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04/05/2008 12:51:12 PM · #1 |
I just had a Maxtor 1TB go down on me, and I can't figure out what the hell is going on. The entire drive intermittently disappears from my computer, both laptop and desktop. When it is visible and accessible, there are a couple of folders that I cannot get into...one of them being my Clients (yeah, all of them) folder. I have tried different cables, different computers and different power supplies, and nothing changes it. Right now, I am running a data recovery program on it, and it still does the same thing. It will transfer about 50 gigs, then everything is lost again until I shut it down and restart again. Any ideas on what would be causing this, or a simpler way to remedy the issue? How about (more) quickly recover the data? There's about 720 gigs that I have to get to...somehow.
And while we are on the subject, what is a more reliable brand of external backup systems? I am looking on BH right now at a 4 TB buffalo system. Anyone have any experience with those?
Thanks in advance for the help.
E
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04/05/2008 12:54:06 PM · #2 |
I would think you might have some USB issues, except that you tried it on another computer. You could remove the drive from it's case and put it inside the computer, on the IDE or SATA connector. That woudl enable you to at least access it, unless it is the drive itself that is at fault.
Message edited by author 2008-04-05 12:54:55.
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04/05/2008 12:54:14 PM · #3 |
| I had a friend experience the same problem recently on her external drive.... I'll ask her how she fixed it Had to do with some setting that got switched. |
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04/05/2008 01:01:00 PM · #4 |
ou should try to add it into your big machine as a slave drive or on a spare sata and see if the drive can be accessed but in my experience MAXTOR are very famous for going down without warning, steer clear of them in future it's a bad company IMHO I prefer western digital or at a push SEAGATE. I feel your pain If all else fails you can try putting it in the freezer for a few hours then trying again, it works sometimes
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04/05/2008 02:50:29 PM · #5 |
Are you running Vista?
There are some issues in Vista which manifest as you describe. If so, try plugging into an XP machine. If not, well ... never mind. |
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04/05/2008 05:40:35 PM · #6 |
Thanks for the ideas guys. Still haven't got a full grasp on whatever is acting up. I am on XP still, and that's on both machines. I have a Seagate recovery program running right now, trying to get the files out. I think its working. From there, I guess its 720 gigs of copying to another drive.
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04/05/2008 09:36:42 PM · #7 |
| As for the question as to which external drive is the most reliable I would say trust none of them. Instead of a 4 TB drive why don't you run two 2 drives, one working and one backup. That way the chance that both would fail at the same time is pretty small. Two externals with one backing up the other is cheaper than a RAID system. |
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04/06/2008 08:39:08 AM · #8 |
Originally posted by jbsmithana:
As for the question as to which external drive is the most reliable I would say trust none of them. Instead of a 4 TB drive why don't you run two 2 drives, one working and one backup. That way the chance that both would fail at the same time is pretty small. Two externals with one backing up the other is cheaper than a RAID system. |
And I do run similar to that now, but I am terrible at remembering to back things up redundantly. And you are right, trust none of them. LEsson learned.
E
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04/06/2008 08:56:34 AM · #9 |
For the backup system I use an external network storage device with 2 SATA discs in RAID setup to auto backup across the 2 drives. It cost me about £200 for the unit and 2 500Gb drives to go in it which isn't a huge anmount more then 2 USB external drives.
Then if either of the drives fail you get a warning and then just replace the failed drive and it automatically copies everything over to the new disc.
The other good advantage is that if you use hard drives as an archive system then you can just remove and replace the drives when you're ready to archive.
I'm definitly happy with my system over the old USB system I had before |
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04/06/2008 09:04:15 AM · #10 |
| I go for the 2 USB drives option, 1 is main backup that runs at night, the other is a weekly duplicate of the first USB drive. I keep that backup at the mother-in-laws, so safe from fire/flood or theft.. |
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04/06/2008 10:50:11 AM · #11 |
i had the same problem with a Maxtor 250GB external drive.
i used GetDataBack to recover it and managed to get 95% of my files back.
and my storage tip is use a Drobo. i have one and it works great. its a self-managed RAID array of 4 disks, and is self-redundant up to 2 disk failures out of 4 (depending on how much storage is used up). it is a bit expensive though, with just the enclosure running $500 without storage, but hey you get what you pay for.
take a look at drobo
Message edited by author 2008-04-06 10:52:10. |
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04/06/2008 01:11:55 PM · #12 |
I have owned 2 Maxtor 1 touch drives, a 300 gig and a 500 gig. I never had any problems, except when my wife plugged the 300 gig in with a power supply from one of our laptops. Fortunately the drive didn't get damaged and now lives in our kids PC. The case was rendered useless...
I think Maxtor is a decent product although they have gone kind of cheap on their casing. (My 300 had a metal case 500gig is plastic) I have had failure and success with most of the big name brands Fijitsu, Western Digital, Seagate/Maxtor etc... My worst luck being with Western Digital.
It is pretty much hit or miss with any of those brands. I usually look at it like this, If the drive survives the first month it will normally last a long time. If it is going to go it usually happens pretty fast. |
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04/06/2008 01:41:34 PM · #13 |
Originally posted by Bugzeye:
..
I think Maxtor is a decent product although they have gone kind of cheap on their casing. (My 300 had a metal case 500gig is plastic) I have had failure and success with most of the big name brands Fijitsu, Western Digital, Seagate/Maxtor etc... My worst luck being with Western Digital.
It is pretty much hit or miss with any of those brands. I usually look at it like this, If the drive survives the first month it will normally last a long time. If it is going to go it usually happens pretty fast. |
I have best experience with Western Digital. I only use those.
Maxtor - used to be good 5 years ago. Maxtor aquired horrible compnay Quantum and tried pushing their drives with maxtor brand so i stopped using maxtor.
Seagate - lots of failures in the past (5+ yrs ago). I hear they they now better.
Do your research here:
//www.tomshardware.com/us/
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04/06/2008 01:59:37 PM · #14 |
The Maxtor Name is owned by Seagate. Not sure how much more relation there is product wise. I have 2 western digital 20 gig drives here that still work both are over 5 years old. But when I got these 2 they were 2nd and 3rd replacements for the originals that failed shortly after I installed them The store manager eventually came to the conclusion that he might have had a bad lot of drives or sent some factory refurbished drives by mistake.
either way after 3 returns I finally had 2 good drives. |
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04/06/2008 06:49:34 PM · #15 |
| Western digital is the most reliable out there. I would suggest using an enclosure and going to a raid configuration or backing up to multiple points. |
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04/26/2008 02:17:10 PM · #16 |
I want one of these ... a remarkable story of hard-drive survival from this NASA news story:
The first real-world confirmation of a theory for how shear thinning works in a simple fluid has come from an experiment that flew aboard the final flight of Space Shuttle Columbia....
Most of the data from the experiment, called Critical Viscosity of Xenon-2 (CVX-2), was beamed down to scientists on the ground before the shuttle's destruction during reentry into Earth's atmosphere. Remarkably, the hard drive from the experiment survived the disaster and was found amid the wreckage, and technicians were able to recover the rest of the data. |
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04/26/2008 02:35:23 PM · #17 |
eric if you try sending it in for warranty they wont do any data recovery and my experience with external hard drives is the controler in the case goes bad and the drive is perfectly good.
If it comes down to it you could do what I have always done. Scrap the case and salvage the drive. The external drives use standard hard drives inside them and can be removed. However if your 1 TB enclosure is two drives in raid configuration then it would prove more troublesome then taking out a single hard drive and plugging it into a desktop or an adapter.
Originally posted by Bugzeye:
The Maxtor Name is owned by Seagate. Not sure how much more relation there is product wise. |
Bugzeye, I recently had to crack open an external Maxtor Oune Touch (III i think?) and it even had a seagate drive inside it so its pretty much down to just a brand name. I have never had one fail from them in the past but I had trouble with quantum fireballs and they absorbed quantum long before they merged with seagate.
Message edited by author 2008-04-26 14:37:17. |
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