Paging Nibby....

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 01/09/2015 at 11:39 • Filed to: None

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Nibby to the front, please. I've got a computer question for you.

I've got a Seagate external 4TB HD that I've had for a few years and over the holiday it started making noise. Click, click, click, whirr or whatever. Overnight one night, it ejected itself. Now, when I plug it in, it won't mount. The Disk Utility (Mac OS 10.7.5) can see the disk, but I can't repair or anything. What are the odds that everything on the drive is hosed? I talked to a data recovery company, and they said that if they have to crack open the drive and start monkeying with the head etc. it will run me $900-1900. The stuff on that drive is important (like a crap ton of photos, and my entire iTunes library), just not that important.

It's events like this that make one start learning about multiple backups and RAID. I used to work in a computer lab at UT, and we had a saying: "There are two kinds of users. Those who have lost data, and those who will lose data." So while it's a major bummer, I'm still resigned to the fact that these things just happen sometimes.

SidewaysOnDirt still misses Bowie > ttyymmnn 01/09/2015 at 11:44

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Sounds like a physical disc failure to me. Backups are important.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 01/09/2015 at 11:46

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I'm not Nibby or in it professionally, but I'll answer with some limited knowledge. Unless you've failed something spectacularly in the way of a platter crash, there *will be* usable info on that drive. Depends at least partly on what failed. If you were to buy another one and crack it open, then swap platters, it's very possible you'd get things back. *But*, that has to be done in a specialized clean room for good results.

ttyymmnn > SidewaysOnDirt still misses Bowie 01/09/2015 at 11:53

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Yeah, I know. I had the drive partitioned so that half of it was for my Time Machine backup, but the other half I was using just to dump things on because my iMac is getting full. Should have had a backup of the backup. And by this afternoon, I will.

Tohru > ttyymmnn 01/09/2015 at 11:53

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The information should be usable, but something inside the drive broke.

SidewaysOnDirt still misses Bowie > ttyymmnn 01/09/2015 at 11:54

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Yeah, you can partition your drive, but it's still the same physical drive, so it doesn't do you any good in the case of something physical like this.

ttyymmnn > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 01/09/2015 at 11:55

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I spoke at length with somebody at a data recovery business here in town. I said that I was afraid that the write head had been scraping across the platters the whole time, and she said that they have opened drives with completely scrubbed platters and piles of dust inside. If they have to clean room it, then I doubt I'll pay that kind of money.

Lekker > ttyymmnn 01/09/2015 at 11:55

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we had a saying: "There are two kinds of users. Those who have lost data, and those who will lose data."

Still applies.

The clicking sound you hear is likely the needle/head scraping the disk or just straight up the disks hitting each other, which would be the equivalent of heavy knocking in an engine. Meaning a big uh oh. Unfortunately sir, I highly doubt anything is recoverable. There is however chance with the terminal if you're handy with it (Macs run on unix), so you may be able to salvage the data but you'll need some command-fu.

I lost a drive with the last pictures of some loved relatives that passed away a week before losing the data. So I can say I fall in the "have lost" category. So now I have 3 backups of everything..

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 01/09/2015 at 11:57

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Yep, platter crashes happen, and when they do, you're typically hosed.

ttyymmnn > Lekker 01/09/2015 at 11:57

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I've got a certain bit of Terminal experience. But yeah, I'm really not holding out any hope.

ttyymmnn > SidewaysOnDirt still misses Bowie 01/09/2015 at 11:58

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Yup.

ttyymmnn > Tohru 01/09/2015 at 11:59

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Let's hope so. But if they want to charge me $900 to recover it, it's gone.

Lekker > ttyymmnn 01/09/2015 at 12:00

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http://tips.dataexpedition.com/hdrecovery.htm…

This might help in general when thinking unix (or Mac..) HD failure and data recovery. I hope it helps

Osiris - I can haz Euro spec? > ttyymmnn 01/09/2015 at 12:02

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It sounds like the writer (I can't remember the actual name of it off hand right now) either popped out of alignment or broke altogether. Either way, that drive would be hosed if that's the case. Data recovery companies would be able to recover the data though because it's not the platter(s) itself that's broken. I noticed below that you said you were afraid that the writer was scraping the platters themselves. While that does happen from time to time, you would definitely not be getting a "click click" sound. You'd get something more like nails on a chalkboard but so quiet that you wouldn't be sure it's the HDD but you know it's the most annoying sound you've ever heard.

ttyymmnn > Lekker 01/09/2015 at 12:02

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Thanks. I'll give this a read.

TheHondaBro > ttyymmnn 01/09/2015 at 12:04

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Just a question. Have you been mistreating the hard drive? Has it been dropped either while it was spinning or dormant?

One of my external hard drives (That my roommate mistreated after I lent it to him) started making a clicking noise and wouldn't mount. I got a new cable and it worked. Try that before spending thousands of dollars on recovery.

Funktheduck > ttyymmnn 01/09/2015 at 12:05

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I can't add much that hasn't been stated but I can give you a little hope. Depending on where you bought your music from you can generally re download it for free. Just gotta take the time to do so

ttyymmnn > TheHondaBro 01/09/2015 at 12:11

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No, no mistreatment. It just sits on my desk. I unplug it when I go out of town, and hide it in the house, thinking that if somebody broke in and stole my computer that I would still have the data. But no, never dropped, never abused. Rarely ever even unplugged.

Tohru > ttyymmnn 01/09/2015 at 12:13

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$900 is when they have to do stuff like laser image the platters and reconstruct the data that way.

Honestly, Amazon Cloud Drive or Google Drive are very cheap cloud-based backup solutions.

I use a 3TB network drive I got on clearance for $86.

ttyymmnn > Funktheduck 01/09/2015 at 12:14

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I had a lot of music from iTunes. And I can re-download all of that stuff. I recently made a project of ripping ALL of my old CDs to the computer so I could put them away. So much burning, in fact, that I think I killed the super drive in the Mac. I will have to rip those again. There was a lot of classical music that I stole from my Dad's iPod a few years ago, but that's not important. All of the App Store apps can also be re-downloaded. It's the photos that are irreplaceable. And I'm not sure what was on there. All of the photos I took at my kids' school and soccer games, but that's not the end of the world. I just hope that none of my aviation photos were there. But I don't think they were.

Funktheduck > ttyymmnn 01/09/2015 at 12:18

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Yeah. I've lost a few drives over the years. Lost pictures too. I have 3 external hard drives now. Photos and videos are all I really care about bc those can't be replaced. I feel for ya.

ttyymmnn > Funktheduck 01/09/2015 at 12:22

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Thanks. I'm going out right now to get a second new drive.