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Ok, having rather serious problem right now. My SATA drive from Seagate, 4 years of daily use, is dying right now...
I have lots and lots of information there that I would not like to loose. Which is your procedure when this moment arrives?
I have buckup of almost everything, but I have nevertheless, worked onto these files for quite a while, so there is work
already done and the best would be to be able to get all this date back to a new disk.

Which are your suggestions, if you have any?

Cheers

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Nestor on 2005-12-27 18:08 ]</font>

Stick in a new drive,
copy from the dying one,
get rd od the now dead one and
reassign the drive letter.

Does that make sense?

Sure it does Paul Nevertheless, I expected something more sofisticated... Yea... like ways to make it through.

Look, the problem is that because is dying, it is very unstable, so I can sometimes have acces to it, and sometimes don't. Then it get locked and it starts spindle like crazy, etc., so I have little time to do the backup. I have tryed several apps that work in DOS, so to copy everything to the other disks, but it's too unstable and would not let me do so.

I am looking for a myracle... he Cheers

stop using the old drive immediately. put a new one in and set up the os. in the meantime, wrap up the old drive in cellophane so that it's airtight and put the old drive in the freezer. when everything is ready, take the old drive out of the freezer, put it in the computer and transfer everything that might be useful to the new drive.

when you have an alternative OS up and running, make sure to get an image as soon as possible. If you can't... then I'd go to selecting idividual files, or the bare necessities. Just make sure you don't spin it more than you have to. It's probably the motor that's dying out...

4 years, that sounds just about right for HD life span. It's tough when these things die out.

The only downside to the fridge advice is condensation...be careful.

Yea, I know, I have posted it myself about the fridge. The only problem is that I don't have a fridge yet Well, I will ahve to ask somebody arround for this favour... Can you imagine comming to somebody house asking to put your HD into his fridge? They'll think I'm getting mad, so I better get ready with a good scientific background on contraction and expansion...

The following noises had been heard:

week weeek week week, like if there was sort of a cycle going on, when the drive is on, and staks the whole system for a while, Windows cannot start till about 30 secods.

Then the Promise Fast Track does not find anything, telling you there is no drive. Then restarting it sees it again.

Some more noises:

sssssshhhhhhclik sssssshhhhhhclik sssssshhhhhhclik sssssshhhhhhclik and similar spining noises, and some smal hits also.

Fortunately, it is not a C drive, I don't have active partitions on there, only samples and the latest work with SX and Pulsar, so all my projects, nothing too important anyway, as I have backupt of all the samples, but of course, all the latest music I've composed will be lost. I don't do every week a backup of 70 GBs... ! I do it once every month.

Lets follow next chapter, it could be interesting... I'll bring you the latest news about what I did. Cheers guys...

When one of my HDs began to die (it sounded like sssSSSt, sssSSSt), I fell in panic, but soon I found out, that it worked after booting some minutes before it shut down. So I bought an USB drive and tried to copy all new files which I didn't backup in the last time. And when the drive got crazy again, I stopped backing up and waited a day, then continued.
NO DATA LOST!!!

Best, Thomas

It does exactly that for me to. But lately I coudn't get it back... I hope my story finishes as good as yours...

STOP USING IT!
then cool it for a week. it's lifespan is very limited......

Yes, don't worry Gary, I am not using it at all, this was untill yesterday, I will do what you have suggested. I am looking for somebody who could share with me his fridge for a drive. I will not touch it until then. Thank you man, for your advice, much appreciated

I forgot to mention an interesting and bezzare white line that would swip the screen, in the down side, crosing from left to right, with smal lines that would create an effect of something flying onto the screen, never seen it in my life. Now that the drive is disconected from the MOBO, of course, this does not happens.

i've had the same identical issue with a seagate sata drive, but i've discovered that the hard drive was not broken, it was the 300 w power supply and after changing it with a new 500 w model, the sata drive has returned to work without any problems.

It seems not to be my problem, as I have just changed it and everything works find. My power supply anyway, is of great quality, I use a Thermaltake PurePower of 420Watts. Cheers

VERY VERY VERY GOOD NEWS! Fortunally, I am right now passing everything from this drive to my new one. Waiting a couple of weeks so how made the drive to come back to life. I do not have fridge, so could not do the experiment of putting it in for a night or a week. All I've done is waiting, and then it even seems to work as it was the first day... Bezzare... Of course, I don't think I can trust it for too long...

Thanks for your advaces, cheers

Wow, you will not believe how HOT!!! the drive got while copying the files... I didn't have a way to mesure it, but it certainly would burn your hand, I can estimate that about 90 to 95 degrees. I had to put some paper on the table, for it not to burn it. I didn't installed it, but rather did the opperation from the outside of the case, because of this mad heat! But did it

Well Nestor, if you have copied all important files, then take your gloves and throw your hot HD away before it destroys your mobo, your cpu or - beware!!! - your cw card.

I didn't know a hard drive could damage a computer.

It lasted 4 years with constant use? That is pretty good. I think mine will go for 10 years because I use it infrequently. My laptop hd lasted through 2 years of very intense and constant use and some bumps.

Hey Herr, are you kidding? I didn’t know a computer could get damaged by a badly working HD. How can it be? I am interested in getting to know which are the reasons and technical possibilities to damage your computer, tell me something please.

Brain, yes, I used this HD for a long time without stop, it was one of the first SATA drives in the industry and coasted me an eye! I did entire albums with it working for month, loading there all the files to be read from Cubase. I would use about 20 tracks or more, so the reading was hard.

Did you use 16 bit or 24 bit audio? I wonder if that makes a difference. I started using 24 bit recently.