Trouble with portable hard drive

[pointguy36]

Hey Guys

I am assuming some of you have experienced a similar problem, so I thought I would ask your advice. . . My Passport 1TB portable hard drive started clicking the other day and now my computer will not recognize it when I plug it in. It contains over 700 GB of my porn collection. Is it gone forever?? Can I take to be fixed (seeing that it contains porn!!!)????

With the rapid pace that links are removed today, it will be almost impossible to replace the files. . .can anyone offer any suggestions?????

Thanks for your assistance!

 

[tonka]

My hard drive was clicking last week. I was able to copy it before it died.
People online suggest cold ( yes, in the fridge). It might give you enough function to make a copy.
I didn't actually try this, but it would havebeen my next step.

 

[pointguy36]

Has anyone had any luck taking their portable hard drive in to be fixed??? (Regardless of the content!)

 

[firekev]

Generally the repair process involves disassembling the drive and transferring the platters into another device to read off anything that can be salvaged. A friend looked at sending a drive off for repair and if I recall correctly it was somewhere between $500 and $1000 for the service. They will recover whatever is possible, but sometimes the platters are damaged and some files may be corrupted or missing.

The clicking sound is most likely the read/write heads not moving properly, so the data is probably intact. If you hear a high-pitched whining sound, that's usually one the heads making contact with the platter, and the data is probably destroyed at that point.

I have successfully recovered the most critical of data using Tonka's suggestion -- while on a business trip I removed the dying hard drive from my laptop and put it in the hotel room fridge for about 30 minutes. It gave me about 5-10 minutes of use when I reinstalled it. If you try this, keep in mind that you'll have to pick the most important stuff to recover because it will probably only work for a short amount of time, but you can go back-and-forth to the fridge a few times as needed.

 

[swallowmeinsf]

Clicking heads and a suggestion

I have had the clicking heads problem with various external drives in the past, especially Western Digital. Now using HP externals for three years without one single problem. They cleverly pre-install their software and drivers on the drive itself rather than on your main PC drive. It analyzes your system automatically and assigns itself an available drive letter. No installation discs, no OS conflicts etc. Just plug it in and you're up and running in about a minute. I also have an HP external Lightscribe DVD burner (built like a tank) and am super impressed with HP peripherals in general.

Just a suggestion for the future until that happy day when all storage is solid-state.

 

[gb2000ie]

The instant a disk starts to make any abnormal noises get your data off PRONTO - once that hardware starts to give it can go very quickly indeed.

Depending on how bad the damage is you may or may not be able to easily get the data back. Something you could try is SpinRite (http://refhide.com/?http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm $89 but a great tool to have in your toolkit) - it won't fix the hardware problems, but it MIGHT allow the disk to be read again temporarily.

If that doesn't work another old trick that I have seen work a few times is to freeze the disk and then try read the data off. Bear in mind that if you do that the disk MIGHT spin up ONCE, so as soon as it mounts, grab your data, because it is almost certain NEVER to spin up again.

After that you are talking about sending the disk away, and at that point you have two problems:
1) it will cost a LOT of money
2) depending on what country you are in you could end up in legal problems given the content of the disk.

Honestly, if it were my disk I'd try SpinRite, then try freezing it if that didn't work, then give up.

B.

 

[theo]

Buy GetDataBack! It should work, and saved one of my 2TB disks.

Be sure to get the right version (NTFS or FAT).

It will literally take days to recover the disk, but it is worth it.

You will need an empty new disk to move your recovery to.

Nothing beats saving music or p0rn that you may never have found again.

 

[reasek1]

It all depends on whether the hardware, the physical drive, is damaged, or just the file system / data on the drive. Sometimes, as some have said above, you can use data recovery programs that will scan through all the data on the drive and then copy movie files, images and doents to another drive.

If you plug an external hard drive into your computer, with luck, it will at least be recognized, and listed as 'external drive e', or 'removable disc f', even if the contents are inaccessible. A data recovery program might also then 'see' the external drive, and scan it for recoverable files. At least then you have some or all of your data back.

My advice is -how much of your personal time and effort is it worth to recover this data? I know it is your entire porn collection, but another option for you (that might be a lot of fun!) is just to start building a new collection and inevitably you will find a lot of videos or pics you had still out there on the internet and some new ones you will stumble across.

Good luck and I hope you find a good solution one way or the other.

 

[gb2000ie]

I had a ticking Western Digital of 500 Gigs, too ($100 in 2009).
Was unable to retrieve the files; so I left it in a drawer.
Recently, I reformatted it completely using a Windows 7 Pro system and now it's working like charm.

Lessons learned :
- never buy WD drives anymore. Just Google it: the ticking prob is always with WD
- I bought 2 x 2TB drives of different brands (Seagate + LaCie); a utility syncs the contents.

I would never send a drive full of male porn to repair anyway. So, if one disk fails I still have the other copy. Today you have networked USB disks ("NAS drives") for cheap, including with sophisticated password protection and encryption.

A.

OK - ALL drives die - that are mechanical devices - you can take ANY brand and stick them into Google and find lots of hits - WD are actually a very good drive manufacturer.

I just had a 3 month old 3TB Seagate fail - that does not mean all seagate drives are crap.

Be careful what inferences you draw from your limited experience, and remember that google is a confirmation bias generating machine!

As a counter example, I have owned two WD passports, as has a close friend, both of us have had both our drives for years, they just keep going and going despite being carried in our bags every day, in my case, one of them having fallen so hard the plastic cracked.

To anyone else reading this thread - don't read too much into the fact that a drive from a manufacturer broke, and remember that it is never a matter of if any particular drive will fail, but WHEN - so ALWAYS have a backup!

B.