I bought a pair of seagate 160gb drives about 2 years ago. One crapped out on me today. Initially, data wasn't showing up, i'd open a file, it'd take a minute or so before anything showed up, then it would only show 100 files when there had been 1,500 or so previously. I rebooted and it went through the whole 'xp drive verfication' bit ... it showed certain sectors as being unreadable. i pulled the drive out, hoping i'd stop any further problems. my question is, has anyone ever had this happen? i'm not quite sure what to do next, the information on the drive means alot to me, it has around 15,000 photographs, all of my digitized work, and about 7 years of computer related material (i.e. - all of my work from university) the drive acted purely as storage, the other drive had alot more traffic, i was constantly changing things on it and using it ... the only real usage this drive had was when i'd occasionally dump photos to it (or recall a file) ... or when i'd use photoshop, it would cache a portion to the disc.
The only way to do it is buy another identical drive and swap out the controller boards with each other and hope it works. It's supposed to be something like 80% of the time that it's the controller board rather than the physical drive, however if they've updated the drive in the meantime a new version might not work with an old. If it does work, invest in an external harddisk to mirror your stuff to, and a load of DVDs to back it up onto. It amazes me people trust a single disk to their entire life.
If you originally bought two identical drives, you could probably just do the controller-board swap between them. You'll still have to buy a third drive, but it won't matter what kind. Just make sure if you do this you back up all the data on the current good drive in case something goes wrong with the board swap. I don't know if there is any risk in swapping boards and then continuing to use the bad drive, but I don't think I'd do it. I would back up the good drive, swap boards, copy the bad drive to the new drive, swap boards back and trash the bad drive.
Well we've all been there at some point, but just make sure you don't repeat it I burn everything of value to DVDR (drives cost £20 and a pack of 100 disks costs about the same), then also use an external disk that's only on when I need it and a server to trebble up data I'm using.
I just bought a gigantic spool of dvdr's ... i'll be spending the better portion of this weekend > burning and cataloging the remaining two drives. I bought the drive as a pair, so i do have an identical drive thats still in working order (*knocks on wood*) ... I've never swapped boards between drives, could you point me towards a tutorial? if you'll excuse my lack of technical experience, what would this accomplish? Since you both recommended it ... would a bad board = data not being read correctly? I think i'll have to spend a few years saving up some $$ in order to send it to a group that reclaims data professionally. thanks for the help though, anything to put this in perspective really keeps me from dwelling on the loss.
If the drive made any unusual grinding or buzzing noises prior to failure (in my experience, these usually last a few days to weeks, though sometimes they can be sudden), then you will need a professional recovery service. The noises would imply internal mechanical damage, and there's nothing you can do on your own to save the data. However, if there were no such noises there's a fair chance nothing more than the circuit board on the back of the hard drive is dead. Since you have another drive with the same board, you've got a spare good board just sitting there. The specifics will depend a bit on the drive, but I'll see if I can get you headed in the right direction. First, you'll need a nice place to work. The logic board doesn't cover any openings into the deep, scary insides of the drive, so you don't need a cleanroom. Perhaps some newspapers on the kitchen table. Then, after backing up all the data on the good drive in case something goes wrong, stick a piece of masking tape on the bad drive's circuit board and label it as such. Find the two or three screws that go through the circuit board and carefully remove them (make sure you only remove the ones through the board - we don't want to take the drive apart), using the correct screwdriver. If they're Torx, go to Sears and buy a set of Torx drivers. No sense in slipping off the screw with the wrong screwdriver and stabbing a hole in your drive. Next, carefully lift the boards off of each drive - there will probably be a few contacts or a small plug connecting them to the innards of the drive - and reverse the process to install the good board on the bad drive. Make backups and switch boards back if you feel like it, then check the warranty on your drives to see if you can get money back for the broken one.
You don't really need a torx. Because it's a six sided hole a normal flat head screwdriver will remove them if you're careful enough. We need rep cause I'd give you a ++ for that reply, Bob
am i missing something here? i thought hard drive failure was almost always the head/platter combo and hardly ever the controller board. i mean, we're comparing a mechanical device to solid state electronics. i'm also going by experience - i've never had a controller board die, but i have had three drives die on me.
It sucks how it usually takes a drive failure to make you start backing stuff up It's not until your HD dies on you that you suddenly realize that your data really isn't that safe. Maybe we should go back to those punch card things, at least they didn't fail on you unless you snapped em I hope none of your data got corrupted though :S
Mechanical devices aren't terribly susceptible to static discharge and power fluctiations. I've never had a drive controller board die - my only hard drive loss was accompanied by a month of grinding before it finally gave in - but I've lost other solid-state circuits before. Like I said in my previous post, telling which parts failed on the drive could be as simple as the noises it made. A controller board failure should be sudden and silent, whereas a mechanical failure would be more likely to make noise and take a while, unless there was a very specific violent event like the drive being dropped. At any rate, I don't think there's any danger in trying the board swap. If it doesn't work, then he hasn't lost anything, and if it works he's got his data.
Don't ask me but that's what I've been told. They've even made controller boards easier to swap out: substituting ribbons for contact points.
I've replaced circuit boards in my time. When I have two drives exactly the same and one has a board failure, same method for detection as bob. But then I lifted it up and a chip was completely burned. Swopped the PCB, got data off, replace PCB, RMA!
