External Hard drive help please

[roothorick]

Actually, based on just a quick Google search and a visit to YouTube, it looks like Maxtor drives really do have some sort of beep code, which can indicate anything from not enough power to an inability to unlock the platters.

In most cases, if you really need what was stored on the drive you'll want to look into recovery services.

^-.-^

Are we talking about USB enclosures (which are often very "smart" *cough*) or actual internal IDE or SATA components? It seems really pointless to put a buzzer on an internal drive; it's very easy to say "blargh im ded lol" to the BIOS.

RestaurantDude's Guide to the Poor Man's HD Recovery

SO glad I'll never have to do this. Linux MD RAID1 ftw!

In all seriousness though, make a separate thread so a mod can sticky it. That's useful stuff.

[Midnight12]

still no news or update. agreed that kind of info needs its own thread

due to the latest insanity over here there has been no time to make an attempt upon the laptop so...nothing to report

[underemployeed]

Any hard drive that is used and abused for 3+ years is highly likely to fail. I have one friend who won't considering using one past the 3 year mark as that is about the standard warranty, I'm not sure if seagate still does 5 or not, but generally the older and more used the less reliable it becomes.

I second the freeze method as having seen it used as a last ditch effort. But from the cost of recovery services sometimes it just better to upgrade to a less beat up drive. I'm not saying an old drive is useless I just would't count on it to have your memories when you most want them. That said I have several computers that have been running the same drives for 8 years. With a lot of hours of use. I have also had to replace most of them more recently and as I type am being reminded I need to take down my server and make a backup image as I will lose many configuration changes if the main drive dies tonight.

Paranoia is key to success in data protection, because Murphy's law always applies. I had my parents computer die a few months ago because the hard drive was about 9 years old with many years of being on 24x7.

[roothorick]

and as I type am being reminded I need to take down my server and make a backup image as I will lose many configuration changes if the main drive dies tonight.

Tip for you: Linux MD RAID. No hardware necessary -- just two or more hard drives and the ability to connect them to the same computer, but since you're paranoid, go with three and use RAID1. There's monitor daemons available to send you an email in the event of a drive failure, or you could just log in and check them every day or two.

You can do something similar on enterprise Windows Server versions, but that's some serious dosh, and I don't think Home Server can do it.

[Midnight12]

apparently hubs wont try this and the hard drive has been sitting bagged up on the shelf for a while. so he gave up and got a new one....go figure. thank you all again for the advice I will keep it in mind.