[sarts]

I have a 120GB hard drive in an external firewire casing hooked up to the powerbook. Been running flawlessly until it produced a faint (but audible) scratching sound when i switch it on to mount. The drive will mount but it takes longer than usual. Opening files and folders take much longer and I can't seem to copy certain files off the drive. The copy process will hang half way and the drive will unmount itself.

I tried Data Rescue X, which takes painfully long but it managed to recover the files. Unfortunately, some of the files are corrupted i.e. mp3s with silent bits and videos with missing frames etc. I even ran Diskwarrior and did the rebuild -- no difference. I've also tried a different firewire cable and a different ext case, still the same.

Are there software/apps that can "fix" physical problems on a hard drive?

Any other suggestions short of reformatting and losing all my data? thanks

[bradoesch]

If you do manage to get your data off the drive and format it, I would toss the drive or use it for stuff you don't mind losing.

There's no way to fix physical problems with a drive with software. If you need the data bad enough you can pay to have it recovered. They have ways of doing that sort of thing.

[sarts]

Yeah looks like a reformat and using for misc. files.