dying hard drive

[caLLous]

I have a pretty old Maxtor Onetouch 300gb that's all of a sudden started misbehaving. It's throwing up crc errors and i/o device errors when I try to copy stuff off of it. But I can still access the files and play them (it's mostly music) and copy little files (sub 100kb) without any problems.

Now. I have an empty 1tb LaCie Big Disk sat here - all I want to do is get as much off of my dying hd onto the new one as possible before it finally pops it's clogs.

Is there any hope at all that this might work or shall I just take the Maxtor outside and bury it?

 

[Utini]

Bung it in the fridge in a sealed bag. When copying from it try turn it on its side and keep it as cool poss with a fan pointed at it or sommt. Then try do an image of it with an imaging tool of your choice. Best off going for that in 1 big hit before it goes kaput for good.

 

[Kryten]

I'd go with Utini's suggestion.

But, something that might be easier - if you have a Linux live CD/DVD or a linux installation you can use somewhere, it's less, er, whats the word "yucky" about file system issues than Windows is. Windows can throw its hands in the air and call your mother a slut when it sniffs a problem in a text file noone ever needs, ever. Linux however doesn't, and with the appropriate NTFS reading drivers (most distributions have this installed already), you should be able to rescue everything you need.

Some hints

1. Ubuntu LiveDVD is wonderful for this - easy to use if you've not familiar with it all and you can use it right off the DVD without installing anything.

2. Maxtor - they are very much the new IBM of dying hard drives. It may be worth checking over the drive with Powermax (downloadable from Maxtors website). It will probably tell you there is an electrical/mechanical issue, as many many maxtors are having at the moment. You can then arrange for a replacement to be gotton from Maxtor/whoever you bought it from. As shit as their drives are, their service dept. and the people that support it do a wonderful job and very quick too.

 

[Yaka]

Bung it in the fridge in a sealed bag. When copying from it try turn it on its side and keep it as cool poss with a fan pointed at it or sommt. Then try do an image of it with an imaging tool of your choice. Best off going for that in 1 big hit before it goes kaput for good.

might be worth opening the box if its out of warranty and using the hdd either via usb2 to ide cable or via your mobos ide/sata conn

 

[caLLous]

Hngh, well things seem to have gone from bad to worse.

I woke up yesterday and went to my PC (which is on all the time) to be faced with a black screen and no activity. I reset it and now it doesn't boot at all. It gets to the windows boot menu then just has a poo and refuses to go further.

Looks like I'm going to be reinstalling on Boxing Day...

BTW, it's not possible for a knackered hard drive to knacker another hard drive by spreading it's evil seed around my PC is it? I bought an 80gb WD Passport a couple of weeks ago and now it doesn't seem to be working. I'm *hoping* it's because I was running my laptop without AC power and it was powering the HD through the usb bus and it just cannae handle it?

Either way, I've bought another SATA hd (I figure I might as well just unplug everything and start from scratch, reinstall on a new hd and then add the old hard drives until something stops working...) and I'm taking my laptop charger home after work tonight so I can get it all working again.

 

[Yaka]

no it cant knacker it like that, stick the hdd in the fridge mate

 

[caLLous]

Oh yeah sorry, forgot to say I did that (with the maxtor, the original one that died). Is there a way of throttling the speed at which a file copies? I can think of a pretty long-winded way involving an ftp server but there must be some easier way. I've managed to copy quite a chunk of stuff over to the Lacie using my laptop but there's holes all over my mp3 collection.

Maybe if I slowed it down it would chill the fuck out and copy normally...

 

[caLLous]

OK. FS.

My power supply issue with the WD Passport seems to have been a complete fantasy because it just plain doesn't work. I plug it in and the little blue led comes on on the drive but it just sits there not being picked up by Windows.

It's only 2 weeks old. And I can't really return it because it has 'sensitive' information on it. Hngh.

Do you *really* need to use the 'safely remove hardware' thing to take external drives out? I've not used it many a time in the past without any problems - I just make sure nothing's using the drive beforehand but that's not hard because most of the externals are for archiving only.

 

[Tom]

Get Spinrite on it. Tiny little app, but very useful.

 

[caLLous]

The Passport is now working again. Well, I saw *working* - I had to hold it at a very specific angle and copy all of the crap off it as fast as was computationally possible but at least the data is safe now.

 

[Kryten]

For note - it's not going to be over 3 years old - go to maxtors site, go to the warranty bit of it, stick in the serial number and see if its still covered. If it is, get yourself a nice shiny new drive for the cost of postage. If not, tell me the serial number and Ill do it - need some more space

 

[caLLous]

I will do this when I get home Kryt - the 'maxtor being the new deathstar' thing really is true, I had an internal Maxtor die on me not so long ago. Over the past 4 years I must've gone through 6 or 7 deathstars (the 60GXP was the most 'fun' range that I remember) and I'm down to 2 or 3 Maxtor's atm, so Western Digital, LaCie and... ExcelStor (? something I picked up in Maplin in a hurry - it's a week old and I can almost feel it clicking already) is all I have left.

Thanks for the help peoples!

 

[Kryten]

No probs. Its unfortunate for Maxtor - they're not really bad drives, but they've just been hit with an electrical issue that's defining a bad patch for them at the moment At least they are aware of it and only too happy to help.