I have a maxtor onetouch ii external hard drive, which contains an ATA 133 500gb 3.5" hard drive. It started not coming out of sleep mode a couple weeks ago, and I've backed up some of my data before it failed, however, it started clicking tonight and it won't recognize in windows. I need this drive back because the info on it would be difficult and very time consuming to recover. The drive powers up, the hard drive spins, but then it starts to click. I've never cracked open a drive, but if it would be easy, i'd do it or pay someone else to do it. I swear to the gods of technology that if i can get this drive fixed, i'll go buy a raid nas and a couple hard drives, but if anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

Clicking hard drives are a bad thing. The drive is getting ready to fail (or already has)

You're not going to be able to repair the drive yourself and it will cost significantly more to repair/retrieve data than it will to just buy a new drive

I plan on getting a new drive ASAP, but the pictures and stuff are worth the repair costs. what kind of $$ are we looking at, and where's a good place to get this done at?

Try this old time tech trick.....

Since it's an external drive, that makes things a little easier.

Put it in a plastic bag that can be sealed, then stick it in the freezer overnight.

In the morning, hook it on your system, then copy as fast as you can.

You may have to do this several times to get everything, so keep track of what you've already copied off, so you don't need to repeat.

Another option would be to get a cable long enough that you can leave it in the freezer while copying.

Minimum of $1,000. Possibly as high as $5-$10k.

One of these days people will start listening to backups BEFORE these things happen.

hey, i have some of the stuff backed up.

Ok, have you actually done this yourself before? If so, how long do you have before it fails again? All I need is about 10 minutes worth of copying.

Also,


Should i boot with a linux live cd or go with windows to copy? What do you guys know about carbonite? My dad uses it and likes it, but i'm just a little leary of 3rd party backup solutions (not that I have anything to hide, but i just want my stuff for me and nobody else).

I hear good things about Mozy...

just another thought... will i have success if i take the hard drive out and plug it directly into an ide slot in a desktop computer to copy the info? Maybe the usb box isn't reading the hard drive because it's partially broken. Any chance I could take this to a neighbor's, or am i just getting my hopes up?

Yep, done it. Actually made an ice bath for it since it was an internal drive. 10 minutes might do it if you freeze it overnight.


Doubt it since you said it was clicking.

2 hours in the fridge and it's not clicking anymore. it sounds normal, but it's just not being recognized in windows.

Try leaving it in there for a while so it gets good and frozen.

I think this isn't the case, but I have visions of you guys snickering at your computers as you tell him to put his hard drive in his freezer.

People have thought it was a joke, but it works.

I thought the same thing...a simple search shows it does work! This guy got 20 mins after a 24hr freeze.

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/f...cover-data.html

Maybe try putting it in some doors??



Sorry, couldn't resist. We were talking about trying freezers and windows before. Thought I'd throw out that idea.

It's fried. I have my pictures that were last updated before christmas, and i've got all of my mp3s, which i recovered off of my ipod, and I have all of my programs backed up on cd or dvd somewhere. If I had nothing, or didn't have all of my mp3s, paying to have this thing repaired would be an option. it's just not now. I'll go buy a nice new external hard drive and pay for mozy or something.

I use Mozy and like it quite a bit. I paid roughly $100 for 2 years of service.

Keep in mind that it'll take a month or so for you to upload all of your data, assuming you have a fair amount (I had about 80G if I recall). I was a bit worried that Comcast would cut my service for constantly uploading, but they didn't so that's good

Jack - what is the theory behind this?

My guess would be having something to do with thermal expansion

The internal components are lined up and attuned precisely before sealing the drive. If something inside becomes misaligned, freezing the drive will cause the components to contract and move back to their original locations

I only ended up backing up about 15 GB of stuff to start - took about 4-5 days to get everything uploaded and encoded. I only did the documents, pictures/videos, but not all my music (only stuff I've bought or burned "legally" - didn't put think putting the Napster to Go songs on the server were necessary, since they are already on the mp3 player and on the Napster server.)

I might add some more stuff when I have some time to go through the computer and figure out if I am forgetting to back up anything irreplaceable.

dev pretty much gave a good reason. Also Nervous Guy provided this link earlier.

Just a little FYI, mozy is taking forever!! i'm at 3.3% and it's been running continuously since yesterday at 4:30pm

Likely depends on your ISP - file transfers (especially residential to commercial) are limited by a number of factors, but the #1 is usually the sending connection's upload speed.

Thanks. I clicked the link, but didn't read it carefully enough.

it's roadrunner, not me. I can live with 20 days to update everything. I just hope that when i attach my network drive that mozy will back that up too. I think i can just set it up as a local drive in windows and it will do it just fine.

Mozy doesn't backup network devices -- you'll have to attach it locally.

I'm in the process of building a NAS server (probably using FreeNAS), so I'm going to try using iSCSI to make it look local on my PC - not sure if that's going to work or not though and I have to read through other limitations. But if you just "map network drive," Mozy won't back that up.

the device i bought has a usb connection, so i can view it locally...

I think connecting it that way would work - just not over the network.

My old usb hard drive (the subject of this thread) was viewed as an internal hard drive, so hopefully this thing will do the same. I'll let you know on monday (unless ups delivers on sunday... I can't remember)

Fez, quick question re: Mozy - I signed up a couple weeks ago, got all my stuff backed up online, and yesterday I reorganized some of my picture folders (folders that were originally backed up and maintained on the Mozy server.) When Mozy ran its automatic backup last night it not only ignored those folders in their new location (and a few others) during the backup (even though it was still in my "Pictures" folder, which was selected to always be fully backed up) it apparently deleted the original folders from the server. So once I figured out what happened and went into the Mozy configuration page and re-checked the boxes, it took nearly 8 hours to re-upload pictures that had already been on the server. So the question(s) are: Can't Mozy just update the file location address instead of deleting and re-uploading? Or am I going to be stuck re-uploading files every time I move something?

Holy crap... I'm in love with my new hard drive setup


I bought 3 things

1) a linksys gigabit switch with 8 ports
2) a WD 500gb sata hard drive
3) a d-link 323 gigabit nas, which has an itunes server, media server, ftp server, and local file server, as well as a usb print server.


This thing is beyond awesome. Since its gigabit, it's running at over 2x the speed of my old usb drive. I've got all of my pictures back due to some hard work from my family and a backup. I've got mostly all of my source cd copies back. I'm pretty much good to go. And yes, fez, I've got redundant backups going. All of my mp3s are backed up on the new hard drive, my computer, and a spare sata drive that i had laying around. I'm using mozy, and after I get my next paycheck, i'll decide if i want to get a matching 500gb hard drive for a raid 1 setup or if i want to blow the bank on two 1TB hard drives for the raid 1. I've got my mojo back!

Not sure why it wouldn't backup the pictures after you move them -- that's kinda strange...

As for the backup itself -- when you moved the files, they should still be on the Mozy server. I've tested in this past and it works fine. If a file is gone for over 30 days (?), Mozy deletes it from the server but that's it.

However, when you move a file, it does need to re-upload it. They might be able to add some intelligence into the process, but it's a hard problem to solve on a large scale, especially since characteristics of the file do change when you move it to a new folder. It's easier to just back it up again so that you don't miss it. Not sure why it didn't do that automatically though, that's weird.

Thanks. Like you, I was more surprised that it selectively skipped folders that were in a folder where everything is backed up by default. As for moving the files and the characteristics changing - that makes sense, guess I'll just have to spread out how much re-organizing I do.

Supposedly... the reason the freezing works is because most drives fail due to head crashes, the read/write head makes contact with the media platter and is stuck there. Freezing makes everything contract and the head gets unstuck from the platter until it warms up and touches down again. It's a microscopic gap between the read/write heads and the spinning platter, so it doesn't take much to cause a crash. The technology has just improved over the years such that the drives are much more reliable.