Harddrive woes- Please help!

Short answer no, not unless you have plenty of RRR's to spend.

The data recovery people will charge you a fortune to recover the data, but you can try it yourself if you feel adventures :p

Just buy a drive that is exactly the same remove the PCB from the new drive and remove the PCB from the old drive and swap them round if that doesn't fix it you know it's the motor. Which means you have to open the drive (you need torx tools to do so) then remove the motor and replace it with the other drive's motor without getting ANY dust on the platter and by trying to either not move or move the heads very little.

The platters themselves don't damage unless they get in contact with anything (and I mean anything, IE a dust particle is enough to damage it). The heads can theoretically be damaged but then the drive would still spin up, but if they are it's a right MISSION to remove them and replace them :D

Enjoy. ;)
 
Try using a different molex connector (the little white connector). It might be bust thats why the drive isn't spinning up, because its not getting any power.
 
Sadly I have to concede defeat. Took the drive out of the enclosure, swapped it for a trusty 80Gb seagate and it worked first time...
 
Gnome said:
Short answer no, not unless you have plenty of RRR's to spend.

The data recovery people will charge you a fortune to recover the data, but you can try it yourself if you feel adventures :p

Just buy a drive that is exactly the same remove the PCB from the new drive and remove the PCB from the old drive and swap them round if that doesn't fix it you know it's the motor. Which means you have to open the drive (you need torx tools to do so) then remove the motor and replace it with the other drive's motor without getting ANY dust on the platter and by trying to either not move or move the heads very little.

The platters themselves don't damage unless they get in contact with anything (and I mean anything, IE a dust particle is enough to damage it). The heads can theoretically be damaged but then the drive would still spin up, but if they are it's a right MISSION to remove them and replace them :D

Enjoy. ;)
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So do you think that when I take it back they might just try to fix it if it is a motor problem or will they just give me a new one?
 
Uhm it depends. They'll(IE the supplier) probably give you a new drive and send that one back. Once the drive gets to WD they will then inspect the drive the determine the extent of the damage, if it is the motor or PCB they usually fix the drive then send it back to the dealer for return to the customer (but you just got someone else's drive or a new drive). So the circle goes. You can contact WD and ask if they will directly take your drive and fix it (under warranty) but if they can't fix it they just give you a new drive. The drive manufacturers will NEVER give you a new drive right then they'll always try to fix it first which is good in your case. But it takes months.

Also I think they completely reformat the drive before they return it. The ONLY way to get the data off is to take it to a data recovery center or to do it yourself. A few years back my friend wanted to try the Data Recovery route, I think they wanted R3k or something (about 2001) so might be cheaper might be more expensive.
 
Gnome said:
Uhm it depends. They'll(IE the supplier) probably give you a new drive and send that one back. Once the drive gets to WD they will then inspect the drive the determine the extent of the damage, if it is the motor or PCB they usually fix the drive then send it back to the dealer for return to the customer (but you just got someone else's drive or a new drive). So the circle goes. You can contact WD and ask if they will directly take your drive and fix it (under warranty) but if they can't fix it they just give you a new drive. The drive manufacturers will NEVER give you a new drive right then they'll always try to fix it first which is good in your case. But it takes months.

Also I think they completely reformat the drive before they return it. The ONLY way to get the data off is to take it to a data recovery center or to do it yourself. A few years back my friend wanted to try the Data Recovery route, I think they wanted R3k or something (about 2001) so might be cheaper might be more expensive.
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I see. Thanks for all the feedback :)

My mate has most of the stuff that was on the drive( he got it all from me) and the rest I have just finished backing up to DVD thank goodness, so a brand new drive should be fine.

I think I am still going to insist on Seagate in the future though. Have not had one problem with their drives ever. I still have a 20GB Seagate that is working 100%. It must be nearly 10 years old and has been used A LOT.
 
Honestly I have had NO WD drives fail on me and 2 Seagate drives fail on me!
Fact is one manufacturer's HD's isn't more reliable than the other, ppl who say HD x is more reliable than HD y is making it up. Even Corporate SAN drives fail just as much as standard HD's (saw a research paper not so long ago, I'll go digging again if you don't want to take my word for it ;) )

The MTBF rate for a drive is only a estimate. If you want to use a drive for external storage a 7200RPM drive isn't the best choice, it's not exactly meant to be lugged around but if you do use it as a external drive it's best to treat it carefully ;)
 
Gnome said:
Honestly I have had NO WD drives fail on me and 2 Seagate drives fail on me!
Fact is one manufacturer's HD's isn't more reliable than the other, ppl who say HD x is more reliable than HD y is making it up. Even Corporate SAN drives fail just as much as standard HD's (saw a research paper not so long ago, I'll go digging again if you don't want to take my word for it ;) )

The MTBF rate for a drive is only a estimate. If you want to use a drive for external storage a 7200RPM drive isn't the best choice, it's not exactly meant to be lugged around but if you do use it as a external drive it's best to treat it carefully ;)
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Interesting. I had not considered that.

So for drives that are going to be inside the computer, the higher the RPM the better and for portable ones that are going to be carried about, lower is safer or more robust?
 
hj2k_x said:
Interesting. I had not considered that.

So for drives that are going to be inside the computer, the higher the RPM the better and for portable ones that are going to be carried about, lower is safer or more robust?
Click to expand...

Yeah, you can check the specs of the drive, they have a rated shock resistance as well as features to prevent head slam in case the drive is dropped and so forth.

Higher RPM = Higher speed and lower access time, with lower reliability.

Usually 5400RPM drives are used in laptops which are quite resistant to damage and the 4200RPM pocket drives are even more resistant. 15000RPM and 10000RPM drives are a big NO NO for external storage but they're fast fast fast.

7200Rpm are the mainstream and they're basically the in between drive if you catch my drift in terms of all the features. They're also the drives that lead the pack in storage space. 150000,10000,5400,4200RPM drives aren't close to 1 TB storage thats available with 7200rpm drives.
 
Gnome said:
Yeah, you can check the specs of the drive, they have a rated shock resistance as well as features to prevent head slam in case the drive is dropped and so forth.

Higher RPM = Higher speed and lower access time, with lower reliability.

Usually 5400RPM drives are used in laptops which are quite resistant to damage and the 4200RPM pocket drives are even more resistant. 15000RPM and 10000RPM drives are a big NO NO for external storage but they're fast fast fast.

7200Rpm are the mainstream and they're basically the in between drive if you catch my drift in terms of all the features. They're also the drives that lead the pack in storage space. 150000,10000,5400,4200RPM drives aren't close to 1 TB storage thats available with 7200rpm drives.
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I see.

And the cache stats that one gets with hdd's? Like my new 250GB Seagate has 16MB cache- does this improve speed as well?
 
Yeah you should check http://www.tomshardware.com for benchmarks on drives (they also alway give you all the technical goodies on the hardware they review). The cache improves the random/burst read speed but usually NOT the sequential read. If you think on it, it'll probably make sense why.

The amount of platters & heads(more heads = more speed) also influences speed as well as the way data is stored on the platter (perpendicular storage seems to greatly improve speed, tomshardware found that a 1tb perpendicular 7200RPM drive almost had the same performance as a WD Raptor 10000RPM drive)
 
Ok, will check it out.

Also, Vista seems to have sped up my drives - I suppose that is a software thing and nothing to do with the hardware. Does it make a difference if I have the 32-bit or 64-bit version installed on a dualcore machine?
 
Gnome said:
Honestly I have had NO WD drives fail on me and 2 Seagate drives fail on me!
Fact is one manufacturer's HD's isn't more reliable than the other, ppl who say HD x is more reliable than HD y is making it up. Even Corporate SAN drives fail just as much as standard HD's (saw a research paper not so long ago, I'll go digging again if you don't want to take my word for it ;) )

The MTBF rate for a drive is only a estimate. If you want to use a drive for external storage a 7200RPM drive isn't the best choice, it's not exactly meant to be lugged around but if you do use it as a external drive it's best to treat it carefully ;)
Click to expand...

Funny you should say that. Most people dont believe in Maxtor, and yet I have 4 running, one as old as 5 years without a stitch of a problem. I have had 2 seagates fail on me.
 
Oh Man. have just searched and realised that there was way more than just movies and series on that hdd. ALL my photos were on there as well as well as various text documents that i dont have anywhere else.

Was busy backing everything up to DVD when the drive died. :(:(:(:(:(
 
hj2k_x said:
Oh Man. have just searched and realised that there was way more than just movies and series on that hdd. ALL my photos were on there as well as well as various text documents that i dont have anywhere else.

Was busy backing everything up to DVD when the drive died. :(:(:(:(:(
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Damn that sucks :(

Just think about last night and that should cheer you up a bit ;) :)
 
Sorry bro, I'm a bit lost in this thread? Is the harddrive broken? Or is it a software issue? I have a recovery program I can send you if it's software ;)
 
It was not spinning up. I took it back to Cafeviva where i got it and the oke said the techies would take a look at it and then send it back to Western digital who would take 5-7 working days to swap it out for a new, empty one...:|

*bleak
 
Gonna call them 1st thing tomorrow and check that they can't just put in a new motor without losing all the data. I hear that it is a tricky procedure and data recovery can run into the 1000s :(
 
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