Help w/external harddrive crash?

[CTU2fan]

OK, 2 things I've learned...1, back up your shows on data discs, and 2, when you go to Dublin to see U2, don't leave your firewire drive on because if it overheats, you're screwed Anyway, I'm hoping I can salvage the data and/or the drive. It's a LaCie firewire drive, 250gb...pretty sure the actual drive inside the case is a Maxtor drive. I'm running XP, SP2. Windows says I need to format the drive when I try to access it. Mechanically, I'm 99% sure the drive is sound; it seems to spin OK etc, so the usual freeze/strike/shake suggestions really don't apply here. I'm wondering how I can access the drive without formatting it & thus losing 300+ shows. Any help would be appreciated, either how to get around the problem or where to send it to recover the data.

[Ted]

To have data recovered is very expensive. Unless it's very valuable to you it's usually not worth it. It couldn't hurt to get an estimate though. I've heard good things about THIS service.

I have a program that "may" be able to read it, but it would be a long shot considering what happened to your HD. I'd hate to have you mail it (and another empty one) for nothing, but I'd be willing to try it out. BTW, it's not one of those cheapo $50-60 "undelete" programs. It's a professional $1200 utility, but it doesn't "specialize" in data recovery. It just happens to be able to read disks a different way than Windows and Windows programs do.

If you're ambitious enough, you can try removing the internal drive and plugging it in as a slave and see if Windows will recognize it that way. I don't know much about how those firewire drives are made, so you may not be able to physically do it. I'd have to remove it too, in order to install it as a slave for this program to read it.

[TheMamba]

Originally Posted by CTU2fan

OK, 2 things I've learned...1, back up your shows on data discs, and 2, when you go to Dublin to see U2, don't leave your firewire drive on because if it overheats, you're screwed Anyway, I'm hoping I can salvage the data and/or the drive. It's a LaCie firewire drive, 250gb...pretty sure the actual drive inside the case is a Maxtor drive. I'm running XP, SP2. Windows says I need to format the drive when I try to access it. Mechanically, I'm 99% sure the drive is sound; it seems to spin OK etc, so the usual freeze/strike/shake suggestions really don't apply here. I'm wondering how I can access the drive without formatting it & thus losing 300+ shows. Any help would be appreciated, either how to get around the problem or where to send it to recover the data.

Check out Maxtor's (or LaCie) to see if they have any recovery utilities OR if they can offer any technical assistance.

It may be worthwhile to have your replacement hard drive ready just in case you CAN recover the data on the Maxtor drive - you'll want to be able to get it the hell off right away.

Ted's got some good ideas on data recovery too. All in all though, most of the data recovery stuff is hit or miss and there are no hard set rules that things will work.

I feel your pain - my main hard drive just started throwing off bad sectors and studdering my machine. Luckily this past weekend I had burned a bunch of shows to archive disks.

[CTU2fan]

Originally Posted by Ted

To have data recovered is very expensive. Unless it's very valuable to you it's usually not worth it. It couldn't hurt to get an estimate though. I've heard good things about THIS service.

I have a program that "may" be able to read it, but it would be a long shot considering what happened to your HD. I'd hate to have you mail it (and another empty one) for nothing, but I'd be willing to try it out. BTW, it's not one of those cheapo $50-60 "undelete" programs. It's a professional $1200 utility, but it doesn't "specialize" in <a href='http://consumeralertsystem.com/cas/zx-hclick.php?hid=73' target='_blank'>data recovery</a>. It just happens to be able to read disks a different way than Windows and Windows programs do.

If you're ambitious enough, you can try removing the internal drive and plugging it in as a slave and see if Windows will recognize it that way. I don't know much about how those firewire drives are made, so you may not be able to physically do it. I'd have to remove it too, in order to install it as a slave for this program to read it.

I think I might look into a quote for restoring it. I was thinking of plugging the drive in as a slave & seeing if that would work...that could be a trick though, I've already got a 2nd internal hd in there so I'd have to swap them I suppose. I'm actually sort of lucky, a bunch of the gigs on there I got in trade so I at least have those shows backed up.

[Five]

does anybody know of a prog which can test to see if a HD is beginning to die on a PC? A friend of mine on Linux told me he found a way to do it on that os but it would be nice to know how to check on PC because every HD eventually fails.

[Ted]

Originally Posted by CTU2fan

...so I'd have to swap them I suppose.

Yes, that's all you'd have to do. If on XP, nothing else should be necessary - just swap 'em and make sure the pins are ok. Make sure your jumper is set to SLAVE or CS (cable select).

Originally Posted by Five

does anybody know of a prog which can test to see if a HD is beginning to die on a PC? A friend of mine on Linux told me he found a way to do it on that os but it would be nice to know how to check on PC because every HD eventually fails.

There are many programs that can monitor drives and let you know what's what. Look for a S.M.A.R.T. drive monitor program. All HD's don't use this technology, so make sure your HD has this tech first. As far as I know, all of the newer drives use it. It's the older ones that don't. You should be able to go to the manufacturer's site to look up your HD model to see if it uses SMART. Sorry, but I can't recommend a good one. I don't use them. I have one that I've used a few times, but to be accurate, they should be running in the background all the time. I just don't like the extra resources being used, though it's not much anyway.

[Beleaguered]

Linux to the rescue...What to do when good disks go bad.

Five...Check out smartmontools. Developed for unix/linux systems, but reportedly runs on windows (although there's probably better tools available).

[Ted]

Beleaguered - are you saying Knoppix will be able to read a Windows file table or are you suggesting it for another purpose? I've heard very good things about Knoppix, but thought it was Linux only. If it'll read Windows, I'll be adding it to my repertoire of useful stuff. I've been putting off burning it because I don't do Linux yet. One day I'll see the light, though.

Thanks.

[Five]

thanks guys. I don't really want to have another process added to my list, so I'm not too keen on SMART yet. A friend of mine has used a linux tool which must be smartmontools but he told me it wasn't available for windows... great to hear there's a windows version I'll have to try it out to see if it works properly.

[Ted]

You don't have to run it constantly. It keeps a history to be able to get a better "guess" as to when the HD will fail based on the many attributes it keeps track of. I'm guessing it'll only be slightly more accurate and that if anything, it may show an estimated time to fail of later than it actually is (probably not by much), but then that's better than not having any idea at all. I keep weekly backups so I don't really care if a HD goes suddenly. That's another reason why I don't use the program. Try downloading a trial version and see how it works for you. It may change your mind.

[cmaz]

This was posted in the Reggae_Lossless_Traders group just today. i can't vouch for the program other than that this guy was successful. Don't know if it will work in your specific instance, but it might be worth a look.

100% (of the 167 Gigs) Recovered! I wanted to pass this little note
along in case anyone in the group ever experiences the sort of
corruption that I experienced. Here's what I did:

I hooked up my drive to my computer running Fedora Core 4 Linux by
Redhat, and attempted to mount the NTFS drive so I could access it
through Linux. I followed the easy-to-follow instructions located
here: http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/instructions.html. By
following the "Which RPM" part of the instructions, I was able to
figure out which RPM to download. Then, I continued on through the
"Install" part of the instructions. BUT, that didn't work. However,
from the error messages I received in syslog (type 'dmesg | tail' to
see the most recent syslog messages) I was able to determine that the
problem with the drive was that the boot sector and partition table
were corrupt.

So...I moved on to plan B. Which, in fact...I didn't really have a
plan B (actually...trying to mount it in Linux was plan B) so I went
straight to Google. After about 30 minutes searching on Google...I
came across a forum post after doing a search for "How to repair a
primary boot sector on an ntfs drive that has been corrupted." In the
forum post chain, two different people mentioned a piece of software
called 'getdataback' by runtime software. At first, I thought it was
some kind of advertisement that was posted by someone that had a
vested interest in runtime software, the company. But, I had nothing
to lose, so I checked it out at http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm.

I downloaded the trial for 'GetDataBack for NTFS v2.31' and gave it a
run. It's probably a good thing to mention that I did this on Windows
XP SP1a, and I made sure to disconnect all of my other hard drives
except for the OS drive and the corrupt drive. That way, it was
easier to determine which one I needed to run the 'GetDataBack for
NTFS' scan on. It only took a little over an hour to scan (sector by
sector) the entire 250 Gig capacity corrupt drive. After the scan
was complete I clicked the 'Next' button and was suprised to find my
entire folder structure had been reconstructed by 'GetDataBack for
NTFS'. The catch was that I had to purchase the software for $79 in
order to be able to save all the data off onto another drive. I
figured that was WAY better than paying a data recovery company
anywhere from $500 to $1500 to recover my data (probably by using the
same method and software I was using). So, I bought it and was able
to enter the registration code without having to rescan the drive. In
fact, 'GetDataBack for NTFS' has an option to Save what's called a
'Recovery Scan'. So, I did actually save my scan and was able to
close out the program and then start it back up and continue from Step
5 (which is the Recovery step). That's quite a nice feature.

So, from there...I attached an external 250 Gig drive and then right
clicked on the Main folder named '[NTFS]' and selected 'Copy...' and
then navigated to the root of the external drive and viola. I went to
sleep at about 2:30 and then woke up at about 5:30 or 6:00 and it was
already finished recovering all 167 Gigs of data. I was even able to
resume the torrents that had been downloading at the time of
corruption.

Damn! I am thoroughly impressed with GetDataBack for NTFS v2.31! In
fact, I downloaded about 4 other pieces of software by Runtime
Software. I haven't tried them out yet, but I definitely will soon.

I hope this email helps the next person that unfortunately finds
himself/herself in this position.

Cheers,
Dave

[Beleaguered]

Originally Posted by Ted

Beleaguered - are you saying Knoppix will be able to read a Windows file table or are you suggesting it for another purpose? I've heard very good things about Knoppix, but thought it was Linux only. If it'll read Windows, I'll be adding it to my repertoire of useful stuff. I've been putting off burning it because I don't do Linux yet. One day I'll see the light, though.

Thanks.

Linux has long had support for reading & writing fat/fat32 formatted drives and more recently there is read only support for ntfs formatted drives. And, Knoppix is Linux, it's just a distribution that boots from CD. It's great tool for emergencies and it's an easy start to Linux for n00bs.

[Ted]

Originally Posted by Beleaguered

Linux has long had support for reading & writing fat/fat32 formatted drives and more recently there is read only support for ntfs formatted drives. And, Knoppix is Linux, it's just a distribution that boots from CD. It's great tool for emergencies and it's an easy start to Linux for n00bs.

You know what? Now that you mention it, I knew that . I'm ot used to thinking in terms of Linux, so I must have stored that bit of info in some dark corner of my brain (one of the many). I doubt that I'd start with Knoppix when learning though. I'll probably dive right in and format a drive and start from scratch with full distro on a dual boot (Win/Linux) or maybe just setup a dedicated Linux box.

Thanks for the reply.

Time to burn that CD...