekly).

So basically I always work off the network drive, as it is connected to my PC with a 1Gb network hub, I have no real problems opening files.

This also works as a time machine for my mac.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-DS212J-Bay-NAS-Enclosure/dp/B005TOXMAW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335827134&sr=8-1
 
ukchris said:
Hi

I just thought I would share what I do, also fingers crossed that your data can be saved.

I have a synology Nas drive with two 500 Gb drives set to raid 1 (thus two copies of the data, this is also connected to a 500 Gb WD passport drive (and automatically backed up weekly).

So basically I always work off the network drive, as it is connected to my PC with a 1Gb network hub, I have no real problems opening files.

This also works as a time machine for my mac.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-DS212J-Bay-NAS-Enclosure/dp/B005TOXMAW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335827134&sr=8-1
Click to expand...

Thanks. :)
 
Furtim said:
I'm paranoid about this and probably a little anal! As I see it, the critical elements in any backup scheme are:
(1) automation - you will forget / get complacent, so automate it!
(2) get something off site - while having two or more copies in your house / flat is great in case of drive failure, but when some sod robs you blind, that pretty stream at the end of your garden turns into a raging river or some higher deity decides its time to rain down fire from above on your abode, it's not going to help.


My own scheme is:

Main copy - Boot disk
Backup No. 1 - an Internal Disk
Backup No. 2 - External disk permanently attached to the Computer
Backup No. 3 - External portable disk stored away from the Computer, but not always
Backup No. 4 - Amazon S3 Cloud; offsite and allegedly highly redundant.

Backups No. 1,2 & 4 are on scheduled jobs, so it's not a case of remembering myself - that said these jobs balls up from time to time, so you do still need to check! Backup No. 3 depends on me remembering to grab the disk from it's hiding place in its waterproof Peli case, so is more ad-hoc.

All disks are replaced every couple of years for new ones and the old ones archived, so typically a full backup is permanently archived every 6 months or so.

I've ended up doing all this on standalone disks - I have used external RAID disks before, but the RAID controller board failed stuffing up one of the disks, so I decided to keep it simple. I also have a NAS lying around, again fully RAID redundant, but the thing is sooo slow on my network, I just gave up.

I don't know where you are based, but I have external hot plug connector and power kits for IDE / SATA drives of all physical sizes if you wanted to borrow them to try to get your current drive powered up correctly, but as others have said, if you suspect any physical damage to the drive, or the possibility of physical damage though use, stop and get it off to the experts. It's been around 5 years since I last had cause to use such a company, and it was around £300 for their services, but they got 90% plus back.
Click to expand...

RE Backup no. 4. Not so allegedly redundant for the millions of people who permanently lost files in 2 unrecoverable crashes of Amazon servers last year.
 
nikonal said:
Hopefully it's just a PSU issue.

Before you send it off to a data recovery expert and pay through the nose, you should try a Magic Bridge II

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Max-Value-eSATA-SATA-Adapter/dp/B001E47ONW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335608165&sr=8-1
Might just save you a few hundred quid.

I did it recently and salvaged a hard drive that I thought was a goner!
Click to expand...

Is that device any good?

I want one that i can connect a laptop hard drive to (IDE) to recover data and be able to use it for Sata drives etc.
 
ukchris said:
I have a synology Nas drive with two 500 Gb drives set to raid 1 (thus two copies of the data,
Click to expand...

never think of raid 1 as two copies of your data. sure if you lose one drive youre able to run from the other but if you delete the file it is still gone. if the files corrupt theyre gone. best to think of it as 1 physical disk.
 
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