[dba-Tech] External Hard Drive Failing

Stuart McLachlan stuart at lexacorp.com.pg
Sat Feb 28 16:54:31 CST 2009


Try putting in your freezer in a ziplock bag for a few hours, take it out and 
*immediately* try to read everything off it - if it works you only have about a 
quarter of an ohoujr or so before it warms up nd stops working again.

I havn't done that for quite a few years, but I managed to get stuff off two 
separate IDE drives in the past using this technique.  

-- 
Stuart


On 28 Feb 2009 at 15:55, Tina Norris Fields wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I've been using a SimpleTech 120Gb USB external hard drive for my backup 
> storage.  It's also the one place I've been putting all my downloaded 
> files, and all my photos.  It started making little sounds reminiscent 
> of a floppy drive having trouble reading a diskette formatted on another 
> drive - you know, the bearings are worn just a little differently, so 
> the tracks don't line up perfectly when the disk is being accessed in 
> one machine, but there is no problem when it's being accessed in the 
> other machine.  The external drive started making that kind of sound - 
> having a little trouble reading.  I was thinking that I would replace 
> that hard drive soon, but it stopped reading before I got around to 
> replacing it.  Now any attempt to access it results in the message that 
> the drive is not formatted and would I like to format it now.  No, I 
> don't want to format it now - I want to copy all the backed up stuff I 
> have on it and put it all on the nice new 500Gb external hard drive I 
> have. 
> 
> What tools are out there that do what the Norton Utilities used to do 
> back in DOS days?  There used to be a good Norton Utility that let one 
> have access to a disk that DOS couldn't read - what's out there now that 
> I might use to recover the good stuff I put away on this drive for 
> safekeeping?
> 
> I will appreciate any help at all on this.
> 
> Tina
> _______________________________________________
> dba-Tech mailing list
> dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com
> http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech
> Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com





More information about the dba-Tech mailing list