Slave Drive Failure

[Sawyer]

Anyone have any suggestions when a media drive goes down? I have a back up of probably 70% of whats lost. Some of the recent stuff I need and don't have (also I have found a little blind spot I didn't backup). I think the drive may still be spinning I see it on the device manager but it says it's offline.

 

Thanks

[Greg Hess]

Can you run a chkdsk on the drive? Try running it from dos using a bootdisk. (If you don't have a boot disk, boot to the windows CD and use the recovery console)

 

If the drive is still semi functional, there are three things you can try.

 

1. Use a program like file restorer 2000 pro.

http://www.restorer2000.com/download.shtml

 

Oooh looks like they have a new version now! Woot!

 

There is a free demo to try that will show you if it can see data on the drive to recover or not. This works about 90% of the time (if the drive is still readable).

 

2. Try cloning the bad drive to a good drive using a dos based cloner, like norton ghost.

 

3. DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER

 

There is a way to sometimes recover data off a drive if the circuit board under the drive is damaged. If you have the SAME drive (sometimes same model type works), type, you can try transfering the PCB (under the hd) from the working drive to the damaged drive, and see if that improves your data recovery.

 

WARNING WARNING WARNING

It is possible to accidently damage the good drive while moving the pcb, so its best to do with with a BLANK good drive, to a damaged drive with utterly critical data on it.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

is it click death? ...if so, put it in a plastic bag, and stick it in the freezer for half an hour. take it out, plug it in, and copy the files off that you don't have backed up.

[Greg Hess]

Though the "freezer" solution can work in rare cases, I'd leave it to VERY last. The process of freezing and then unfreezing the drive causes moisture to form both on the external and internal components, which will generally completely destroy what chance you had of getting any data off the drive, and make further recovery impossible (through an expensive data recovery service).

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/245

 

You can also look using knopix to try and mount the drive.

http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/

 

Download @

http://www.knoppix.org/

[Sawyer]

Thanks guys. No no clicking. BEfore Greg got back to me I tried Stellar Phoenix it also has a demo that did a run through and showed me everything. I purchased it and right now it is coping the files over to the new external drive I got for this. So far I see everything and the main files are copied. I hope to sleep a bit better.

 

I also talked with Boxx yesterday they talked me through some things and said I should have a new hard drive today.

[Ernest Burden III]

right now it is coping the files over to the new external drive I got for this.

 

I buy those Lacie Porsche 120s and fill 'em up, swap to the next one. It's also a perfect platform for my model MiniCooper. My wife bought it for me hoping I would think it was as good as a driveway-sized one. Sorry, no. But it's fun to look at all day, sitting up there on top of the workstation.

 

Glad to hear your drive is looking recoverable. The externals are so easy to copy to that I hope you do more backing up now that you have one. It's even a good way to transfer many gigs of data (like 5000 animation frames in TIFF, for example) between PCs, faster than my network.

[Sawyer]

Yeah I even had a few externals I was just about to fill one up so being a dumb ass I waited instead of buying a new one right away.

 

The hard part is not watching the files transfer (slow process). I am going to the climbing gym.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Though the "freezer" solution can work in rare cases, I'd leave it to VERY last.

 

ya, but it sounds really cool. i was thinking about buying some dry ice, and placing it in a bag on above and below the drive so i didn't have to put it in the freezer.

 

...but as i was discussing this with someone, we decided it might be a good idea to place a mini fridge next to my computer, keep the hard drive in there along with a couple of beers for late night work.

 

...the last part was tongue in cheek.

[Ernest Burden III]

might be a good idea to place a mini fridge next to my computer, keep the hard drive in there along with a couple of beers for late night work.

 

How much data can you store in a can of beer? Maybe you would want to invest in those Fosters cans, they're pretty big.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

How much data can you store in a can of beer? Maybe you would want to invest in those Fosters cans, they're pretty big.

 

the beer works in reverse, ......it makes you loose data.

[Ernest Burden III]

the beer works in reverse, ......it makes you loose data.

 

OK, I'm doing a study of your methods, running Bass Ale bottles in serial. I'll report results later--if I can remember any.