Hard drive is failing

[Morrigan]

So I'm having hard drive problems (Western Digital). I have two identical 500 gigs drive (4 years old, warranty expired last year). The first is partitioned in two, with C: containing Windows and installed software, and H: which has been unused and empty so far. The second has D: which contains all my media (photos, music -- including all my ripped CD collection -- and videos). It had about 50 gigs left as of today.

D: has started failing today, pretty much suddenly. I was playing an album, and into track 3 the song stopped playing and the player froze. Repeated retries did the same thing but playing a sample Beethoven song from the C: drive worked fine. Restarting the computer did not help. Then, after a while trying to browse through D:, the D: drive disappeared from Windows explorer and the Device Manager. :mad:

If I reboot, D shows up, but copying stuff from D to H is excruciatingly slow (just browsing folders on D is painful and laggy), even when I select just a few photos to copy, and eventually it fails, telling me D is "not connected" (and of course D disappears from Windows and the device manager).

Am I SOL with my D drive, or is there any hope whatsoever? :( I was told about a freezer trick (http://lifehacker.com/5515337/save-a-failed-hard-drive-in-your-freezer-redux), someone told me it helped him (at least temporarily to recover the data), has this ever worked for anyone here?

Thanks.

[Drs_Res]

Have you tried checking the connections to the D drive?

[The Norseman]

If it were me, I'd check connections as Drs Res suggested as well as boot to a non-windows rescue disk and do a thorough disk check.

You can do a thorough disk check with windows too, so if you haven't done that yet, I'd strongly recommend it. With 500gigs, it'll take several hours or so.

If I knew for sure the HD was failing, I'd start to burn backup DVDs in preparation of scrapping the drive before it becomes really, really expensive to recover the data after the HD failed.




ETA:

Forgot to add that I've heard of the freezer trick as well, though I've never had an opportunity to use it. Again, if it were me, I'd read about half dozen or so different blogs and websites describing the freezer thing first before my own attempt.

[Beerina]

Open your computer and blow out the inside with a leaf blower.

[MrQhuest]

From what i've read the freezer trick is a last ditch effort to restart a stuck HDD. I would not attempt it unless the HDD is dead, and you are NOT planning to send it out for data recovery.
YMMV

MrQ

[OnlyTellsTruths]

It had about 50 gigs left as of today.

If it has 50 gigs left (from a 500 gig drive) and you never did any defrag on it, then it could have symptoms like these....

...but what you describe sounds to be a bit worse that that.

Good luck recovering the data! (Not sarcasm.)

[Cuddles]

Have you tried checking the connections to the D drive?

This. I had a very similar problem with an external USB hard drive that suddenly stopped being able to play most files, and then disappeared entirely the next day. Giving the connections a bit of a clean got it back working fine. Presumably the same sort of thing could happen regardless of how it's connected.

[monoman]

I once saved the whole contents of a non-xp readable drive using Knoppix. You can download it and boot it from a cd or dvd - can't remember which.

[nvidiot]

Try using something to image rather than copy the drive to a new one. You might find that can at least rescue a good chunk of the data.

Paragon is pretty good for that, but there are many disk imaging products out there.

[Captain_Snort]

HAve a look at the health of the drive using SMART. I unfortunately have no idea how you would look up such data using windows, but if you were to use linux, woudl simply be a case of using 'smartctl' in the terminal. That will give you a run down of the data the drive has about its' own health, such as age, hours used, recent failures etc. May help you decided if it does need replacing, or maybe just a wee glitch.

[JWideman]

It sounds like the drive is very heavily fragmented. The first thing you should do is run scandisk. Use the most thorough mode, including having it check on reboot. Then if there's no physical errors, defrag it.

[JJM 777]

There are reasons why I keep all my data on two different hard disks (one of which is a USB drive), which are stored in two different buildings.

[Zax63]

I've tried the freezer trick once on a drive that was clicking and would not start up with no success but is was already farther gone than your drive.

I don't like the idea of defragmenting and if you are going to use Scandisk don't allow it scan for bad sectors. With an already failing disk I think it will do more harm then good.

You might want to be selective about copying your data. If you have your CDs and videos they can always be ripped again. Yes, it will be a PITA but you won't have lost anything. Photos on the other hand can't be replaced if you have no backup so I would do those first.

When you have tried everything else you can give this freeware a shot: PC Inspector (http://www.pcinspector.de/Default.htm?language=1)

I used it years ago and recovered maybe 1/3 of what was on the drive. That version was insanely slow, it literally ran for days.


One of my rules of thumb is that drives are on borrowed time after 3 years. Expect failure in a drive older than that. In your case don't trust your C: & H: drive. Plan on replacing it and get some kind of external backup as well. I like drive docks and bare drives as opposed to a contained external hard drive.

Second of course is to have two or three copies on different media of anything important. A lesson few people, including myself, ever pays attention to until they suffer a major loss of data.

[roger]

It was kind of lost in the rest of the thread, so I will repeat it. Downloading a bootable form CD linux is a very common way of recovering data from a disk that you cannot read from windows. I don't know the details of why, but the protocols are different and unix is able to continue reading a disk when Windows just gives up.

I strongly suggest trying this before any of the suggestions above. Why? Because it is more likely to succeed, and if you disk is really failing at a hardware level you only have so much time left before it is utterly dead. Spending hours on it in Windows may just mean that it is dead when you finally go to trying linux.

If you google 'recover drive knoppix' you'll find dozens of threads/articles recommending the same thing, often with instructions on how to do it.

[CORed]

I've tried the freezer trick once on a drive that was clicking and would not start up with no success but is was already farther gone than your drive.

I don't like the idea of defragmenting and if you are going to use Scandisk don't allow it scan for bad sectors. With an already failing disk I think it will do more harm then good.

You might want to be selective about copying your data. If you have your CDs and videos they can always be ripped again. Yes, it will be a PITA but you won't have lost anything. Photos on the other hand can't be replaced if you have no backup so I would do those first.

When you have tried everything else you can give this freeware a shot: PC Inspector (http://www.pcinspector.de/Default.htm?language=1)

I used it years ago and recovered maybe 1/3 of what was on the drive. That version was insanely slow, it literally ran for days.


One of my rules of thumb is that drives are on borrowed time after 3 years. Expect failure in a drive older than that. In your case don't trust your C: & H: drive. Plan on replacing it and get some kind of external backup as well. I like drive docks and bare drives as opposed to a contained external hard drive.

Second of course is to have two or three copies on different media of anything important. A lesson few people, including myself, ever pays attention to until they suffer a major loss of data.

I would add that it's a good idea to have a backup stored in a different location than your computer (different building if possible). In the event of a burglary, fire, flood or other disaster, both your computer and your backup media may be gone, if they are in the same building.

[CORed]

It was kind of lost in the rest of the thread, so I will repeat it. Downloading a bootable form CD linux is a very common way of recovering data from a disk that you cannot read from windows. I don't know the details of why, but the protocols are different and unix is able to continue reading a disk when Windows just gives up.

I strongly suggest trying this before any of the suggestions above. Why? Because it is more likely to succeed, and if you disk is really failing at a hardware level you only have so much time left before it is utterly dead. Spending hours on it in Windows may just mean that it is dead when you finally go to trying linux.

If you google 'recover drive knoppix' you'll find dozens of threads/articles recommending the same thing, often with instructions on how to do it.

I second this advice. There are actually several bootable Linux CD distributions available, Knoppix is one of the oldest and best known. A command line utility called ntfsclone should be available. It will image an entire drive, and that image can be restored to a different drive. You can also mount the drive and copy files.

The first thing I would suggest trying would be to open your case and unplug and reseat both ends of the data cable (hard drive and motherboard) and the power connection. If you are very lucky, the problem is just a bad connection somewhere. The second thing I would do is use a bootable Linux CD to attempt recovery of your data. If you are successful in recovering your data, then you can try checkdisk, defragmentation, etc., if you really think trying to salvage the drive is worht the effort.

[Morrigan]

Update: I turned off the computer for a few hours yesterday, then turned it back on. D was showing up, and I managed to copy the majority of my data to H at a decent speed. Right now I only have some videos left (of course, the video folder being the biggest one, but so far it's still copying all right, only about 3 gigs left). During these copy attempts, the D drive "disconnected" about 2-3 times only. Not too bad. If the copy speed at been at the same rate as it was when I posted the OP, I'd still be copying some photos. :boggled:

Someone said that I'm to assume C/H will fail also. That's scary, but I already planned on buying a new computer soon, so I'm hoping that my data will at least be intact until then.

If I ever have more problems for retrieving data, I will try the Knoppix trick before the freezer trick, for sure. Though my filesystem is NTFS, would that cause problems?

Also, my boyfriend said he unplugged and replugged the SATA connector and it didn't help, so it's not the connector.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. When I get my new computer, what would be a recommended backup protocol exactly? An external hard drive? A RAID 1 array maybe? (Burning stuff to DVDs constantly is just not practical at all, so that's out.)

[Rat]

Thanks for the advice, everyone. When I get my new computer, what would be a recommended backup protocol exactly? An external hard drive? A RAID 1 array maybe? (Burning stuff to DVDs constantly is just not practical at all, so that's out.)
For every internal drive in my machine, I have an external drive duplicating it. I use Vice Versa to sync them, but I imagine there are good free equivalents.

I also have CrashPlan backing up a lot of my stuff online, but how practical that is depends on how much data you have.

[commandlinegamer]

Fragmentation is not generally an issue with modern filesystems, viz NTFS. FAT was horrible. Unless you're constantly adding, and removing large chunks of data, I just wouldn't bother.

I would certainly not recommend defragmenting a drive which is suspected of failure. You do not want to stress that disk any more than absolutely necessary.

Imaging the disk to another drive is the best option. I use ddrescue which is pretty good at salvaging stuff provided the drive is not too far gone. For checking the disk, most live Linux distros include badblocks.

There are tools which can repair bad sectors on the disk, but again I wouldn't use them until you're sure you've got as much of your data off as you can.

[CORed]

...
Also, my boyfriend said he unplugged and replugged the SATA connector and it didn't help, so it's not the connector.
...


There are three connections that need to be reseated: The SATA cable to the drive, the SATA connection to the motherboard, and the power connection to the drive. A bad SATA cable is also a (rather unlikely) possibility.

[Morrigan]

Ah, well, I just asked my boyfriend and he said he tested all of those cases (except testing a different SATA cable).

Any more suggestions regarding a back-up plan for my new computer? So far I got one vote for an external drive. Anyone in favour of a raid 1 array?

[The Norseman]

I wouldn't bother with a RAID without some competent knowledge of their use and weaknesses.

A good rule of thumb is to make backups on different media types -- in this case, what I do is burn DVD's of my pictures, documents and so on as well as external HDDs.

Also, I am pretty serious about the utility of my data in the coming years, so I also tend to favor open formats (like vanilla text files or similar) rather than proprietary formats such as MS .docx files. I have learned the hard way about this. Another example is that I have a copy of Foxit pdf reader on the same DVD as my pdf's just in case.

Yes. Occasionally I am paranoid about my computer stuff.

[Walabio]

Others have said this already; but it cannot be emphasized enough however, backup is your friend. You need to backup everything.

[Morrigan]

Others have said this already; but it cannot be emphasized enough however, backup is your friend. You need to backup everything.

Yeah, thanks, I really had no idea. :rolleyes:

[monoman]

I use a free 2GB DropBox account to backup non-rippable essentials. Although it doesn't sound like much, I have all my word docs, cubase songs and visual studio projects on there.
Once installed, it acts just like a regular folder on windows, so you simply drag and drop your files into the folder and drop box automatically synchronizes for you.

[Fishstick]

Ah, well, I just asked my boyfriend and he said he tested all of those cases (except testing a different SATA cable).

Any more suggestions regarding a back-up plan for my new computer? So far I got one vote for an external drive. Anyone in favour of a raid 1 array?

Raid is not backup.

As others have said, if they're identical drives, expect the other to fail at some point in the near future too. If there's crucial data on either one, you should get a clone of the drive ASAP. 1+TB drives are super cheap right now, so there's no excuse not to hook one up and make a proper clone (with filezilla or a livecd, or whatever method of choice) of the old drive(s).

I've always said there's two types of users; those who have experienced a data loss, and those who will experience one.

[WildCat]

Anyone in favour of a raid 1 array?
My RAID 1 has saved me before, I recommend it.

[Rat]

My RAID 1 has saved me before, I recommend it.
But it will not help you retrieve your data at all if you have a house fire. Or if you are burgled.

[MortFurd]

HAve a look at the health of the drive using SMART. I unfortunately have no idea how you would look up such data using windows, but if you were to use linux, woudl simply be a case of using 'smartctl' in the terminal. That will give you a run down of the data the drive has about its' own health, such as age, hours used, recent failures etc. May help you decided if it does need replacing, or maybe just a wee glitch.
You download Smartmon from here (http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki) and use it as the instructions say.

[WildCat]

But it will not help you retrieve your data at all if you have a house fire. Or if you are burgled.
Nor does an external hard drive in the same house.

I'm not worried about someone stealing the computer, it's not a laptop. Not many people stealing desktop computers.

I also have an external HD and also back up pictures on dvds, but nothing beats the convenience of a RAID 1. If a drive fails just remove it and pop in a new one, and it gets restored. No software to reload!

[Zax63]

I have a cautionary tail involving RAID 1. Not too long ago my computer warned me that the boot drive was failing. After I replaced it the BIOS decided to treat my RAID, that I use as a data drive, as 2 separate drives. I looked at the contents of each drive and found that one of them was missing over 100 GB of data, 10's of thousands of files. If the wrong drive had failed I would have lost all of that.
No idea what the problem was, it's a decent ASUS motherboard and at no time did I receive any error or warning messages about it.

RAID also doesn't protect from accidental deletion or erasure by virus.

Nothing wrong with using a RAID but I wouldn't count on it as my only backup.

[CORed]

Ah, well, I just asked my boyfriend and he said he tested all of those cases (except testing a different SATA cable).

Any more suggestions regarding a back-up plan for my new computer? So far I got one vote for an external drive. Anyone in favour of a raid 1 array?

A raid 1 array is much better than a single disk with no backup, but there are still events that can result in a loss of data, for example a power surge, or a severe failure in the RAID controller that damages both drives. However, the risk is much lower than with a single drive.

[Rat]

Nor does an external hard drive in the same house.

I'm not worried about someone stealing the computer, it's not a laptop. Not many people stealing desktop computers.

I also have an external HD and also back up pictures on dvds, but nothing beats the convenience of a RAID 1. If a drive fails just remove it and pop in a new one, and it gets restored. No software to reload!
People certainly do get away with desktop machines, but indeed mine is a very heavy beast, and I had trouble enough getting it in place. But yes, the point of a RAID is that you can recover very quickly, while restoring from external drives is going to take a day or two.

But online is the way forward for most stuff. I have about half a terabyte backed up online at the moment. I have about 4 terabytes that is not currently online, but that's stuff that recreatable if needs be, and it is duped to external. The problem is that unless you have a much faster connection than I do, by the time you've backed up everything online, you need a new machine and have to start again.

[Morrigan]

My best vacation photos are stored on a Photobucket account, so I do use online for back-up a little bit, though of course to a very limited extent. Also, most of my important documents have been converted to Google docs, so I'm good here too.

I guess RAID 1 is pretty limited after all, so I might go with an external drive. Any brand recommendations?

[grmcdorman]

Question, Morrigan: do you have more than one computer in use at home (i.e. a network)?

If so, then something called network attached storage might be a good choice (it's a little box containing a hard drive, electronics, and some software, that you plug into your WiFi router and can access from any computer connected to your WiFi). They're a bit more expensive than a simple external hard drive, though.

If you don't want, or need, that route then external hard drives are almost a commodity item (i.e. not much difference between brands). The main difference is (edit: physical) size: there are actually three sizes:

Flash drives, also called thumb drives. Small, can fit into a wallet or purse, but more limited capacity (a large one these days is 64MB). Slower than hard drives for writing.
Desktop hardrives. About the size of a hardcover book, typically with a power adapter. Lots of storage, 2TB (2048MB) or more.
Portable hard drives, about the size of a small paperback book. Smaller capacity than the desktop drives, typically without a power adapter.


You'd want to choose from the above types (or some combination!) based on what you need to do. If portability isn't an issue, and won't be in the future, go with the desktop drive.

[Morrigan]

Yeah, my boyfriend has his own computer and we are in a network (and of course we have wifi). I'm not sure about the network storage, how much do they cost and are they big? I don't have a lot of extra room, though if it's as small as a normal hard drive it might do.

I think a desktop drive is the best solution. I would need a lot of storage, so flash drives are out. How much space do portable drives typically have?

[Cuddles]

Some good reviews here:
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/07/20/ten_portable_usb_3_hdds/
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/08/11/ten_desktop_usb_3_hdds/

Basically, you're looking at ~£100 for 2TB on a desktop drive and the same price for 1TB for a portable one. You'll struggle to find more than 3TB for normal or 1.5TB for portable drives.

As for physical size, it really is just a hard drive in a box. The difference between desktop and portable is that desktop are 3.5" drives (normal PC hard drives) and portable are 2.5" drives (common in laptops). The exact size and weight will vary a bit depending on materials and design, but if you think of a regular hard drive in a fairly close-fitting box you won't go far wrong. One point to bear in mind if you're pushed for space is that a lot of desktop drives will stand vertically rather than lying flat, so they might actually take up less floor/desk space than a portable one.

[grmcdorman]

To answer your question about network storage devices: they are only marginally bigger than the desktop hard drives.

Here's a picture of ours:http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_158784e833b5b9c865.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=24298)

The white box is the NAS; this particular one is from Synology (www.synology.com), which as a techie I have found to be very good. You might want one a little less fancy, though.

To the right of it there is a desktop hard-drive (1TB), and on top of it is our WiFi router.

The Synology devices provide printer sharing, music streaming through your web-browser, a photo album, file downloading, and a lot more. Their base model is available from Amazon; in the U.K. (is it correct that you're there?) it's £116.26 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-DS110j-Bay-Enclosure-Installed/dp/B002U42XD6/ref=sr_1_2?m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1317223666&sr=1-2) for the base model without a hard drive, and from £169.99 with a hard drive, depending on how large a hard drive you want in it.

Other brands include D-Link or Netgear. I'm not as familiar with those, as I don't own one.

Edit to add: The devices generally come with some sort of software you install on your computer to automatically backup files; for Synology it's "Data Replicator" (http://www.synology.com/dsm/backup_desktop.php?lang=enu).

[quadraginta]

I had to replace our WiFi router recently. I got a Netgear N600 for less than $100. It has a USB port for an external hard drive that is accessible to anyone using the router.. Seems to work without any glitches. I backed up all the personal data on all the stuff in our house.

I think it is hot swappable, but I'm not certain.

Not high tech, but it is one more tool to add to the box if your budget is limited