I have only ever heard heartbreaking stories of failure and data loss from those who’

[mustpost]

Lacie

Aarrghhh.
Big bluddy 1tb Disk Extreme+ - it's gorn with all my 800gb.

Now I've got your attention , I now realise that, as fule kno, this is/was a crock of sh1t, and it stinketh, etc, etc. If you would like to wallow in my (commercial) misery please guugle it and see what a putz I've been. (I did buy it in 2007 tho'.)

The web is full of all of the recovery stuff - what I'm looking for in this esteemed organ (!) is anyone who has direct experience with the same drive..

Don't even begin with customer support

I've done most things, problem looks like it's the RAID and integral board powering up the disks etc.. I have had the external power supply renewed, it was first thing that went wrong. But then, disks don't power up seperately on a caddy. Suggestions are that the board fried the Seagate drives...

£800 + for data recovery...

Help???

[Bushfiva]

I don't have experience with the same drive. I did a quick Google which suggests this is by LaCie and it's RAID0???

If that's true, then you're probably quite screwed beyond belief. People selling RAID0 kit should have their knackers cut off.

On the offchance the drive is OK, I've recovered data from a RAID5 array with a bad drive in a unit that wouldn't rebuild using third-party software whose name I can't remember right now. The drives were removed from the RAID device and attached to a PC, and the software did its thing over the next 4 days... The software cost something like $70. Getway has something similar, costing $180 (caveat, never used them) but you can try before buy: the trial will show you what can be recovered.

If you think one of the drives is genuinely blasted, in the past I have swapped the driver controller from a known functional drive long enough to recover the drive.

I think I'd attach the drives to something else, use RAID recovery software in demo mode, and see if it offered any light at the end of the tunnel.

Alternately, you could just buy a new unit and recover from backup...

EDit: OK, I re-read the specs: this thing does RAID0 if you add more units? So I guess you've a single drive in yours? Anyway, I'll leave what I wrote in case there's anything useful in it. Check out R-Studio stuff, again try before buy.

[mixture]

Bushfiva,

People selling RAID0 kit should have their knackers cut off.

Actually, believe it or not, RAID0 has its uses, primarily in the world of performance critical applications with either non-critical or frequently backed up data.

Business examples include audio and video streaming, graphic design and "scratch" disks.

In the home environment, I'm led to believe that gamers with OCD use it in their desperation to reduce their lag times or whatever gamers do.

Please, please do not think RAID (whichever number) is the great saviour. I've seen very expensive RAID5 setups fail.

The value of your data should be reflected in the number of redundant backups you make of it.

[marketaero]

Don't rely too much on external backups or backing up on HD. I also learned the hard way and lost a whole amount of data. maybe 100GB. Well I could have got it back but paying $1500 dollars.
Now I use google for storing or online backups.
By the way I did have 2, 1TB seagates. 3, 500 GB wd. 2, 250GB iomegas. They were all a waste of money

[mixture]

Don't rely too much on external backups or backing up on HD

Let's straighten up some misconceptions here.

There is nothing wrong with external backups or backing up to HD.

There is something wrong with doing backups to only ONE external device or HD.

Remember the old saying about eggs and baskets ? Well, it still applies in the 21st century.

Now I use google for storing or online backups.

Did you know Google do not make backups, they simply store redundant copies of data (typically three copies) ..... all stored on..... yup, HDs.

[Sprogget]

My own policy is to back up my work data daily onto a Freecom drive. I bring this home & copy it onto another pc. So the idea is it's held on three hard drives at any one time - if the office burns down overnight, I've got it on two hard drives. If both my work pc & home pc blow up in synchronised glory, I've still got it on one drive.

Works for me.

[MG23]

Originally Posted by mixture

Please, please do not think RAID (whichever number) is the great saviour. I've seen very expensive RAID5 setups fail.

RAID5 is a recipe for disaster, though at least more robust than RAID0; it's very easy to have one drive fail and then have a second drive fail when you're trying to rebuild the RAID on a new drive. Personally for data I want securely stored I'd either use RAID1 or ZFS RAIDZ, which gives you the space efficiency of RAID5 with far more robust recovery.

[Saab Dastard]

MG23,

I wouldn't go so far as calling it a disaster, providing that you understand its problems.

I always implement RAID configurations (usually 1 or 5) with an on-line hot spare for each array. Thus a RAID 1 mirror requires 3 disks, RAID 5 requires n+2.

I have never had a RAID array failure in 15 years, although I have had individual drive failures. Of course you do have to monitor the disk sub-system!

I am talking here about corporate environments, where money is often a secondary or even tertiary consideration!

Over the last 10 years or so, I have built more and more servers with minimal local disk (usually just system, possibly swap) with all other data on a SAN via fiber channel - data integrity then becomes someone else's problem!

SD

[call100]

You would be really unlucky for your back up HD to go belly up the same time as your PC HD...So backing up on an external HD is better than not backing up at all.....
I back up on HD and the pictures are also backed up on Picasa the documents are backed up on Dropbox as well....
If the Nuclear bomb that gets all of them at the same time doesn't get me as well I'll be happy.....

[cml387]

Norton Ghost is our default backup method at work.
It backs up an image of the whole drive.
However we are all wise after the event as the saying goes.