[Monolith]

Holy shit.

Right now, my Buffalo external portable hard drive has stopped working. I've tried it a few times and it makes a scratchy noise and the mac tells me that the drive cannot be read. I tried to get it to read on a friends laptop and it doesn't even give him a message prompt there. This is so so fucking stupid, but all of my work from last year is on it and now, with very little time to the end of my third year in architecture, I could have fucked myself up really really really badly. I know how stupid I am to have done this but with so little time in day to day life, I just haven't backed it up and worked solely off the external HD.

Please, if anybody is able to help me in any way with this, I will inscribe your name upon my tombstone.

Thanks,

Tom.

[slackline]

I had an external 3.5" HD die on me a year or so ago.  Turns out it was the power supply inside that was screwed.  Solved it by a touch of serendipity when Unclesomebody was passing on a spare casing he didn't need drive was fine inside.

But to start with, what format external HD is it? There are two sizes, 2.5" and 3.5".

If yours is 2.5" what length USB cable are you using, the one you've always used or a new (and quite possibly longer) one?  I ask because the smaller formats get their power from the USB cable and if you use a cable thats too long it might not be getting enough power through the cable (as it degrades over the length).

If its a 3.5" you could try taking the drive out and sticking it in a computer to see if it still works.

EDIT : Correcting typo.

[GCW]

Get a casing for it and try reading it with that.

[Lund]

So: if it makes a scratchy noise that probably means that it's got power - and it's trying to spin up.  So it's unlikely to be the power supply if it still does that.  Why it doesn't even spin up on your friend's laptop may be down to driver differences or the drive trying to protect itself.

It seems quite likely that either
- something has gone wrong with the motors - so the heads can't move and hence it won't work, or
- you've hit a head crash.

The latter is the most devastating.  Given that it's a portable unit, it's quite likely that is what you've done.  Not necessarily I guess, but that's the worst case situation.

If you agree that it's likely that... I wouldn't power it up again.  It'll be fucked now, and it's unlikely that anything you do now will fuck it much more, but you might be lucky.

As with life, there is some good news and some bad news.
- Good: Probably a good 99% of the data on your disk is recoverable.
- Bad: it's gonna cost you cash.

I have no idea how much it'll cost you, but you can ask I guess.  I'd do a fair bit of research though because from what I can see it's a rip-off minefield.

There's some more info here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/saving-data-a-head-crash,1044.html

[slackline]

So: if it makes a scratchy noise that probably means that it's got power - and it's trying to spin up.  So it's unlikely to be the power supply if it still does that.

I had a scratchy noise when trying to use a Western Digital 2.5" before.  Yes it was getting power, but not enough power.  Using a shorter cable was the solution in that instance.  Whether its the "same type of scratchy noise" I've obviously no idea.

Why it doesn't even spin up on your friend's laptop may be down to driver differences or the drive trying to protect itself.

Or that an even longer cable is being used so its getting even less power?

It seems quite likely that either
- something has gone wrong with the motors - so the heads can't move and hence it won't work, or
- you've hit a head crash.

The latter is the most devastating.  Given that it's a portable unit, it's quite likely that is what you've done.  Not necessarily I guess, but that's the worst case situation.

In light of this how do you use the external drive?  Does it sit on/under your desk and you plug it in when sitting doing work, or do you carry it around everywhere?  If the later do you recall dropping it recently at all.

[Lund]

If yours is 2.5" what length USB cable are you using, the one you've always used or a new (and quite possibly longer) one?  I ask because the smaller formats get their power from the USB cable and if you use a cable thats too long it might not be getting enough power through the cable (as it degrades over the length).

Oooh, SCIENCE time:

A portable drive suggests that you get a peak power draw of about 2.5W; at 5V that's 0.5A; USB cable is usually about 28 AWG for each line.

So at 2 feet of cable... you'll get a voltage drop of 2.6% or an end voltage of 4.87.  4 feet = 5.2%, 8 feet... etc.

Feck knows when it becomes important.

[GCW]

I would suspect when your entire house is full of cable.

[robertostallioni]

When they say the cost can quickly spiral to 4 figures I guess they don't mean £75.49?

[Monolith]

Guys,

Thanks so much for the replies and sorry for reply delay. I've ran around campus and called a friend with a Phd in computing science for help. He told me a lot of stuff and I then saw a friend in the department who had the same problem recently where the USB 'bridge' (?) was replaced for 12 quid and the drive functioned again. I noticed that the small input to the HD was slightly bent and I wonder if like Slack Line mentions, there is not enough power being drawn. A guy at our computing services has it now and in the morning is looking at it for me. He seemed very knowledgable and I told him under no circumstances to fuck with it in any way he's not sure. I'll just have to pay to get this back and pray that I can.

The bizzare thing is that I went from using it in one building, moving to the library with it disconnected and then it wouldnt boot. Of late, I've noticed that when I take any other USB object out and touch even lightly the connection to the HD, the drive ejects. This is making me think further that it might be a power supply/lack of issue and not a damaged disk. I hope so I really do.

Thanks again guys.

[Johnny Brown]

I had a serious hard drive failure a few years back, recovery required sourcing an identical working drive and swapping the disc. Idiot tax ran to about £470. If its making noise I suspect its not that bad though, mine - an IBM Deskstar aka Deathstar was totally dead. Apparently they sometimes make a clicking noise prior to dying, doesn't sound the same as your scratchy though.

One thing I discovered was the vast majority of data recovery firms who appear on google are not capable of doing hardware repair like this and just rely on software methods. You will likely be wasting your time using as they rely on mouth-breathers wiping their flash cards. Don't fill any forms online either you will be inundated with phone calls after your business. Mine ended up with these who did a very quick, professional, fucking expensive service - http://www.fields-data-recovery.co.uk/

[robertostallioni]

Anytime mono. 

Good luck.

[slackline]

Oooh, SCIENCE time:

A portable drive suggests that you get a peak power draw of about 2.5W; at 5V that's 0.5A; USB cable is usually about 28 AWG for each line.

So at 2 feet of cable... you'll get a voltage drop of 2.6% or an end voltage of 4.87.  4 feet = 5.2%, 8 feet... etc.

Feck knows when it becomes important.

When it doesn't provide the power the device requires! 

[Monolith]

So.. Liverpool University computing services couldn't do anything. Guy in the local laptop repair/data recovery place couldn't do anything. A friend recommended John at Cheadle Data Recovery. He was super helpful on the phone and I'm going to see him on Friday in Stockport for the diagnosis. The cost is fixed at £199 for basic recovery not requiring new componentry or £399 if it does.

I am a stupid stupid man.

[slackline]

Before you fork out it might be worth trying a different casing ( assuming is 3.5") as they only cost about~£15 which is considerably less than £2-400, and it really is a piece of piss to swap drives over between cases.

[Monolith]

I think it might be2.5 Slack.. It's this one

http://www.comet.co.uk/p/2.5-inch-Portable-Hard-Drive/buy-BUFFALO-HD-PV500U2-BK-2.5-inch-Portable-Hard-Drive/691062

It mentions on the Cheadle site not to open the casing but I know nothing about external drives.

I'm pretty bummed in every case with this scenario though as my final university critique is next Friday before which I need the drawings to work on/print out. The only option might be to stay awake for a week beginning from now.

[tomtom]

Just got in Mono, so my experience of similar matters...
I doused my laptop and HDD with tea 3 years ago, and paid c.£250 to get the data off it. It was dead, no power or scratchyness or nowt. They were really efficient, and provided me with a replacement HDD with all my data on it, as well as an ftp to all the data online (whilst the HDD was being posted out to me). I can't remember the name of the company, but if it turns out you need it then I can scour some email archives.
Since then I have subscribed to online back up services (previously carbonite.com and now mozy.com) so its all idiot proofed (because I am an idiot!).
Best of luck - a GOOD company will (at worst case) be able to take apart the drive and get data off the platters (as I understand it) so all should not be lost...
Tom

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

So.. Liverpool University computing services couldn't do anything. Guy in the local laptop repair/data recovery place couldn't do anything. A friend recommended John at Cheadle Data Recovery. He was super helpful on the phone and I'm going to see him on Friday in Stockport for the diagnosis. The cost is fixed at £199 for basic recovery not requiring new componentry or £399 if it does.

I am a stupid stupid man.

Did either of those people take the the drive out of the case? It's pretty easy to do on most portable drives. A colleagues drive died recently and I opened it up and tested the drive to see if it was totally dead. Depending on who makes the internal drive (it isn't Buffalo) you can reasonably easily run a few checks. If you have a newish desktop machine with SATA connections its pretty easy to drop the drive in, and if it doesn't appear run some diagnostics on it.

The one I tested was Hitachi and you can download their tools from http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/

The health check tool creates a bootable CD which runs some basic checks to see if the drive is responding at all. Unfortunately in my colleagues case it was not only dead but was also an encrypted drive so even if she paid £££ to recover the data it's likely it would be useless! Oh the joys of enforced data encryption!

Good luck with it. [goes off to back up own data...]

[Monolith]

I asked the guy not to do anything invasive to the drive so I'm wondering now whether he did open it or not. In any case, I have a good friend on my course from Hong Kong who seems very confident that we can do something such as you mention in the morning. I think he made a microchip or something when he was 4 so I trust him with his advice.

Although I'm sure I sound dramatic about this, I don't think I'm actually conveying how dramatic this is for me. I told my head of year earlier whose response obviously ran along the lines of 'don't you have it backed up?' before some vague bollocking/sympathy/I don't know what the fuck it was. Needless to say, I wouldn't come to you if I had another copy of the data!

Thanks for all comments/advice as ever team. I love you like brothers and I hope something can be done.

[slackline]

Good luck, hope you get a solution soon, deadline of a week ain't far off.

[Monolith]

Amen. Here goes...

[Nibile]

beast good luck.

[Control freak]

Hope it all works out for you Monolith, but folks..... please BACK YOUR DATA UP!

Seriously guys - I hear this all too often. Small portable drives cost 2 tenths of fuck all these days. A backup schedule is so easy to set up - theres tools in windows and on MACs and also stacks of third party tools.

I have an external working drive which is backed up nightly to a RAID array using a command line backup util which is then scheduled using windows the scheduler. Set it up, leave your computer on and forget about it.

I also have another task which runs weekly which copies all the most important stuff to a 2.5 Inch portable drive of which I have 2. Every week I swap it over and take the newly backed up one to work and leave it in my draw. The logic being that even if we're burgled / have a fire, the most important information (tax docs, family photos etc) is all safe

It all sounds like a bit of a faf but once set up the only thing you need to do is swap a drive over once a week.

Theres also the cloud option of which there are a growing number but ideally you need an internet plan where your uploads arent counted and there is some way of sending them a hard copy in the first instance (uploading 300Gig of photos is gonna take some time....)
If its just a few docs tho something like MS skydrive works just fine

[Paul B]

The NAS drive thread might be of some use in conjunction with the above post. I haven't yet setup a major off-site backup, Flickr gets all of the photos I don't want to lose and Dropbox takes the documents.

[SA Chris]

Reading this has made my bum pucker at the thought of losing everything on my HDD. Might get another one to back it up.

[GCW]

In my video editing PC I have 3 drives!  Anal or what?!?