Reviving a Hard Drive

[myxpykalix]

I have a Maxtor 250 gig external harddrive that seems to have died. The power light is on but you can hear that the drive is not spinning. It has all my shopbot files on it and is the backup for the main drive. Any ideas on the best way to revive the drive or extract the data?
BTW- Best Buy has a SimpleTech 500 GIG HD on sale for $79.95

[jerry_stanek]

You can try putting the drive in a lock tight plastic bag and freeze over night as soon as you take it out plug it in and try to recover your files. Sometimes this works but as it warms up the drive will die again.

[steve4460]

Just do a serch for ( harddrive recovery services ) on the net and you will come up with lots of them . I heard that they can even get files of burned drives .
Good luck
Stephan www.windwardsigns.com (http://www.windwardsigns.com)

[Brady Watson]

Just carefully remove the cover with a torx driver after peeling off the label, and spin the platters by hand (spin from edge). I've done this many times before & it works every time provided that the problem is the motor.

Then Ghost or XCopy ASAP.

-B

[don]

Jack, I've some some computer techs do some amazing recoveries with this software.

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

[drodda]

I usually found that if you cool the drive then lightly tap on it you can get it going again long enough to recover any data on the drive. Have your new drive loaded and ready before even trying this recovery as you will need to get what you need as fast as you can.

I have had drives stick as you mentioned and once they free up they worked for some time, But I never pushed the envelope to see when it would fail again.

Good Luck!

-D

[cnc_works]

If it is an external, you should try it in another external drive enclosure to be sure the power supplied by the enclosure is OK. Or you could put it in your computer and drive it directly. Opening the hard drive itself is definitely a last gasp try because it is no good after that, whether you get your data from it or not. Even a half an hour in the freezer is often enough, though this process has only worked for me about 10% of the time. If the drive is not turning, no software is going to do you any good.

I would not buy the cheapest hard drive I could find because quality definitely varies. Find the best price you can get on a Western Digital or a Seagate. Maxtor is on the average OK, but is a lower grade drive with more of a chance to fail. This is one place where skimping is not a good idea. If you get a new enclosure be sure it is one with a built in cooling fan, and again, get quality. Data storage deserves the best.

20 years in the computer business.

Donn
Donn

[woodworx]

recovery services can run you 5K. Maybe a back up for a back up is necessary?

[myxpykalix]

All good suggestions I will try. I have had maxtor drives running 24/7 in my tivos for over 8 years now with no problem that was why i thought it would be ok. I guess its true what they say.."They don't make 'em like they used to"
thanks

[rcnewcomb]

Here is a reference on why this sometimes happens. Stiction Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiction#Hard_disk_drives)

BTW, when I used to work for Seagate and this happened we would just take the drive into our Class 100 Clean Room, open the drive, give it a spin, seal it up, and we were good to go.

[eric_schumacher]

Drive failures are expected. You have to plan for them. In creating a backup strategy do not use mirroring as your approach. You should always set up point in time snapshots and keep several. e.g. back up every day for a week so you have 7 rolling copies of your data. The reason for this is to avoid backing up corrupted data to your live backup mirror and destroying your data.

I recommend to everyone that they use network attached storage and implement RAID. RAID will allow you to swap a failed drive without data loss.

[fmihm]

An article from 2001 is:
http://www.hddrecovery.com.au/PDF/200ways.pdf

Note the caution about using these techniques for drives with capacities greater than 1GB!!!!! (What are the odds your drive is less than 1GB!)

[bcammack]

Eric,

With some RAID configurations you can swap a drive w/out data loss, but with others you are still toast.

I recommend that anyone contemplating a RAID configuration do a little research first on the differences between RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, etc.

[eric_schumacher]

Brett, Yes that is a true statement. I was being general so as not to be too overly technical.

You really can't go wrong with the netgear NAS offerings that run more than 2 drives. Even the HP Windows Home Servers could be adequate.

You want RAID 5 and if you are totally fanatical RAID 6. Look for NAS drives with 3 or more disks.

[larry_r]

Jack,
I had the same problem a couple of years ago. I removed the drive from the external case and put it in my computer as an internal HD. Worked and still does.

Larry

[myxpykalix]

That was going to be my next step because it is just DEAD! I tried the freezer thing but I need to verify that it is the drive and not some component in the external box keeping it from running.

[wmcghee]

What about laptop hard drives? I had one go out a year or so ago. Can you get a connector, say for a USB port and connect it up like that instead of having to take the good one out?

[cubicdissection]

No input on the revival issue, but for those of you who have mission critical part files stored on your PC, may I recommend carbonite.com? $50 a year unlimited encrypted OFF SITE backup. I have an account for my shop server and my home computers. For $100 a year, the place could burn down and I would retain the hundreds of hours I have spent on files. A steal if you ask me.

/no affiliation and all that...it's just good cheap insurance I wanted to pass on

[bcammack]

Good point, Eric.

Even if we disregard that particular service, the subject of meaningful, disciplined backup procedures is an important one, as is illustrated by this thread.

Whether an off-site service like carbonite.com, a commercial backup product, or one that comes with the operating system, it is important to make backups of your critical information.

I keep my drives partitioned into separate drive letters and dedicate each to a particular function, like programming, gaming, etc. Then I use a simple USB/IDE drive adapter (no enclosure) and just copy the entire contents of a particular drive letter onto a "naked" IDE harddrive. I keep them labeled and do a child-parent-grandparent rotation.

Others may prefer a different method. If you throw enough money at Symantec, you can use their Backup Exec software and their own off-site storage solution to completely automate the process so you never have to consider backups again. They just happen automagically.

[cubicdissection]

"If you throw enough money at Symantec, you can use their Backup Exec software and their own off-site storage solution to completely automate the process so you never have to consider backups again. They just happen automagically."

That's how Carbonite works - designate the directories you want backed up and it just happens in the background when your net connection is idle. Completely autmatic and transparent.

[bcammack]

Cool! I suspect that $50/client is waaayyy cheaper than Symantec.

[eric_schumacher]

Be cautious with things like carbonite. You are still only mirroring your data which can bite you. If you have a virus and it corrupts your files and then due to the corruption carbonite see's file changes and then uploads the files then you are stuck with no backup.

It's a good price and you may still be able to use it in a good way by replicating your files locally and then have carbonite sync them.

Another service is Amazon S3. You can use something like JungleDisk to treat the remote storage like a disk and use any backup software you have.

Lots of ways to skin this cat. The idea is to be on-line 24/7 and be able to endure drive failures and continue working.

Lots of text based files can compress very well so even just burning archive copies to DVD's and keeping them off-site is a good step.

[myxpykalix]

Brett,
My problem was that my backup was what died, not my main drive. What i did was saved all my creation files in a shopbot folder on my C drive. I used a microsoft program called SyncToy to copy all those files from my C drive to to my J drive which was the external drive. I figured the external drive which was only used for file storage would be safer than the main drive...NOT!
I started this thread by telling about a SimpleTech HD. Well that piece of junk lasted 2 days before it quit working on this computer. I took it back and took Don B advice and bought a Western Digital.

[mikeacg]

I use one computer in the house for designing my stuff and another out in the shop for running the bot. I use a USB drive to transport files out to the shop. I have 3 copies at all times that way and with the price of blank CDs these days, I write a copy of new files from all my computers (between the Graphics business and the Embroidery business I can fill a CD pretty fast) about once a week. I have been through plenty of drive crashes through the years and I don't want to do that again!

[bcondon]

My situation is similar to Michael. I have a design machine that everything is on and a control machine attached to the Bot.

I use a 8GB key to move tooling files from the design machine to the control machine.

Once a week, I drop a blank DVD into drive and back up my work area on the design machine. The DVD can handle something on the order of 4.5 GB. I start it at 9 or 10 in the evening and a shiny new disk is ready sometime overnight. It is dated, and put in the backup file folder in my files drawer. I found CDs bothersome because they are only 700MB and required a bit more work to stay organized unless you have "working on" directories that you only back up the latest stuff.

ANOTHER IMPORTANT POINT is that when you back up your files, take a look at you CD/DVD to make sure you can restore to you disk. I have known some very large companies to have 3 years of backups only to find that they were useless when they needed to restore.

My New Year's resolution is to stay organized in the important areas...

I have a file folder for each machine (design + control) with all the software and important papers. If I don't stay organized, then chaos theory will take over...

Large graphic libraries (such as the 3D lib from Vector 3D is on two DVDs. The total zip file size is 5.3 GB. They are in the file folder with the backups so I should never lose more than a week's work.

Does anyone use the large 500M -> 1Tera drives (notbooks)?

[mikeacg]

Good hint on checking the disk, Bob. We had a tape backup on our server at the office and faithfully changed the tape every morning. When we finally needed to use it, we couldn't read it! Fortunately we used a different tape for each day of the week so we just went back a day at a time until we found one we could use. We still had to rebuild some stuff but it was better than starting over from scratch!
Last fall I got a Western Digital My Book 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive from NewEgg ($129.00 and free shipping) to put on the graphics computer at the office. We had lots of stuff stored on disks and had to search any time we needed an old job but now we have everything at our fingertips. We love it! I'll be getting one for my computer very soon.

Mike

[scottgus]

Regarding backups: One thing I started with my home shop, and have convinced my boss to do (to his joy and satisfaction when he needed it), was to use Seagate/Maxtor's backup/restore programs (Seagate DiscWizard / Maxtor Maxblast). They are free versions of Acronis TrueImage backup software which work if you have a Seagate or Maxtor hard drive in your computer. I have had to switch and restore some failed hard drives using this arrangement, and it has worked every time. The advantage with this software, aside from its being free, is that it backs up not only the data but the operating system as well, allowing a complete, ready-to-boot system after the inevitable hard-drive crash. No hunting down the XP/Vista disks and all the install disks for your design software, it's all there, ready to go again. Works with USB external drives, too. Only caveat is that one of the drives in the backup operation (source or destination) must be a Seagate or Maxtor hard drive, if you're using the free software. The pay-for version from Acronis allows any hard drive manufacturer to be used.

(BTW I did some research on RAID - not the silver bullet for data protection it seems to be. RAID 0 isn't really data backup: it's just making the computer think two or more hard drives are really one hard drive. As mentioned earlier in this thread, if one drive in a mirrored RAID 1 setup gets corrupted data, then the other one does, too. RAID 5/6 allows for the computer to continue operating while a dead hard drive gets replaced. But there is a considerable increase in disk activity when a RAID 5/6 array of disks is being rebuilt, and the probability of another drive failure while the rebuild is happening increases. A RAID 5 array consisting of three drives can handle only one dead drive. The array is toast if another of the three drives dies while rebuilding. RAID 6 (four drives) can handle two drive failures, but the risk is still there. Best-case scenario is multiple independant backups.)

My data backup scheme is as follows. I bought 2 Seagate hard drives, 2 usb enclosures, and downloaded the free software from the Seagate website.

I connected the usb enclosures with the new Seagate drives to my computer, then installed and ran the free backup software. I also burned a copy of the free software's bootable restore CD. I made two backups of the entire system drive in my computer, then stored the backup usb drives in a safe place (best idea here would be two safe places, in case one drive gets lost, destroyed, etc.) The free software's limitation about one of the drives being Seagate/Maxtor is satisfied by the drive in the usb enclosure. I also can copy the data folders for the Shopbot using the typical Windows methods onto the two usb drives on a regular basis, so I have the operating system and all my data copied twice.

To restore (which I have done successfully), after reformatting or replacing the computer's hard drive, I re-connect one of the usb drives and run the bootable restore CD. Again, one of the drives in the restore operation must be a Seagate or Maxtor. Unlike the backup operation, where a usb-enclosed Seagate/Maxtor is OK, for the restore the required Seagate/Maxtor drive has to be directly connected to the IDE/SATA cable inside the computer. To continue using the usb-enclosures, this means the destination drive must be Seagate / Maxtor. This is a limitation I'm willing to live with, since I doubt Seagate, at least, is going to disappear any time soon. (The pay-for Acronis TrueImage software boot CD does not have this limitation, thus allowing a restore to any manufacturer's drive from any manufacturer's drive, usb or direct-connect. It also restores backups made by the free software).

I have switched out my home-shop design computer's hard drive successfully with this arrangement, and at work, two of our office computers suffering hard-drive crashes were back up and running, completely restored in a half an hour. Boss is happy.

Time spent doing backups (and making sure they can be restored) is time well spent.

[rb99]

I have HP removable hard drives in 2 of my computers. I have all my files etc. on the J drive. I copy it entirely over to the other PC so I have 2 copies.

What I want is complete ISO's of my computers so if it crashes I just pop in the backup drive and keep going...

I have also paid for different backup systems over the years and when I needed them they did not work.

I recently bought a USB backup drive and it had its own backup program and it did not work. When I ask the company they said they were working on it. Weeks later they sent me a new version of the software. I never used it.

I do have Acronus but have never used it.

RB

[myxpykalix]

The moral to my story was that I took the drive out of the external case and mounted it in my computer and it ran long enough for me to copy over all my files to my new 1 Terabyte drive then it just quit. I have to check the warranty on it but more than likely it will be used as a door stop soon.

[jerry_stanek]

I hope you don't have one of these terabyte drives made by Seagate SEAGATE'S FLAGSHIP desktop Barracuda 7200.11 drives, in particular the 1TB (ST31000340AS) units, are failing at an alarming rate and prompting outrage from their faithful customers.

[myxpykalix]

Jerry,
It is a Western Digital. Hopefully it will keep going for a while. Nothing seems to be made with quality and durability these days (other than a shopbot, that is!).

[foampro]

I have an external HD just for my basic storage. I keep important files on my laptop backed up using Carbonite.com. Automatic off-site backup. Had to use it once do to a virus. I got EVERYTHING back including the last emails. I also have Carbonite.com on all my other computers including my Shopbot computer. I would not be without it. If my shop burns down I will not lose my files.

Glen Kadelbach
www.innovativefoam.com