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ixus_123 · Jul 4, 2003, 09:24 PM

I have and external firewire hard drive that I use for downloads / music and software downloads mainly, although it also has bank details on it amongst other stuff.

Today I unmounted the volumes did everything correctly and took it to the studio. Plugged it in to the next mac and started it up (same routine I've done countless times before).

It made a funny noise whilst spinning up and only 2 of the 3 partitions on the disk mounted properly. I managed to get one file off a mounted partition but the partition I needed didn't mount so I unmounted (ejected) the HD and went to mount again ... and nothing I can't mount it or even use disk utility on it to check for problems permissions etc.

I'm guessing by the noise something is up with the drive mechanism. If anyone knows any links on how to work on the inards of a hard disk I'd be grateful.

It's under waranty but I don't really want someone nosing throught my files especially with so much music & apps, personal detail & passwords et etc - you get the picture :/

icruise · Jul 4, 2003, 11:50 PM

I don't think you'll have much luck trying to repair the drive mechanism if that is indeed the problem. It's possible that it's just the enclosure and not the drive, though. If you have access to a powermac tower, you might try removing the drive and putting it in the the tower to see if it works.

ixus_123 · Jul 7, 2003, 06:32 AM

Thanks. The situation does not look good. I should be able to try it in a tower tonight. I really hope that works.

Although the drive is under warrenty I'd rather have it destroyed than give it back with so many passwords on it

jtc · Jul 7, 2003, 09:12 AM

It it's not a hardware problem, diskwarrior is probably your best bet for recovering the data.

If it is a hardware problem, you may be out of luck. The warranty will not cover recovering the data, it will only get you a replacement drive. There is drivesavers, but they are very expensive. The drive we sent them was over $2000 to recover the data.

With new hard drives, you can't swap out circuit boards, for some reason this doesn't works. We used to do this on older drives, but about 2-3 years ago this stopped working, even with identical drives.

ixus_123 · Jul 9, 2003, 06:51 PM

thanks for all the advice guys.

There is no hope for the maxtor drive but I have gotten over the lose now. Even though I have always backed up I hae learnt not to take anything for granted and will be backing up even more regular in future.

(I think over heating caused the drive to fail which I blame on the new Dvico firewire HD cases)

derekn · Jul 9, 2003, 10:42 PM

One thing you can try is taking the hard drive (not the case itself but the hard drive alone), putting it in a zip lock bag and putting in the freezer for about an hour. There is a lot of heat generated when the drive runs and cooling it down can help in some cases. It won't compromise the data any. You can then try mounting it again and see if you can retrieve any of the data. It's not a gurantee but if the data is worth that much, it's worth giving it a shot.

tooki · Jul 10, 2003, 01:20 PM

Yeah, um, for really old hard drives, sure.

For modern hard drives, baloney. Since about 1997 drives have been designed in a way that they are immune to thermal expansion, thus making it impossible for the freezer to help.

The freezer will, however, cause the drive to have condensation form on it when removed to room air, thus ensuring it won't work.

tooki