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Author Topic: WD HDD failure, need help urgently  (Read 3808 times)

ChrisJR

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WD HDD failure, need help urgently
« on: March 02, 2009, 11:36:16 am »

On the suggestion of DarkPenguin I've posted this problem here as well as in Computers & Peripherals.

Here is my problem

My one month old Western Digital My Book Essentials HDD has basically died. It won't mount on my computer and when I run disk utility (I'm using a Mac btw), it comes up with the following...

(in a box) "First Aid failed
Disk Utility stopped verifying "My Book" because the following error was encountered:

The underlying task reported failure on exit."

Then it shows...
"Verifying volume "My Book"
** / dev/disk1s1
** Phase 1 - Read FAT
** Phase 2 - Check Cluster Chains
** Phase 3 - Checking Directories
Unable to read directory (input/output error)
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit

1 non HFS volume check
Volume needs repair."


Are there are decent software packages for recovering data or will I have to pay a specialist to fix it? Out of principle I really don't want to pay for data recovery one month after buying a HDD (poor QC or just plain shit product?) but if I really have to I will.

One thing for sure is once I get my data back the drive will be returned and I won't be using their products again.

Thanks.
Chris.
« Last Edit: March 02, 2009, 11:37:39 am by ChrisJR »
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rsmphoto

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WD HDD failure, need help urgently
« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2009, 11:44:24 am »

I've used Data Rescue II which works very well.

http://www.prosofteng.com/

FileSalvage also does a good job

www.Subrosasoft.com

Hope this helps.
« Last Edit: March 02, 2009, 11:46:40 am by rsmphoto »
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ChrisJR

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WD HDD failure, need help urgently
« Reply #2 on: March 02, 2009, 11:56:32 am »

    [/li]
Quote from: rsmphoto
I've used Data Rescue II which works very well.

http://www.prosofteng.com/

FileSalvage also does a good job

www.Subrosasoft.com

Hope this helps.
Thanks for the reply.

I've just got Data Rescue II running, how does FileSalvage compare?
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rsmphoto

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WD HDD failure, need help urgently
« Reply #3 on: March 02, 2009, 12:16:13 pm »

Quote from: ChrisJR
    [/li]
Thanks for the reply.

I've just got Data Rescue II running, how does FileSalvage compare?[/quote]

I tried them both side by side when I had a problem a while back, and they worked equally well, recovering Hasselblad .fff files. I don't remember one being significantly faster than the other. I do prefer Data Rescue's GUI.
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jonstewart

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WD HDD failure, need help urgently
« Reply #4 on: March 02, 2009, 04:47:48 pm »

Chris,

I understand your frustration, but why were you trusting a new hard drive that hadn't been burnt in?

I believe WD have a very good track record for reliability (I've had about a dozen, and none have failed. Most retired after 6-7 years) Best burn in advice I can give is run it continually for about 2000 hours; 95%+ of failures will have happened before that time.

The other comment here, is that why would you have only one copy of any critical data? Why not get a wd twin disk solution (or other manufacturer) and run it in raid 1? I know it'll be slightly bigger, physically, but if you need to store off the Notebook HD, it's probably a better bet.

(I'm currently using a 4Tb WD Sharespace as the non-portable solution; consumer grade RAID5; can't afford the real thing!)

Lastly, I'm not trying to take a dig at you Chris, I just think your frustration is a little misplaced, and pointing out what I have above might help others in future in some small way.
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paul_jones

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WD HDD failure, need help urgently
« Reply #5 on: March 02, 2009, 04:58:10 pm »

i have used data rescue a few times on drives that were stubbornly dead. it has worked really well.
but a warning, it can take an awful long time- one 80gb drive took over 14 hours once.

also, out of my dead drives (about 6 or so), all are WD, the only segate that died on me is a new 1.5tb drive i bought recently. either i buy too many WDs, or WD has no luck with me.

paul
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ChrisJR

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WD HDD failure, need help urgently
« Reply #6 on: March 02, 2009, 05:06:37 pm »

Quote from: jonstewart
Chris,

I understand your frustration, but why were you trusting a new hard drive that hadn't been burnt in?

I believe WD have a very good track record for reliability (I've had about a dozen, and none have failed. Most retired after 6-7 years) Best burn in advice I can give is run it continually for about 2000 hours; 95%+ of failures will have happened before that time.

The other comment here, is that why would you have only one copy of any critical data? Why not get a wd twin disk solution (or other manufacturer) and run it in raid 1? I know it'll be slightly bigger, physically, but if you need to store off the Notebook HD, it's probably a better bet.

(I'm currently using a 4Tb WD Sharespace as the non-portable solution; consumer grade RAID5; can't afford the real thing!)

Lastly, I'm not trying to take a dig at you Chris, I just think your frustration is a little misplaced, and pointing out what I have above might help others in future in some small way.
I never realised HDD's needed to be burnt in.

All of my data was stored on this new drive as out of my 3 HDDs, the one had completely died and the other was dying so I was using the Western Digital to temporarily store data (just for a couple weeks) until I bought another solution, something like a RAID or Drobo system, early March.

Part of my frustration is at myself but I'm pretty peeved that a brand new HDD from a reputable manufacturer failed within a month. Whatever the case it's no doubt a stupid error on my part but I needed a quick solution just in case my second drive failed completely and just as a temporary measure. As mentioned in the Computers & Peripherals section I won't be making this mistake again and am looking at the raid/drobo options as well as online storage.

Thanks.
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jonstewart

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WD HDD failure, need help urgently
« Reply #7 on: March 02, 2009, 05:37:32 pm »

Sorry I don't have any better solution than already offered to your current predicament!

I've been where you are, and it's just the lesson we all need to learn to make sure we don't do it again! You're not at all stupid for not knowing the need to burn in a drive (others will laugh and say you don't really need to do that; I disagree!). I recently realised that my little RAID1 Zyxel NAS had the power config set to turn the drives off after 5 mins! I thought I had those burnt in months ago. As soon as I realised what had happened I copied all the stuff off them onto a single removable drive.

Eerily, in a raid 1 scenario, there are many times (more than you would expect) where, when one drive fails, the other quickly follows. Raid 1 is much better than not, but not necessarily foolproof. Having copies of critical data across not only multiple hard drives but also multiple devices is not a bad idea, if they have commercial value. Of course, this requires a great deal of organisation. I seem to remember (I think it was James Russell) saying how many hard drives he was having to buy during a busy week!

Sincerely hope you get the data recovered.
J

EDIT: @ Paul; I had the same experience as you with Maxtor!
« Last Edit: March 02, 2009, 05:41:55 pm by jonstewart »
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samirkharusi

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WD HDD failure, need help urgently
« Reply #8 on: March 02, 2009, 08:22:06 pm »

Quote from: jonstewart
EDIT: @ Paul; I had the same experience as you with Maxtor!
I purchased one Maxtor, it failed in about a month, got a warranty replacement, that failed too in a similar timeframe, and got another warranty replacement. Now I switch it off except when I am actually writing or reading from it. I then got an Iomega and that failed the second day! Got a warranty replacement, still working a few months later, but I switch it off. Got a WD. I prefer it because it powers off by itself. Still working after a couple of months. Anyway now I need extra storage. I am thinking of going WD. I am still skeptical about RAID. What about viruses? Somehow over the years I have never had a situation where software-driven backups ever helped me. I think I will continue backing up on separate drives in separate housings weekly. Nuisance, but I feel more comfortable.
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jonstewart

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WD HDD failure, need help urgently
« Reply #9 on: March 03, 2009, 12:15:15 am »

When's the last time you heard about one of these raid devices being compromised by a virus etc?

Most of these raid devices (somebody correct me if I'm wrong) run a Unix / Linux core. Barring a compromised firmware update, alteration is usually not possible.

Not possible is a relative term; I suppose I mean that compared with the operating system on a computer, which by definition any of which can be overwritten / altered, these external RAID boxes are very secure. (I also run a Linux server, rather than Windoze, for much the same reason of protection against viruses, trojans, worms etc.)

I suppose that you could still have a worm migrate from a server (any prone to such infections - that wouldn't be the Linux one ;-) )and start chewing up the external HD's, but I would imagine that's a very unlikely scenario with good security in place.

Another thought: What are we using these RAID devices for? Is it backup, or is it the main repository for our data.  If the latter, then we should really be backing up on a regular (ie daily) basis to something else shouldn't we? (..or am I being too presumptive here ;-) )
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samirkharusi

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WD HDD failure, need help urgently
« Reply #10 on: March 03, 2009, 01:35:19 am »

Quote from: jonstewart
When's the last time you heard about one of these raid devices being compromised by a virus etc?

Most of these raid devices (somebody correct me if I'm wrong) run a Unix / Linux core. Barring a compromised firmware update, alteration is usually not possible.

Not possible is a relative term; I suppose I mean that compared with the operating system on a computer, which by definition any of which can be overwritten / altered, these external RAID boxes are very secure. (I also run a Linux server, rather than Windoze, for much the same reason of protection against viruses, trojans, worms etc.)

I suppose that you could still have a worm migrate from a server (any prone to such infections - that wouldn't be the Linux one ;-) )and start chewing up the external HD's, but I would imagine that's a very unlikely scenario with good security in place.

Another thought: What are we using these RAID devices for? Is it backup, or is it the main repository for our data.  If the latter, then we should really be backing up on a regular (ie daily) basis to something else shouldn't we? (..or am I being too presumptive here ;-) )
Frankly (my) little knowledge is dangerous. The failures I have had to date were either mechanical (hence my unease of a RAID setup in the same enclosure) or Windose failure (either virus-caused or otherwise) that necessitates reformating. Each and every time I lost data, the cause was totally unexpected, hence not catered for. The usual software fallback measures to avoid the necessity for reformating have always failed me (eg Windows XP recovery, etc), and I ended up losing all data. But that was in the days when I still backed up on CDs and DVDs. Hence the major nuisance was reinstalling all software and reloading all data from CDs and DVDs. How Microsoft got so big with such unreliable software is beyond comprehension, but thankfully there seems at last to be a creeping, realistic alternative from Open Source. Good! Currently my data files are becoming simply too large to keep on using DVDs, hence I back up to external HDDs. I am at this juncture contemplating adding some Terabytes. WD has an excellent-sounding 2TB HDD that is very easy to set up for RAID. It has 2 drives in one housing. Does this also mean that an absurd overheat in one drive might also lead to a disaster with its twin? I could also buy 2 separate 1TB drives for similar cost and not bother with RAID.

Thus my query: Since RAID backup is practically instantaneous, any software glitch (virus-caused or Windose corruption) that causes one drive to require reformating might lead to the second drive also to require reformating? Instant double jeopardy?! Does the same apply to power-interruption-caused mechanical failure? E.g a write-head scratching the disk while writing data? Since the RAID mirror is also writing or reading simultaneously, are we again exposed to double jeopardy? For my non-commercial purposes I feel that a single backup is sufficient, rather than also an additional back-up of the back-up. That kind of discipline is probably beyond my motivation. I store the back-up HDDs in another room, hopefully enough...
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jonstewart

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WD HDD failure, need help urgently
« Reply #11 on: March 03, 2009, 04:03:29 am »

Really what we're talking about is maintaining copies so that if one system goes down, the data is still on a second. My experience is as follows. I may have just been lucky.

I've used (consumer grade) RAID 1 on the server for years. There are two pairs (arrays) of drives, one smaller pair for OS and the larger pair for data. I use a WD 4Tb Sharespace for online backup, and then have single external hard drives for 'final' and offline backup. (I used to use a RAID 1 Zyxel NAS for online backup, but it's got too small) The sharespace is fast becoming the primary repositary, since I'm running out of space on the server, and PATA drives are more expensive now we're all on sata. The current motherboard is about 4 years old with a consumer Highpoint RAID controller onboard.

About 4 years ago 1 maxtor in the server mechanically failed, and as I was off loading data from the one remaining drive to external HDD, the other raid member also failed. Apart from that, I have never actually had an issue with both drives in an array becoming corrupted with virus or anything else.

As regards the power outage... we have infrequent but annoying momentary power outage here in the rural part of the country. As a result, I run the server, network switches, router, and Sharespace off one UPS, and there is a second in the office supplying my workstation and switch there. I have little doubt that a power outage could seriously screw up a whole array!

UPS's are not overly expensive, and only need to provide enough time that the server stops copying to other devices. Beyond that (after the server has shut down), it seems that most raid devices can just go down ungracefully without any losses. I might be wrong here, but I've never had a problem with the Zyxel in this respect.

At the end of the day, you can only do so much. I try to do what is reasonable. If the server hard drives, the Sharespace and external hard drives all fail simultaneously, I'll just have to shrug my shoulders and think of it as an opportunity to develop a new portfolio!  
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