3 TB HD Gone South

[lomapaseo]

This is a real puzzler to me. This drive has been working fine in Win 7 64 bit with a little over 2 tb of data on it. Then it simply disappears from my drive list. I relocated it and it now shows up in the disk management utility as 746 gb GPT partition but still not active. .

I want my 2.2 gb of stored data back. Is this a lost cause and I have to format it to get it recognized as the 3 tb that I originally had it at??

I suppose I can tolerate the data loss but it's the principal of the issue as well as understanding it that is bothering me.

[mixture]

backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup ....

seriously people... how many more of these sorry stories do we have to see round here..... for gods sake learn how to ....

BACKUP


Its not hard, it can be heavily automated.... just do it !
(and test restores once in a while)

If you want another way of looking at it, its like safe sex.... perhaps tedious to remember to do consistently. But if you can't entirely trust your partner, you won't regret it !

[Milo Minderbinder]

totally agree with Mixture

with the following additional points
the bigger the hard drive, the bigger the potential loss when it goes tits up8.
and the newer the technology, the bigger the risk. 3TB drives haven't really worked through enough into mainstream yet to have overcome teething problems.....remember with Seagates 1TB ones they started failing at around 8 months old, and I seem to remember a similar problem with the first batch of 500GB
the other comment is, it sounds like it's ****ed, but it could be worth trying to attack it with Recuva or a similar program on a 64-bit machine


(question - you say you relocated the disk. You DO have it on a machine with a 64-bit OS don't you....)

[lomapaseo]

I said I could tolerate the loss (obviously I have backups) but it's the principal of what how and why.

Yes milo it's on a 64 bit machine. I just moved it from a USB 3.0 caddy to an available slot internally when it went south.

OK if I can recover it with less than an 1/2 hr work on my part not including any additional computer resources which can be running in the background then That's what I'm interested in.

If this is basically lot's of work, I'll just have to start selecting my backup files from around the place and burn them onto a freshly formatted disk + check dsk and await the next mysterious failure. If it's the disk I can easily replace that for a couple of hundred $ +. If it's the Caddy, I already ordered another one. If it's the computer than I need to fix it somehow.

[MG23]

Can your computer actually handle a >2TB drive internally? If I remember correctly, 746GB is what you'll see if the SATA hardware/drivers don't support 3TB disks.

[Milo Minderbinder]

MG23 is right
Wait and see what happens with the new caddy
But if you do need to go down the recovery route it will be a lot longer than 30 minutes

[lomapaseo]

Thanks Milo

it's now an easy decision to format the drive and rebuild it from scratch. At least I don't have the nagging feeling that I could have saved it with a couple of clicks

[Mac the Knife]

S.M.A.R.T. status for the drive?

(I know it isn't the be/end-all of drive status)

Mac

:ooh:

[lomapaseo]

S.M.A.R.T. status for the drive?

(I know it isn't the be/end-all of drive status)


What be that ? not heard the term before

[Milo Minderbinder]

it may be an easy decision to format the drive

its NOT an easy decision to trust it if it really has lost its formatting. That doesn't happen without a reason

I seem to remember we had a similar problem twelve months or so ago where someone had a drive moved from a caddy and it wouldn't format.....anyone else remember the thread?

[lomapaseo]

Got my new caddy today and it works fine with a new 3 tb drive, easy to format etc. in disk management.

The screwed up drive readily accepts being reformatted in disk management but only to the default displayed size of 7-800 gb

I'm sure there is a way to do this at the 3 Tb size but for the life of me I can't remember how since disk management only displays the one volume size.
There's got to be a work-around for this somehow. I thought about cloning but was afraid that would only recognize the size as the 7-800 gb size.

I checked the WD web site but it seems only to cover a displayed 3tb size disk using disk management on my Win 7 64 bit machine.

[mixture]

I seem to remember we had a similar problem twelve months or so ago where someone had a drive moved from a caddy and it wouldn't format.....anyone else remember the thread?

Yeah, I think it was that chap XV105 who's always messing around .... :)

[Milo Minderbinder]

lomapaseo

I think you need to accept that disk is u/s
Get it exchanged by WD

[Mac the Knife]

S.M.A.R.T. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T).

Use GSMartControl to read data (and test) - GSmartControl - Downloads (http://gsmartcontrol.berlios.de/home/index.php/Downloads)

Mac

(You can also use CrystalDiskInfo - Crystal Dew World - simpler and smaller) (http://crystalmark.info/?lang=en)

:)

PS: SMART will predict about 50% of HDD failures.

[aditya104]

Recently a 2001 Samsung 20GB HDD failed on me. Stopped booting. Spent two days diagnosing the problem after which I isolated the HDD as faulty.

You mentioned that you don't want to spend much time on this. But if anyone else ever is in a similar situation and wants to check the health of their HDD, the best tool atm would be SeaTools for DOS (http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/). Do a short test, followed by a long test. My HDD passed the short test but failed the long test. This tool can be run on HDDs of any make. But it can 'repair' only Seagates.

For booting SeaTools from a USB, I used RMPrepUSB (http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/72---easyboot---a-grubdos-multiboot-drive-that-is-easy-to-maintain). Some learning curve there, but after that a very handy software.

I am not an HDD expert. I learned the above from the internet.

[mixture]

You mentioned that you don't want to spend much time on this.

For those of us who've spent some time on the commercial side of IT, time is money. If an engineer wasted two days attempting to diagnose a fault on a PC, they would soon be looking for another job.

Sure, server side complex/critical problems, spend a couple of days if you must .... but at desktop/laptop level, spending a couple of days is positively unheard of. In the amount of time wasted, you would have already rebuilt the thing and restored any files from backup (if applicable).