Uh Oh... Hard Drive Failure!? - DPChallenge Forums

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8

04/11/2005 01:37:45 PM · #1

Sometime last week one of my hard driver's seemed to fail. I left the room (with computer on) for an hour or so and came back to notice that the computer had restarted. I later come to find out that my primary slave drive (two partitions, that both correspond to the same drive) is not showing up! Crap! All my photography, family pictures, music, video clips, miscellaneous files and documents... gone! This was the drive that I kept most of my important things on. I figure it's pretty much gone for whatever reason. The computer would make a ticking noise at startup for a little while but eventually get into Windows.

Now my Primary Master drive has gone haywire as well! The computer is detecting 0 drives and I can't even boot up (I'm on a computer at campus right now). It tries to detect them (all while making the same clicking noise it did before) and then eventually says that there is a System Boot Failure..

What should I do?!! I would love to be able to save everything, but my slave drive if of the utmost importance to me because of the irreplaceable files that are on it. The fact that the Master 'died' as well is leading me to believe (and hope!) that it is the motherboard and not the drives. Does anybody have much computer expertise/knowledge and might be able to point me in the right direction? If I need to take it to a local computer shop for the 'save', then that is fine - but I don't want to take it down there and waste my money if all hope is already lost.

Thanks so much for reading, and any help/advice you can provide would be appreciated!

Message edited by author 2005-04-11 13:38:44.

rex

Canon PowerShot SD780

04/11/2005 01:44:36 PM · #2

Do you have another computer you can plug these drives into and set them as slaves?

rkfoote

Nikon D70

04/11/2005 01:47:05 PM · #3

If it's ticking (or clicking) you're pretty much hosed. You can send the drive to a data recovery specialist for lots of $$$.
A cheaper thing to try is go find a linux geek on campus. You can download a copy of linux that will boot off your CD drive and (assuming the drive isn't completely toasted) image the data and then try to sift through the image.

Good luck.

Joe_Cool

Canon PowerShot G6

04/11/2005 01:47:21 PM · #4

Ok, I'm by no means a pro with computers, but I've done some work with them and think I can help.

First, I think that all photographers need to back up all their photos onto CD. This isn't that expensive these days, and I think it can save this sort of thing from happening in the future.

Now, to your problem. It is very strange that one drive would fail right after another drive failed. If you ask me, a different component to your computer, quite possibly the motherboard, is haywire. Find a computer expert in the yellow pages, explain your situation, and hopefully they can retrieve your files from the drives.

Lastly, the sad but true possibility: new virus. I've never heard of something exactly like this happening from a virus, but I'm certain that it is possible. I hope not, because if this is our explanation, your files are probably lost for good.

Hope that helps!

Tom_Robbrecht

04/11/2005 01:49:52 PM · #5

You might want to hook up the slave to another pc.
If your controller/mb was failing, the other pc should be able to read the drive.
If you know Linux, you could also boot your pc with a knoppix CD and check the drives.
I believe there might even be some software out there that might help you recover lost data but never used it. The word back-up comes to mind...

04/11/2005 02:00:13 PM · #6

Wow - thanks for all of the replies thus far. From what I've found on the internet, the ticking seems to be a telltale sign of hard disk failure, although I'm hoping that this is an exception (the one right after the other thing makes me hope that it's the mobo).

One thing I did find is that I need to stop turning on my computer in hopes of it magically working (they say that repeated attempts to start the computer can cause even more damage to the drives! yikes!). Unfortunately, I don't know linux, but I hope that I can maybe hook one up to my roommate's computer and check if it will work. That will surely have to be later though, since I'll need to wait 'til he gets back to the apartment tonight to ask him if it's okay (and let's hope that it's not some new virus, since that would be horrible for his computer as well :-X.)

rex

Canon PowerShot SD780

04/11/2005 02:06:05 PM · #7

If you can get it hooked up to his computer as a slave and it works burn the stuff you need to cd first thing.

gloda

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

04/11/2005 02:10:25 PM · #8

In case you can connect to your drives but your data seems gone - see this thread.
Edit: Backups, backups, backups. Oh, did I mention backups? I learned my lesson the hard way...

Message edited by author 2005-04-11 14:11:12.

Mattel Barbie Photo Designer Digital Camera

04/12/2005 12:37:18 AM · #9

Great - thanks for all the replies. It'll be another day or two before I can get a chance to test it out, but I'll definitely keep the file recovery software in mind if it comes down to it (and if it's still an option).

Thanks for all of your advice so far!

nsbca7

04/12/2005 01:01:56 AM · #10

Originally posted by brianlh:

If it is the mechanics of the HD that went it is quite easy to swap the disk out of it into an identical HD housing. I would do what a few others had suggested first. That is to access the HDs on a different computer. About the only way you could lose the info off the HDs is in a very hot fire, a strong magnetic force, by way of a virus, or by shooting it or otherwise physically mutilating it.

notonline

Canon EOS-350D Rebel XT

04/12/2005 02:32:29 AM · #11

I haven't found a drive yet that I couldn't recover. I would be willing but I'm in Toronto, Canada. My suggestion to you is to put your slave ONLY into a different machine with a big primary drive incase it comes up you can recover right away. There is a few other steps you can try if you need more help then plz feel free to PM me. Remember there is never a gaurentee in data recovery.

04/13/2005 02:12:55 AM · #12

Well, it certainly isn't the motherboard. I hooked up an extra drive that I had inside (from when I recently upgraded hard drives and didn't remove this one from its dock). Everything installed fine and is working great. I cleaned out the computer and have now been able to get the previous master to work again (am currently burning CDs to save what I can that's on it). I also did manage to hook up my drives to my roommate's computer with no luck.

The bootup is also now detecting the old slave (right after it checks the RAM), but it still is not showing up under 'My Computer'. Of course, the drive that's giving me the most trouble is the most important one. Neither drive is making the ticking sound at boot anymore.

At this point I could really care less about my old 'photos' and whatnot, but would like to save all the old snapshots from the past four years of college and random vacations. Whatever happens, let's just say that I'll be backing up anything important from now on!!

notonline

Canon EOS-350D Rebel XT

04/13/2005 02:26:26 AM · #13

If it won't detect it as a slave then try setting it as a master and booting with a floppy. sounds like the secondary ide controller is shot witch is most common from what I've encountered. You should also be able to hook it up to one of the slots(controller) off the cd-rom and disable one of those to get it to run temporarily.

Zoomdak

Canon EOS-5D Mark IV

04/13/2005 02:35:41 AM · #14

Originally posted by brianlh:

At this point I could really care less about my old 'photos' and whatnot, but would like to save all the old snapshots from the past four years of college and random vacations. Whatever happens, let's just say that I'll be backing up anything important from now on!!

I think this is also a good reminder (as always, whenever somebody tells a "horror" story like this) for people to back up thier things. I just got a new 300gb external HD to store photos on (filled my current 80gb HD :o ). But I have backed up photos up to January. I think it might be a good time to start making more backups :).