Just lost 1 TB of stuff.

[pffh]

AAAAAArgh I hate my external hard drive so much right now.

Right I have a 1TB WD external hard drive and apparently they can just decide out of nowhere to become useless pieces of plastic and metal :smallfurious:

*Calm calm* The problem seems to be that the computers don't see the drive anymore AND the drive tries to install drivers that it doesn't have AND it randomly doesn't gain power. I've tried everything and am going to contact the store I got it from tomorrow to see if they can maybe get some of my stuff back but... :smallfurious:

[Dr.Epic]

That's...odd. Best of luck sorting this out.

[ZombyWoof]

Sounds like the USB connector is the bad part. Which is fine. Don't plug it in anymore though or you WILL lose the data just by being rough with the damn thing. The best option is to take it apart and pull out the HDD. If you've got a local Best Buy the Geek Squad can do it for $100 if it's worth that to you.

[pffh]

Sounds like the USB connector is the bad part. Which is fine. Don't plug it in anymore though or you WILL lose the data just by being rough with the damn thing. The best option is to take it apart and pull out the HDD. If you've got a local Best Buy the Geek Squad can do it for $100 if it's worth that to you.

Don't have any best buys here but we have some geeky computer stores and if they can't figure it out I'll try ripping it out and jamming it into my desktop to see if I can access it that way.

[Sir Enigma]

If it's something important, there are also companies that specialize in recovering data from things like this; just google for data recovery companies in your area.

[ZombyWoof]

Don't have any best buys here but we have some geeky computer stores and if they can't figure it out I'll try ripping it out and jamming it into my desktop to see if I can access it that way.
Yeah talk to them about it. They should be able to pull it from the casing easily.

[Trog]

Is this a MyBook? I gotta tell you those things are pretty dodgy. My dad had one and it crapped out on him in the first month. And there was one at work (my boss's idea of a secure back-up 9_9) which died. He bought another one to replace it >.< Due to my mistrust of said beast when it died we only lost a minimal amount of stuff, thankfully. Ah well, that certainly does suck. I still have one here at home (also a 1 TB one which I got on sale ridiculously cheap) but it's a true back up, meaning that whatever is on that drive is also located somewhere else. Redundancy is my friend.

Hope you can revive it somehow. Best of luck to you!

[tyckspoon]

Yup. Hard drives do that. If you're lucky, it's just the external connector going bad, so as mentioned you can probably grab an appropriate screwdriver, deconstruct the shell, and do something with the actual drive. If you're unlucky, it's just gone. Anything truly important to you needs to be backed up on a separate drive or otherwise available to be re-acquired- hard drives are not permanent. I'm pretty sure they're actually the piece of hardware that fails most often, aside from maybe aggressively overclocked CPUs.

[Flame of Anor]

Don't have any best buys here but we have some geeky computer stores and if they can't figure it out I'll try ripping it out and jamming it into my desktop to see if I can access it that way.

Be careful with that. Those are precision pieces of equipment.

[factotum]

Anything truly important to you needs to be backed up on a separate drive

QFT. Hard drive failures are Nature's way of telling you to take backups!

[drakir_nosslin]

Another easy way of trying to backup data from failed computers and external hard drives is to buy an external hard drive docking station (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112). I bought one a few years ago and I've used it several times. As soon as something starts behaving strangely I take out the HDD and use the docking station to copy everything that I want to keep. Then I can put it back together and start experimenting.
However, I still have a double backup of certain folders at home, once to my server and once to an online server park that I rent space at. Very reliable system, if one of them goes down you just use the other to restore it.

Oh, and that docking station that I linked was overpriced, you can find something cheaper, but I didn't have the time. :smallwink:

[Phishfood]

Yup. Hard drives do that. If you're lucky, it's just the external connector going bad, so as mentioned you can probably grab an appropriate screwdriver, deconstruct the shell, and do something with the actual drive. If you're unlucky, it's just gone. Anything truly important to you needs to be backed up on a separate drive or otherwise available to be re-acquired- hard drives are not permanent. I'm pretty sure they're actually the piece of hardware that fails most often, aside from maybe aggressively overclocked CPUs.

General wisdom on servers is to replace the hard drives every 3 years and thats enterprise grade SCSI drives with an estimated lifespan in the centuries.

As others have said, it should be an easy job to unscrew the casing and extract the hard drive. USB drives are just standard PC or laptop harddrives with a USB case around them. You should either be able to plug the drive directly into your desktop and retrieve your data or you can pick up something like this little baby (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/peripherals/357292/startech-external-dual-hard-drive-dock) that we use to save drives.

I don't put much weight on this, I've never tested it but some people have suggested carefully freezing hard drives can help with some problems. I'd call it a very much last resort though.

[OoTLink]

These devices always seem to become of no use at the most inopportune times. I have an insufficient hard drive in one of my towers and an external that is annoyingly on its last leg too. :(

Oh and the drive in my new tower is a 40gb .. can you imagine.. 40gb?! It's noisy too!

[Flame of Anor]

Oh and the drive in my new tower is a 40gb .. can you imagine.. 40gb?! It's noisy too!

:haley: "Tee hee, it's so tiny!"

[Drascin]

QFT. Hard drive failures are Nature's way of telling you to take backups!

Problem being, generally externals are already the drives used to backup old, not used much already data. So we have to make backups of old data backups (insert "yo dawg" joke here). Which feels like aggressively wasting money until one explodes, hence why a lot of people don't do it. I honestly can understand the feeling.

[factotum]

Problem being, generally externals are already the drives used to backup old, not used much already data.

I use an external drive purely for backups--I would rather purchase a larger internal drive if I was running out of space on my PC! Simple fact is, if you have any data that is only in a single location with no backups, you clearly don't care if you lose that data. If you *do* care about losing that data, you back it up!

[Phishfood]

I use an external drive purely for backups--I would rather purchase a larger internal drive if I was running out of space on my PC! Simple fact is, if you have any data that is only in a single location with no backups, you clearly don't care if you lose that data. If you *do* care about losing that data, you back it up!


Amen. I remember when I was working on my dissertation. I had a copy on the biology department server, one on the IT department server, one on a USB drive, one in my e-mail and 2 on my own PC. Version control was difficult, but no way was I loosing a 300 page document to anything less than global nuclear war.

[Renegade Paladin]

Backups of your backups. I learned that the hard way. I have an external drive with automated backup software dedicated purely to mirroring my internal drive, and online backups of my important files on top of that.

[pffh]

Yay it's still under warranty and as we speak the tech guys are working their arcane magic on it. :smallsmile:

Also yeah backups of backups fortunately nothing important was on the drive and I just ordered another 1tb drive (samsung g22 for anyone interested) as a second backup.

[The_Ditto]

Be careful with that. Those are precision pieces of equipment.

Yep ... be careful .. sure ... gotcha ... Precision (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMhdEp3SM_w) ...
:smalleek:

[pffh]

Yep ... be careful .. sure ... gotcha ... Precision (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMhdEp3SM_w) ...
:smalleek:

Looks pretty precise to me.

[Don Julio Anejo]

Amen. I remember when I was working on my dissertation. I had a copy on the biology department server, one on the IT department server, one on a USB drive, one in my e-mail and 2 on my own PC. Version control was difficult, but no way was I loosing a 300 page document to anything less than global nuclear war.
I find the best way to back up documents like this is to email them yourself every time you write something significant.

In addition to the normal flash drive and one or two computers, of course.

On topic: it's possible to recover data even from a hard drive someone took a hammer to. The only question is whether it's worth it because something like that costs in the thousands. But ripping out the hard drive itself is generally easy. All you have to do is.. rip it out.. (duh) and install it in some $20 housing.

[Lord Seth]

Is this a MyBook? I gotta tell you those things are pretty dodgy. My dad had one and it crapped out on him in the first month. And there was one at work (my boss's idea of a secure back-up 9_9) which died. He bought another one to replace it >.< Due to my mistrust of said beast when it died we only lost a minimal amount of stuff, thankfully. Ah well, that certainly does suck. I still have one here at home (also a 1 TB one which I got on sale ridiculously cheap) but it's a true back up, meaning that whatever is on that drive is also located somewhere else. Redundancy is my friend.I've got two MyBooks and, apart from when one of them for some reason seemed unrecognizable to my computer for a few hours until it later spontaneously started working perfectly again, I've had no problems with them. Heck, one fell off a table (okay, a fairly low coffee table, but still) and months later continues to work fine.

External hard drives are often luck of the draw, though, as every manufacturer is going to have a few that are duds. The best you can do is try to pick manufacturers that have a lower percentage of duds.
Backups of your backups. I learned that the hard way. I have an external drive with automated backup software dedicated purely to mirroring my internal drive, and online backups of my important files on top of that.Well you don't necessarily need backups of backups, the key thing is that critical data should be in more than one place at a time. So if a file is on your computer AND an external hard drive, then you're fine. But if you're moving it to the external hard drive because you want to delete it off your computer, then you want another external hard drive (or online backup).

[grimbold]

i send you many hugs
i will pray to the computer god for you

[OoTLink]

the key thing is that critical data should be in more than one place at a time

ON DIFFERENT HARD DRIVES please XD

[Phishfood]

ON DIFFERENT HARD DRIVES please XD

So, I shouldn't have snapped that hard drive in half and put the two pieces at opposite sides of the earth? oops.

[Flame of Anor]

So, I shouldn't have snapped that hard drive in half and put the two pieces at opposite sides of the earth? oops.

If you quantum-entangled them first you should be fine.

[Obrysii]

Just a remark on the person who mentioned data recovery companies: these do work.

They can recover data off of just about any damage. Hard drive was in a fire? That's OK. Underwater for a month? Cool.

Fell out of orbit when your shuttle exploded in reentry, hit the ocean at terminal velocity, and sat at the bottom of the ocean for a month or two before it was recovered? Not a problem.

(I'm not joking about the last one. A data recovery company was able to recover data off of a hard drive from Columbia when it blew up during reentry.)

[Lord Seth]

DriveSavers seems to be one of the best data recovery companies. I personally got my data restored at a more local one named Gillware, though. They did a great job and were (by the industry standards) fairly cheap, but did take a while to do it.

[Renegade Paladin]

Be ready to spend more than you would for a new computer if you do that, though. I have a couple of dead hard drives that I'm saving in case I ever win the lottery, but nothing on them is worth a combined $3000 or so. :smallsigh: