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Message # 47905.8.1

Subject: Re:O/T (I guess) External Hard drive problems! PLEASE HELP!

Date: Wed 15/12/10 09:48:13 GMT

Name: Anonymous

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yes you are definitly right. He should only try "do it youself" if he does NOT want to give the drive to a professional company for data recovery.

I also gave some hints above, but I was under the impression that he does not want to give the drive out of his hands, due to the private nature of the data on it.

I recently had a failure of an external drive myself. I had a backup, so not realy a problem. I had still warranty on the defective drive, but the drive contained personal things , so I decided to throw it away and not send it back to the manufacturer.

In reply to Message (47905.8)

Re:O/T (I guess) External Hard drive problems! PLEASE HELP!

By AnthonyX - anthonyx@jowc.net Wed 15/12/10 09:10:42 GMT

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I wouldn't try any of the "do it yourself" hints myself. I'd take it to a computer shop I trust and ask if they can do a recovery on it. Any "trick" you might want to try carries a risk of making the situation worse i.e. what may be an easily recoverable condition now may become unrecoverable after a failed attempt to "fix" it.

20/20 hindsight: Disk drives are now so reliable that it's easy to believe we will never experience a failure. Also, it seems expensive to buy extra media, and it can be a hassle making sure our valuable data is securely backed up. So we don't do it. And then some day a drive fails. I've had a laptop drive fail on me, but thankfully, I didn't lose any data. Although the drive itself was unrecoverable, there was nothing on it which was unique, valuable, not backed up elsewhere, etc. The biggest issues for me were the cost of the new drive and the hassle of rebuilding the system.

After you get your data back, there are a number of possible options for backup of your irreplaceable data. But before you buy/implement a solution, you might want to consider the threats/hazards you want to protect your data from, and how a given solution will address each, and how you would recover your data after an incident. Besides media or electronics failure, head crash, etc., there is also the possibility of data loss to a destructive virus, theft of the computer (or external drive) itself, accidental damage (especially if we're talking about a laptop which is on the go with you), power line spikes, or fire.

I mention all this because one really easy solution that is now available is RAID. A RAID module contains at least two physical drives and can be configured to automatically "mirror" data between them, so if one drive fails, you still have all your data intact; all you have to do is replace the faulty drive and it's as if nothing happened. The problem is, it doesn't protect your data from most of the threats I just listed, and the RAID controller itself is a single point of failure. If you've been running a given RAID configuration for a long time (a few years), there may be problems finding a suitable match for a replacement drive if one should ever fail. It would be a ideal solution to prevent a recurrence of the problem you've encountered, but it might be wise to look at the bigger picture.

The safest solution is always to keep your valuable data backed up on a separate device/media. Backing up to DVD is one option, just be aware that it might not be a stable archive (very long term storage) medium. I've read about burned CDs/DVDs degrading over time (5 to 10 years) and becoming unreadable. Some people think spare hard drives are more trustworthy for long term data storage. A pain in the ass having to perform regular backups, but perhaps less trouble than losing valuable or irreplaceable data.

I think Nigel's approach is a good one - regularly rotate out drives while still early in their expected service life. I need to start doing that myself.

In reply to Message (47905)

O/T (I guess) External Hard drive problems! PLEASE HELP!

By wetlookstu - Tue 14/12/10 15:01:42 GMT

Website: twitter.com/wetlookstu

Hey guys,

Hope you don't mind me posting this. But I am in urgent need of your help and I would imagine some of you have had similar issues

I have a Western Digital harddrive (500gb) and have had it for about 4 years. On it is loads and loads of movies, music, photos, and of course, wetlook. Lots and lots of wetlook. God knows how much money is on there in terms of subscriptions to leon's sites, flaviu's pool parties, wetlook hunter, MostWet, streetsplash public etc etc.

Recently, the worst thing that could possibly happen happened...it died. But I dont know why. It seems like it just happened overnight with no prompting. Usually when you plug it in, it makes some initial whirring noises, then the light lights up and it begins to whir some more and kicks into life. But now all it does is make the initial whirring noise but then never comes to life.

So i'm stuck! Does anyone know what the problem is? Is stuff savable? What steps can i do? Some mates have said i should take it to PC World or something, but I'm a bit conscious of the fact i have downloaded films and wetlook on there - so I'm a bit worried about that.

I would be eternally grateful for any help you guys could give.

Thanks, here's hoping for good news

Stu

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