Topic: External HDD Failure - THIS SUCKS ASS!

[rabhan]

so, i have just recorded 7 shows on my laptop and transfered them to my maxtor 120gig usb 2.0 external drive. i also have converted all the 24/48 files to 16/44 and have tracked out and flac'd half the shows. last night i went to transfer over the show and after the files get moved, my laptop locks up(all of windows stops responding). upon reboot, windows locks up whenever i try to attached the drive. i tried it in both 2k and xp, i also tried it both in the pcmcia usb card and the usb port on board. when i unplug the device, windows becomes unlocked(it responds again). i believe that i got a power surge from one of my inverters in the car and it fried something in the box. i can hear the unit spin but i dont think it boots up properly. i guess can buy another hdd tomorrow to get me thru the rest of tour. and hopefully, i can send off this drive to maxtor to get it repaired and they can save the data. worse comes to worse, i do have DAT backups.

my jarma is completely blown here.

[Lee]

+T, that's a bitch... maybe the radiation from the aircard got to it!

[Simp-Dawg]

that does suck...definitely see what maxtor can do....did you get a warranty with it other than what is provided?  i say that because if there was a power surge and the drive was damaged, you might be shit outta luck on the factory warranty.  i know companies like dell don't warranty against a power surge, it's considered external damage, unless you purchase a special warranty.

in any case...worse comes to worst you can always try to remove the drive from the enclosure yourself and slave it up to your home pc to pull the data off....i'd be willing to bet the drive itself is still intact.  unless you've been travelling with it and it's been handled roughly.
some of those desktop external harddrives that aren't meant to be moved around can actually be very sensitive to any kind of shock and might get damaged if you travel with it.

sorry for your troubles but at least you've got dat backups!

[Joe w.]

sorry to hear it Jon. nice work on backing up though.

[nic]

word of advice, do as Simp-dawg says and try to back up the data first. Maxtor or WD or whatever the manufacturer will not even try to back up the data for you.

[Cooker]

another option if you hit a dead-end is a data recovery service, but they can be pretty expensive.

[nic]

data-recovery services are VERY expensive
last time I checked, a year ago, they ran roughly $1000 PER GB!

[rabhan]

i ripped the external hdd apart and tried to mount the drive into a desktop machine and the drive has some serious errors. the data is lost. luckily i put 2 shows on my music keg and can save those, but i lost 4 shows and i am now ripping them from the dat backups. the source is 140s > v3 > ua5 > d8 and they sound pretty damn nice actually. i might rip one or two from the shows which were v3 > laptop and see how much difference the A>Ds in the ua5 sound compared to the v3. and i am doing the conversion with my new R500 i got a few months ago. so far so good. it seems to like 90meters just fine.