hard drive failure

It seems as if one of our network hard drives just up and died this evening... :’(

Of course it would be the one that we don’t have backed-up. I was going to buy a new drive next month to make this a RAID drive, but I hadn’t gotten up to the states to do it yet. And it’s our media drive, so it’s chock full of video, music, and photos.

I’m wondering if anyone here has had a similar experience and was able to recover their data. The drive is making a noise like a big ball bearing dropped on a table, followed by somewhat electronic-sounding clicks and beeps, and then more mechanical-sounding clicking. It seems as if maybe the head is just not reading the drive, and maybe if I whack it hard enough it will straighten up and fly right.

It’s a Seagate drive from an HP Media Vault, and it is detected by BIOS and Seagate’s Disk Tools app, but all tests on it fail (and it shows up as unpartitioned in Partition Magic).

Any advice that might make my day a little less bleak?

Hi, sorry about the problem you’re facing.

Maybe you would like to try Spinrite. Obiously it doesn’t correct hardware problems but there have been cases where, eventhough the drive has fisical damage, it lets you recover your data.

I hope you recover all your data.

Quote from: ZAP at Feb 01, 2008, 08:40 PM

It seems as if one of our network hard drives just up and died this evening... :’(

Of course it would be the one that we don’t have backed-up. I was going to buy a new drive next month to make this a RAID drive, but I hadn’t gotten up to the states to do it yet. And it’s our media drive, so it’s chock full of video, music, and photos.

I’m wondering if anyone here has had a similar experience and was able to recover their data.

Hi Zap, not sure if this is useful.

I have great success in recovering my data from a corrupted external Hard Drive with this software:
http://www.prosofteng.com/
Mine is Mac version but I think it has PC too.

You can download a trial (full) version to test out if it works; he trial version comes with limited MB transfer.

@carlosma and chinesedream: Thanks for the sympathy and the suggestions. I may give SpinRite a try just for the heck of it. The drive is doing one of these, though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKc4qsrhOB8

I one time fixed a hd by swapping the main bord of the hd by the main bord of an identical drive.
if that does not do the trick than try swapping the actual disks, but that is a very delicate work. and easy to screw up your drive.
most of the time swapping the main bord works good.

Quote from: Dimmy at Feb 02, 2008, 01:10 PM

I one time fixed a hd by swapping the main bord of the hd by the main bord of an identical drive.
if that does not do the trick than try swapping the actual disks, but that is a very delicate work. and easy to screw up your drive.
most of the time swapping the main bord works good.

I’ve been debating trying that also. I have a very similar drive (same series, but 20GB bigger), and I might be able to get the data off of it that way. But I’m also very likely to end up with two dead drives, and I wouldn’t be able to send the first one in for a replacement anymore either.

Today I’m going through old backups and whatnot to see how much is really lost, and so far it looks as if I can live with it.

Let my tragedy serve as a reminder to y’all: BACKUP EVERYTHING TODAY!

Oh thats a real tragedy, sorry, i too had a moment like that before, seems we almost looooose data actually a seconds after the HDD get to know that you don’t have a backup!

Quote from: ZAP at Feb 02, 2008, 01:24 PM

Let my tragedy serve as a reminder to y’all: BACKUP EVERYTHING TODAY!

ZAP, can’t help ya, but did want you to know you’re not alone. Last summer I lost a hd with mysql on it that i forgot to backup, and lost 3 months of 10 other employees work.

So I feel ya. That sucks dude - sorry it happened.

My condolences. I’ve been there and it’s no fun.

If the lost data is valuable, you can give these guys a crack at recovering it: http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

They are fairly expensive, though, so it’s only worth it if you REALLY need the data back.

Bob

Sorry to hear of your drive failure ZAP.

I’ve had one die on me and a couple of others of friends too.

I have spinrite and I have to say it has worked tremendously both for data recovery and drive maintenance and I’d recommend it too. (it can be rather slow if the drive is large).

I’ve also used ontrack Easy Recovery too.

Just be aware that I found once you start using SpinRite then you have to let it run all the way through the drive. You can stop and start the program at leisure but you can’t do stop it and then try and access it via OnTrack Easy Recovery. In my case it looked completely stuffed but on completing SpinRite the files were there and could be copied off to another drive.

Sorry for rambling but I know how daunting it can be when faced with a knackered drive and the feelings that go with it when it seems like you can get to the data, then maybe can’t.

Good luck with it. I hope you get it all back.