Aug 082010
So I fire up my computer and plug in the 1 terabyte Western Digital external hard drive that has all my goodies on it… and watch as the little blue light sadly fades away. The computer did not recognize that anything was hooked up to it. The drive now seems to be deader’n hell. So, at a time when I don’t want to leave the house for fear of burning gas money, I now have to drive my ass up to Logan and hope the computer techs can recover the data off this thing.
Friggen’ *wonderful.*
7 Responses to “Oh, this is *exactly* what I needed…”
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Did you try pulling the drive out of the external enclosure and putting it in your computer? Could just be the power supply in the external drive. I’ve had one of those WD externals die on me before (just out of warranty of course) and that’s what I did.
Don’t feel bad, You’re not alone. I had a seagate that I used strictly for backup every couple months. When not in use I kept it stored, in its box, in a shelf, I treated it with the utmost care so it would hopefully function when I needed it.. Ha!
I started having computer problems, plugged it in, and… Nothing. I have no idea how a hard-drive can die just siting on a shelf! But I tried it on a external enclosure as well, still.. dead. Thankfully I was able to salvage the stuff on my computer and replace most of what was on the drive, but im sure many things were lost. But regardless, its most frustrating. And I’d still like to know how the hell a hard-drive can go bad siting idle.
Now when I buy those Western Digitals I RAID them. Had one of THOSE die on me but I was able to pull the individual drives out and get the info off the good drive just by plugging it into the computer. Then I chucked the bad drive, bought a replacement for the good one and I was good to go.
Thanks for the warning. I was plotting to get one of those things. Now I may spring for two externals of smaller size. Or maybe three. All different manufacturers.
Back from the shop. The tech indicated that the probable cause of the trouble is some “bridge” thingie between the drive and the USB port, and that copying over the data onto a new drive should not be a problem. I bought two… when (hopefully today or tomorrow) I get the one with (hopefully) all the data backed up onto it, I will copy all *that* onto the second. So I’ll have (and, if I’m smart, maintain) a backup of the backup, so the next time something horrible like this happens, I should have a functional backup ready to copy over onto the *next* hard drive.
Do I have the money for this? Hell no. Thank goodness for credit cards and living in debt. Yay!!
Gah.
“Two is one and one is none.” The law of detonators also applies to backups.
I’ve got a spare WD 465GB USB-Mini powered hard drive I’d be willing to swap; I don’t use it any more since I now have a 1T drive. If you’re interested, drop me a line.
There are drawbacks with it I know but I use Idrive online backup. 150gigs for $5.