UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
Aye, my mate knocked my last one of the desk whilst it was running, he paid for a new one, but getting all the data back was a pain.
Lacie or Seagate external desktop HDs
- Thread starter Firky
- Start date
Aye, my mate knocked my last one of the desk whilst it was running, he paid for a new one, but getting all the data back was a pain.
Soul On Ice
Well-Known Member
I bought a Western Digital MyBook 250 GB a two years ago and had no problems.
Following an internal disk drive failure about a year ago I bought a WD 500 GB to use as a backup. It worked fine for about 6 months and then it "all on its own" lost the data. No problem I thought - it's a backup drive so the original data is intact. I thought it best to reformat the drive and it only formatted to 200 GB despite it being a 500 GB drive.
Before Christmas I sent it back to WD under the warrenty - and I'm still waiting for it to be returned over 6 weeks later. Though according to the website tracking it is being processed to be sent back.
What I have learned is this:
- all hard drives fail at some point, ussually when you least expect it
- if you don't want to have grief, have a regular back up routine onto a seperate drive
- have a SPARE back up drive too cos back up drives can go funny too
- WD have decent drives but they sometimes go wrong - I guess this applies to all makes
Following an internal disk drive failure about a year ago I bought a WD 500 GB to use as a backup. It worked fine for about 6 months and then it "all on its own" lost the data. No problem I thought - it's a backup drive so the original data is intact. I thought it best to reformat the drive and it only formatted to 200 GB despite it being a 500 GB drive.
Before Christmas I sent it back to WD under the warrenty - and I'm still waiting for it to be returned over 6 weeks later. Though according to the website tracking it is being processed to be sent back.
What I have learned is this:
- all hard drives fail at some point, ussually when you least expect it
- if you don't want to have grief, have a regular back up routine onto a seperate drive
- have a SPARE back up drive too cos back up drives can go funny too
- WD have decent drives but they sometimes go wrong - I guess this applies to all makes
Structaural
in Chatsubo
Western Digital for me - I've had two failed Seagate drives in the last 6 months. WDs are standard in macpros btw.
e2a - install a S.M.A.R.T. checker too (this keeps an eye on the hardware to a certain extent)
e2a - install a S.M.A.R.T. checker too (this keeps an eye on the hardware to a certain extent)
Lazy Llama
Suburban robots that monitor reality
Most USB and network drives won't report SMART status properly though, so you might not see much useful information for non-internal disks.
Structaural
in Chatsubo
oh really? Scratch that then.
Lazy Llama
Suburban robots that monitor reality
Sadly not, would be useful if they did as external drives often end up getting moved around more and are more likely to give problems.
System Profiler said:
dogmatique
merde alors
Well, the new power supply arrived, and works beautifully - until that is, I plug it into the LaCie Big Drive. Then the light goes out.
So... Two months out of warranty, and the drive is useless. That's a year's tv and movies. Thankfully nothing too personal that I can remember - no pictures were saved on that drive, and no music either, just lots and lots of video and every game released last year that I downloaded.
Send it back to LaCie you say! Well, sounds good, as I suspect it's a problem with the logic board / power supply within the enclosure - I defragged the drives last week and they seemed healthy enough. Just wish I'd moved the data off. Unfortunately, LaCie make a point of noting on their support site that if you return a drive to be fixed, they will wipe the drives regardless. Which makes returning it pointless.
The cheapest solution if I was that bothered I suppose would be to buy another Big Drive, take out the drives from that, and put in the ones from the old one. Which would be an obvious gamble, as there is no way of telling if it really is the unit rather than the drives as assumed.
Lesson learned? Never ever buy an external drive that has two drives striped to raid 0.
I've had a Maxtor external drive fail on me before, but nothing was lost as it was just the enclosure that went. This one? next to impossible to fix without the data being lost.
So... Two months out of warranty, and the drive is useless. That's a year's tv and movies. Thankfully nothing too personal that I can remember - no pictures were saved on that drive, and no music either, just lots and lots of video and every game released last year that I downloaded.
Send it back to LaCie you say! Well, sounds good, as I suspect it's a problem with the logic board / power supply within the enclosure - I defragged the drives last week and they seemed healthy enough. Just wish I'd moved the data off. Unfortunately, LaCie make a point of noting on their support site that if you return a drive to be fixed, they will wipe the drives regardless. Which makes returning it pointless.
The cheapest solution if I was that bothered I suppose would be to buy another Big Drive, take out the drives from that, and put in the ones from the old one. Which would be an obvious gamble, as there is no way of telling if it really is the unit rather than the drives as assumed.
Lesson learned? Never ever buy an external drive that has two drives striped to raid 0.
I've had a Maxtor external drive fail on me before, but nothing was lost as it was just the enclosure that went. This one? next to impossible to fix without the data being lost.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
Could you take the drives out and try putting them in your machine to get the data back?
dogmatique
merde alors
Yep, could do if they weren't striped to raid 0. If you can do that, I'd be interested to know how!
Bob_the_lost
Elsewhere
I think it's been tried before, storagereview forums.
dogmatique
merde alors
Cheers. Searching, but only finding woes at the mo.
Mostly I'm just kicking myself for not moving the data at the end of last week when I knew there was a problem, and just defragged the drive without moving everything.
EDIT: Signed up and posted a thread - waiting to see if anyone bites.
Mostly I'm just kicking myself for not moving the data at the end of last week when I knew there was a problem, and just defragged the drive without moving everything.
EDIT: Signed up and posted a thread - waiting to see if anyone bites.
nellyphant
visitor from Dimension X
I'd vote for a WD MyBook.
Same here, very good external hard drives...
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=347
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