Firewire Drive troubles
 

One of my backup footage drives, a 200gb Western Digital firewire drive, took a big poo today. This morning it started making some load clicking, and then decided to vanish from my Mac. I usually capture now to my 2nd internal drive, but I move the clips to this FW drive to keep capture space open. I have changed cables, plugged it into different macs, anything I can think of. Anyone have any other ideas? I have about 80 gigs of video for a current project, and if I've lost that data, I may just cancel the project and eat the loss.

Back-up People. Even if it means 2 days of DVD-burning.

- having one crappy day.

Aw jeez Brian, reading your post was like listening to fingernails on a blackboard. When they start making that click-of-death sound it generally means RIP. Since your Firewire bus still operates and the drive won't work on other Macs, I think the drive is pushing daisies or, at least, not user-fixable. I'd recommend giving WD a call, particularly if it's still under warranty. There are also companies that can recover data from dead drives but the cost and turn-around time may make this infeasible.

Very sorry for your trouble, Brian.

Can you hear it running? Does it show up on the Apple System Profiler? What software do you have, Disk Warrior, Norton, etc. Data Rescue X is software to recover Data, it is not a repair utility like others. I have used it successfully on several occasions.

If the drive is not running then you need to make sure it is not a power issue.

thanks Ken, that's what I was afraid of. At this point, from what I've heard of Drive Saver's costs, this project isn't worth it. I just hope WD replaces the drive so I'm not out the cost of it as well. The drive has been quiet and fast, so I'm hoping that this was a freak occurence.

Thanks for the reply Jeff, the drive is definitely powering up ( with the same clicking noises as before. Quite frightening. ) I have Diskwarrior, I haven't tried the recovery one though. I followed the instructions for using Diskwarrior on the WD site, I started Diskwarrior, plugged the drive into the computer, and in the pulldown menu it said "Unknown Disk" and the message text below said "error communicating with drive". I haven't tried System Profiler, but I will check that out right now.

*update* drive still clicking like mad, and not showing up in System Profiler. ( cries ).

Definitely call WD. I agree that clicking is usually fatal I do recall a case a few years back of some Toshiba drives where the problem was not the DRIVE but the circuit board. If the circuit board was replaced the data on the drive was salvagable. These were internal drives and it would be much easier to replace the circuit board on an internal drive...

Brian, see what WD says. There is software that will attempt to mount the disk so it can be seen. It may erase a small portion of data to write a new boot block. Then use the data recovery software to get your data onto another hard drive. Once a new boot block is written, the drive will never see your old files and will record over them.

I spoke with WD and with Drive Savers today. Both said the drive was likely dead, and my continued attempts to run it most likely damaged it more so. I did some more digging into my Final Cut cache folders and found about half of my project ( thank goodness I switched drives during the project! ) Drive Savers said from 600 - 2900 to recover the data, 200 if they couldn't get anything. For a $1k project, I decided it wasn't worth it. I've got some of my project back up, and getting ready to do some re-capturing ( still have all the tapes of course ). UGH.

This may sound like a joke, but it has worked before. Put the drive in the freezer, wait for it to cool down (not too long, you don't want it to freeze). Then try mounting the drive. Sometimes the chips on the drive start to die and get more sensitive to heat. Putting it in the freezer can help this.

good luck,
Aaron

edit: you should keep it in the freezer while you run it, if you can, that way it won't heat up and you'll be able to transfer all the data off of it without it overheating

My new drive from WD arrived today, DOA. I can't say I'd recommend their products to anyone at this point, although the customer service reps are doing a great job at keeping me quiet. :(

A brand new drive from WD?! Dead dead? Whew. Brian, you must be feeling like you're being punished for some mysterious transgression.

I just ordered a WD drive...I can't wait to see how it does <g>.

I have one of the WD200 external drives. The drive seems ok, although it takes a bit of time to mount, but the firewire cable it came with was DOA. THAT took a while to figure out.

I have a WD 100 gig internal that's been treating me very well. The IBM that came with my MDD was clicking for while, but it stopped and hasn't made a peep in 5 months.

my kosmic interference is bad, and high. i was born on 4-20, hitler's birthday. can't be good.

anyway, the "new" new drive is supposed to arrive tomorrow. i'll keep everyone posted.

my maxtor 160gb drive is running smoothly. ( fingers crossed, knocking on wood, and sending the dogs out to kill any black cats in the neighborhood. )

just kidding about the cat thing. i have 2 cats and i love them very much, i just needed a third item in my list.

I've got the new drive, and things are running smoothly. I haven't stuck it back into the production loop yet, but I'm using it on my laptop for some audio editing and things are cool. One thing I noticed about the DOA drive was the unruly hums coming out of that thing as soon as I plugged it in. This new one is so quiet I can stand to have it sitting on the table next to me.

WD is OK by me! Once again. :D