January 22, 2007

• I don't know. Good luck.
• Yeah, me neither. Let me know how it works out.
• Hey, thanks!
• everything pretty much grinds to a halt while it tries to read the drive That's a bad sign. /Dep't of the obvious Usually means that unreadable disk sectors have appeared in an inconvenient place on the disk. With what filesystem is it formatted? Have you tried poking it with chkdsk?
• just went through this w/ my laptop, then my friend went thru it with his external drive. firstly...IF THE DRIVE IS MAKING NOISES THAT IT HAS NEVER MADE BEFORE SHUT IT OFF IMMEDIATELY! that is the sound of your data being irretrivably lost by means of the heads scratching it off the platter. (that's what happened to my friend...hope you backed up...he didn't) but it sounds more like the problem i had where one of the chips in the drive failed (probably got zapped in the reboot) google yourself up some 'data recovery' (if you haven't backed up, dummy) and be prepared to hear some heart-stopping quotes (like $3000-8000), keep calling around. for me, it cost 300 to replace my drive (upgraded from my original 40GB to 100GB) at the place i originally went to for recovery...they told me that they couldn't get my data, but that i should send it to their really good friends 800 miles away and expect to pay $5000-8000 after waiting 6-8 weeks. well, fuck you and fuck that i told 'em and did some looking around and found a local guy willing to do it for $800 (he usually charges around 1200-1500, but basically i cried like a girl and the price went down) and he got my data back in three days (he had to take the platters out and put them in another drive). worth it. if you cant find anybody local to you, i'll give you his number. the first place gave me an 'assessment' ($100, refunded when they couldnt fix it) to see if they could fix it with software...which is really your first stop...try 'disc doctor'...thats what most places you will take it to will try first (and it's cheaper to buy than they will charge you to use it at any data recovery joint)...if you're reallly reallly lucky the drive has just misplaced its internal map of where all your stuff is and that should fix it... good luck
• Haven't done a chkdisk or an fdisk on it. Looks like it's just seeing it as a blank partition right now. It's an NTFS drive. Or, more accurately was, according to XP. It's not making any noises, so I don't believe it's a hardware issue. As to data recovery, I did find an article that recommends TestDisk as a freeware option for analysis and recovery. May give that a shot. And yeah, if it's just a file table that's screwed, I'll consider myself beloved of God.
• It's not making any noises, so I don't believe it's a hardware issue. Let me clarify that dumbass statement: I don't believe it's a problem with the platters or the head. Could still be an issue like sexyrobot describes.
• If I'm not mistaken, this is just a removable "thumb" drive, no? In other words, there are no moving parts, it's flash memory. I know there is software out there specifically designed to recover data from such devices. I utilized one app (forgive me, I don't recall the name now, and it was for Mac) that was able to recover data from my digital camera flash memory card. It worked like a charm. The first link from my google-try gives this: Pro Data Doctor. I'm sure if you have no luck with the Simpletech support, you can try this approach perhaps. Good luck!!
• Nope, it's a hard drive.
• Aah, 80GB... I saw 8GB and assumed it was flash memory.
• oh...also my drive was giving me trouble for a while (about a week)...seems the chip was failing intermittantly and scrambling its file table...thats why the software fix wouldnt work...it was just too scrambled...but like your drive it just wouldn't 'mount'...
• "Simpletech"! Sorry to laugh while you're in obvious pain, but that IS a good one.
• Monkeyfilter: that is the sound of your data being irretrivably lost
• I think I have the exact same problem going on in one of my internal hard drives. Post the solution when you get it.
• Try the following: Fat Recovery -- if it's a lost FAT, this may help recover it. File Recovery -- general data recovery, including deleted data, lost data, and lost drives Smart FAT Recovery another fat recovery program I recently went through the data recovery hell and actually managed to get all my files back (the dog at the FAT or something). I've since removed the program I used to successfully recover the files, so I'm not sure which one actually worked for me. These are the installers I have, though, so at least one of them worked. Hope this helps.
• grrr..."ate" the FAT. the dog ATE the FAT. I previewed three times and still managed to miss this. Not that it's all that important, but still, you go through all the effort to make sure you've gotten rid of all the typos and stupid words and then miss an "e". It's frustrating. Oh yeah, the three programs I linked to were free, or at least free to demo. The one that actually worked was free and and fully functional, so try these before you start dropping hefty cash to get data back. Good luck!
• Sorry to hear about this. I once had a problem like this (the Master Boot Record had somehow gone missing) I can't remember the exact steps I used, but I got it back with free tools. Since that time I purchased Spinrite from grc.com and I recovered another drive I had that had stopped working, and two more people used it with success. (but that costs money) Otherwise a free data recovery program is PC Inspector
• Yeah for Monkeys with ideas!! Poor MCT *hands him a Pop Tart
• Don't do that! He'll try to put it in his zip drive!
• Some things to try: -Can the drive be removed from the case and read by physically plugging it into a computer - either as a second drive in a desktop or in a laptop, booting from a live CD? -PC recovery software as described above - also try File Scavenger which has saved my ass a few times (and seems to do a better job of recovering things than the Convar freebies like PC Inspector) but it isn't free and we all know there is absolutely no way to make a non-free program work, even if you search the internets for ways around the registration (because that isn't legal). -Last ditch effort - freeze the drive, then boot it with a USB cord snaked into the freezer. Some drives have heat failure, and for some reason freezing it can solve the problem long enough to recover your data. Stick it in a Ziploc, freeze it today, try recovery tomorrow (again keep in freezer while attempting recovery).
• I like taking things apart and fixing them. I had a laptop drive go kapoot on me a couple years back. I cracked it open, pulled out the drive, and shucked it open. I fiddled around with the head, and instinctively thought I moved it to a better position than before. Surely it would not work! But I attempted to boot up before screwing everything back together, and voila! It worked... I didn't lose any data. But as I thought the drive was toast before I began my experimental operation, I didn't take any extra care in opening... a couple pieces of aluminum duct tape did the job. I sold it on eBay a year later. I got positive feedback. I like caution live frogs last ditch effort. I would give it a try if I wasn't too concerned for the data in question, but that doesn't seem the case here.
• > 80GB Simpletech removal USB drive, WinXP. I don't really understand this. Do you mean you have WinXP installed on the removable drive, or the system you were plugged into when it crashed was WinXP? In addition to the good advice given above, you could check out thi page for some projects on Linux-NTFS interoperability and data recovery.
• thi -> this I would like a ┌───────┐ │Preview│ └───────┘ button.
• It would be wrong to have a preview button, because that would be messing with the future, and could lead to unexpected consequences.
• I don't really understand this I meant I'm using it on an XP system. So far I'm checking frogs's answer as best. I tried using TestDisk, the program I mentioned above, which was able to find quite a bit of my data, but nearly all of my docs folder (thank God I finally started putting everything in one place) was still missing. I then got my hands on a copy of File Scavenger and did a long scan including deleted files. Went to bed. Woke up this morning, there's a list of my data. How well it actually recovers still remains to be seen, but by God it sees it all. I'll update again when I'm done, but so far so good.
• That happened to me once on a fixed HDD. Lost all my mp3s. I recovered them all, but then they had names of "FILE1234.mp3". Which left me with 4Gb of good music and no idea which was what. *kicks stupid cheap ubiquitous Windows*
• Yeah, out of this I keep thinking about breaking down and buying a MacBook. I've not really been using Linux all that much -- the main thing I like about *nix-based systems is the sweet, sweet command line tool set, but I just don't enjoy tinkering with my OS. So I installed Cygwin on my XP partition so I could have the best of both worlds, and I absolutely love it. OSX would give me that natively. Only two downsides are I wouldn't be able to do Windows-based software development on a Mac (or at least I don't think I would be able to, and my future job prospects are very much up in the air right now), and in addition I'd want a MacBook Pro (as a coder, I like to have plenty of juice on reserve just in case), but I ain't got two grand to drop on that bad boy. Well, I've got it, but missustool would give me a much-deserved punch in the face if I spent it, what with the leaky roof and the uneven kitchen floor and the running and the screaming and the glay-hey-ven.
• *hands him a Pop Tart That should help with the FAT recovery, anyway.
• pssst
• ...because USB devices plugged into Macs never break?
• pssst Yeah, I know about that, but I'm not crazy about dual OSes. It is a solution, definitely, just not one I want to spend two grand on -- if I'm going to spend all of my development time running Windows, then I might as well just get a Wintel PC for less money. ...because USB devices plugged into Macs never break? No, really just because I'm in the market for a laptop and I've got a lot of problems with Windows -- I'd rather have the super-sweet interface with *nix tools under the hood, plus MS is really pissing me off with some of the stuff it's doing for Vista (which is essentially the "most OSX-like version of Windows EVER!" when you parse their ads for it). Believe me, I've been as critical as anyone of Mac Fanboy Syndrome, I think there's a lot of stupidity in the iPhone &c., but they're just damn nice computers.
• True. Dammit. Err, darnit.
• > I'd rather have the super-sweet interface with *nix tools under the hood Suse + KDE
• #2 has just caved and bought a second laptop because he's found that doing software dev on the iBook is just too much of a pain in the ass. Definitely keep a cheap PC around if you plan to do that sort of thing at home. (He's partitioned the hard drive on the new lappy, WinXP and Ubuntu.)
• Suse + KDE I have yet to find a Linux distro that didn't need tinkering (I've used three or four), and I just don't enjoy that as much as I feel I should. Plus it's been years since I used KDE (Windows 98 days), but I remember it running pretty slowly. I have no idea how it's been in the last five years or so.
• I find KDE's looking increasingly mac-like. Performance is okay, but yes, lots of tinkering.
• my hard drive crash was on a mac...my friend's was a la cie drive attached to a mac...HD failure isn't really a mac vs pc issue as almost all hard drives are manufactured by third parties...think mine was a fujitsu...just checked a few forums and most say those are the worst...you should maybe think about upgrading/replacing to a hitachi or toshiba (good reviews) i upgraded to a matsushita...didn't really think about checking up at the time...
• MCT. Five words: Don't. Buy. A. MacBook. Yet. I'm an ACPT, and I highly recommend you wait until they work the kinks out of the system. Without divulging too much, they do have their "issues" currently. I think by 2-3Q 2007 they'll be up to par with the hardware functionality of the late 2005 G4 iBooks. Secondly, I've seen external drives fail under so many conditions. Simpletech, LaCie, MacAlly. The first thing to do is run a Disk Utility. Then run a Data recovery. Thirdly, place the drive in a known good enclosure. Lastly, replace the actual circuit board of the drive. (An easy repair as long as you have a known good board of the same manufacturer, GB size, and manufacturing era.)I strongly recommend against actually handling the plates outside of a clean room, but that's anyone's game. the MB Pros are the way to go for now, unless you're running the CS2 suite.
• As a datapoint, MCT -- my ex-Boss is a Microsoft coder (.NET in Visual Studio). He bought himself a Macbook Pro, installed WinXP in Parallels and uses it as his daily work machine. Says that it's the fastest machine he's ever coded on. Also: the sexiest.
• Okay, here's where we are so far: File Scavenger did one heck of a goddamn job on this. Recovered nearly every single file I needed back off of the drive. I say nearly. There's only one major missing file here, and that's a 20GB TrueCrypt volume I had on that drive. It found the damn thing just fine, but there was something about the way it recovers that it couldn't come up with enough disk space on my local HD to run the recovery. The more space I could give it to work with, the farther it gets, but I gave it 75GB of free space to work with before finally throwing up my hands and saying "fuck it." Fortunately, that volume didn't have anything I didn't back up. Work files on the PC in my cube that I sometimes bring home to pick at, some private info (numbers, etc.) that I wouldn't want falling into someone else's hands if I lost the drive, and of course my 1000-page e-book: The History of the Wooden Spoon in American Kitchen Culture. I am a bit disappointed about this (I loved those spoons, man!), but I consider it an overall win, big time. I was able to recover literally everything else that mattered, down to the bookmarks.html file in FirefoxPortable. As to TestDisk, it found everything on the drive except for what I needed. No additional prodding through its software seems to have worked, and I've tried every key combination. I tried rebuilding the partition through its interface, and while it no longer holds up my PC when I plug it in, I still can't access shit on it. It actually gives me a semaphore timeout message, and I have never in my life seen a commercially released OS ever say a damn thing about semaphores, didn't even know they existed until my third year of study. So something is REALLY fucked on the drive. Gold star to Dr. Frogsy for his recommendation, and silver star to the rest for your good wishes and shocking adeptness at not letting this thread devolve into Your Favorite OS Sucks. 36 hours later, not even an auto-generated e-mail from Simpletech. I may just buy me a new Western Digital drive, if I don't hear back soon.
• So how did it go from being recognized but not readable to File Scavenger getting them back? I ask because I gots a old Quantum SCSI drive that died some year' back and although it's dead dead I wondered how File Scavenger was able to scrape out the data when Winblows wouldn't read it at all? /cornfused
• When your OS mounts a drive for access, it doesn't read the whole drive, it checks a file table that lists what's stored on it and at what addresses. So for instance when you delete a program from your hard drive, the information's not scrubbed from the disk, it's just deleted from the table, so the OS thinks its gone and can write to that space later if it wants to. Stuff like File Scavenger doesn't use file tables but instead actually reads each sector of the disk and analyzes what's there. It may not be able to get everything -- for instance, it may only recover part of the file, or it may know the file type but not the filename, but it can see what's written to each sector and report back whatever information it can glean from the scan. Your OS will have to recognize that the drive is actually there even if it can't properly mount or read it, and the drive will have to physically work in the sense that the platters will have to spin and the read/write heads will have to move. As long as those requirements are met, then recovery programs like File Scavenger can take a look around and tell you what they see.
• Ah. Okay then I gots it, thanks. File Revenger sounds like a cool tool then.
• Another good way to get your words and pictures and stuff out of the grey grinding box thing is to get a nice strong magnet, and then you put the magnet on the box thing and then you pull it away and shake it onto a paper plate. Carefully set the paper plate aside and DON'T LET THE CAT GET AT IT. Then you can use a vacuum hose and get all the yucky gunk out of the box thing; use a spray cleaner if it's real yucky. You might have to pry the cheese up with a knife. Then carefully tip the paper plate into the slot and you're done! There may be some extra beeping or smoking as the box tries to put all the stuff back, so just give it a good shake. Remember to keep it tightly wrapped in blankets (as it may have the flu), and force fluids. Hope that helps!
• Why, you!
• *flees, pursued by man with giant butterfly net*
• Oh, so THAT'S how the cat got all pixellated!
• DON'T LET THE CAT GET AT IT Y'all listen to your Aunt Koko, y'hear? Because I once tried this, except that I put the paper plate onto the coffee table for just a moment while I went to check the kettle. When I came back, my kitties were frolicking merrily in the remains of a once proud pr0n collection. Now whenever the preacher and his husband stop by for tea, I have to hustle the kitties out of the room, lest one of them go *purr purr purr purr TEEN SLUT WAREHOUSE purr purr ENEMA BONDAGE purr* when stroked. It is really quite upsetting.
• I just assumed that was censored cat bukkake.
• Wow, my comment was for TUM's pixellated picture, but it works nicely with goetter's followup.
• Oh, and I finally got those Simpletons on the phone. I had to call them. They'll ship me a new drive second-day after I return this one. At my expense, but whatevs.
• MonkeyFiler: purr purr purr purr TEEN SLUT WAREHOUSE *beep!* BSOD
• Before you send it back, put your initials somewhere unobtrusive on the drive, using fingernail polish. Then see if, like a box turtle, it returns to you. In a box. This is how I discovered the Der TurtlenBoxen Inc. was not in fact replacing my turtle as they promised, but just giving it a facelift and sending it back. Poor little critter looked just like Joan Rivers, after the third attempt.
• If Chy was around, this is where he'd put a animamamated gift.
• 
• Nicely done, fish tick!
• kittastic! Well done ticky!
• Well done! not saying you'll every replace the Chy-monster
• Well, normalcy is returning to tooldom. I got in touch with a Simpletech...um...tech, and after two minutes of trying various USB ports, he told me to send it back in for a new drive. Following TP's suggestion, I wrote my initials on the bottom with an enamel marker, and lo and behold, they sent me back a brand new drive. However, in the meantime, I decided to take the opportunity to upgrade and get a larger drive -- you can now get 120GB removable drives for what I originally paid for my 80GB drive. So my plan is to sell the new replacement drive that Simpletech sent me. Tracicle, please please please delete this comment if it's an abuse of the site, but I thought I'd give you guys first dibs and see if any of you are in the market for a new drive for less than half retail. They're currently going for $115US on Amazon, and I'll offload it for fifty bucks. Brand new, still sealed in its bag. NTFS-formatted, so you'll have to reformat for Macs or *nix systems. I'm offering this here because (a) I love you, and (b) I'd rather not fuck with an ebay auction if I can avoid it. So if you're interested, e-mail's in the profile.
• Like we want your old junk!
• Hey, this is premium, quality merchandise. Now, if you'll just step around into this alley, we can do some business...
• Mo' money, mo' money, mo' money!
• dangit and I just blew my unnecessary gear-wad money on a widescreen display. Now where will my ill-gotten t00nz live!?!