Toronto Passions

Failed 1TB External Hard disk

R

Radio_Shack

Retired Perv
Apr 3, 2007
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Finally had a failed 1TB hard disk. The drive is heavily used and stopped responding yesterday.

Recovery
---------
Took drive out of it's external case
Hooked it up to another computer via SATA cable
Booted computer with LIVE CD for ubuntu
Mounted the sda (force mount)
Was able to get to the data and copied it to a fresh 1TB disk

Moral to the story. All is not lost if an external disk seems to have died on you. In my case it was the actual enclosure that turned out to have failed not he actual disk. Lucky I guess....
 
This thread is useless without the failed make/model....:D

And Linux to the rescue again....
 
WoodPeckr said:
This thread is useless without the failed make/model....:D
Click to expand...

TrekStor 1TB (WD I think) but information in General would be useful so if you did happen to come across a failed external hard disk you should take the little puppy out of the case and try things with it. Don't assume you are snookered.
 
Great point!
Thanks for pointing that out...:cool:


PS: You know that really sucks.
You expect the HDD to fail, not the enclosure!
 
Last edited:
Radio_Shack said:
Finally had a failed 1TB hard disk. The drive is heavily used and stopped responding yesterday.

Recovery
---------
Took drive out of it's external case
Hooked it up to another computer via SATA cable
Booted computer with LIVE CD for ubuntu
Mounted the sda (force mount)
Was able to get to the data and copied it to a fresh 1TB disk

Moral to the story. All is not lost if an external disk seems to have died on you. In my case it was the actual enclosure that turned out to have failed not he actual disk. Lucky I guess....
Click to expand...

Serious questions for you and your large HD. Why do you need a drive so large? Do you actually use as lot of the space? If you do, do you back it up to another large drive? Movies? Music? What's the story if you don't mind.

Reason for asking is that i have never met anyone with a huge drive who uses more than lets say 20% at best.
 
I have torrent downloads of most movies for last 5 yrs or so. All poker programs. Lots of software. I backup the most important stuff with incremental backups. The movies I don't really care cuz I can get them back.

I am also a developer so I have source code for several clients I maintain.

I have 4TB+ of data right now.
 
Radio_Shack said:
I have torrent downloads of most movies for last 5 yrs or so.
Click to expand...
Have a buddy who does that.
He claims to have as many movies as Blockbusters on several T drives....:D
 
onehunglow said:
Serious questions for you and your large HD. Why do you need a drive so large? Do you actually use as lot of the space? If you do, do you back it up to another large drive? Movies? Music? What's the story if you don't mind.

Reason for asking is that i have never met anyone with a huge drive who uses more than lets say 20% at best.
Click to expand...

In my business I fill 1TB every 3 months and back up to 4 of them in case of failure. Can never be too careful.
When they are full I place them on a shelf and hook up 4 more. At $120 each it's cheap insurance for irreplacable customer files
 
Medman52 said:
In my business I fill 1TB every 3 months and back up to 4 of them in case of failure. Can never be too careful.
When they are full I place them on a shelf and hook up 4 more. At $120 each it's cheap insurance for irreplacable customer files
Click to expand...

Just another addition you might want to add for DRP(disaster Recovery Plan) purposes. Take an iteration of backups OFFSITE and do it now!!!! All it takes is a flood, fire or robbery to really fuck you up.
 
Radio_Shack said:
Just another addition you might want to add for DRP(disaster Recovery Plan) purposes. Take an iteration of backups OFFSITE and do it now!!!! All it takes is a flood, fire or robbery to really fuck you up.
Click to expand...

VERY VERY good point!!!!...I've been thinking of doing just that...but should stop thinking and do it!

Thanks for the reminder!
 
I have a 1TB drive (external USB) that's about 30% full (just got it recently), a 750GB that's pretty full, a 500 gb drive that's pretty full, and a 250 gb drive that's also pretty full. I have another 250 gb drive that I use for my Time Machine backup on my iMac.

What do I need so much data space for? Torrents! I pretty much download all of the TV that I watch, along with the occasional movie. I hardly watch regular broadcast TV, as I much prefer watching downloaded Xvid content for viewing, avoiding all of the commercials. I only backup my main computer drive with Time Machine, as the other content if lost, would not be catastrophic. I just hate erasing the stuff, and it is so much easier (and pretty cheap these days) to just buy another drive, than it is to burn it all to DVD's.
 
Goomer said:
...and it is so much easier (and pretty cheap these days) to just buy another drive, than it is to burn it all to DVD's.
Click to expand...

After getting burned using CD media for long term storage BIGTIME, I have even less faith DVD media would fare any better.

Until something better comes along I use a couple ext HDDs for long term storage. Drives are cheap.
 
I haven't decided what solution I am going with yet but have decided to trash all drives smaller then 1TB that are in my farm to make data management easier.

I have looked at SAN arrays as a possible solution.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4292853&Sku=T52-1006

This one can hold 5TB with several RAID levels available. I think I will likely go with 2 of these arrays and 2 complete copies of my data onsite and a third rotated monthly OFFSITE. Since the drives are HOT SWAP I can just take out a set and store them in a vault OFFSITE.

Advantage to SAN is that it does not rely on a computer to make it available since it connects directly to the network. Not the best performing way to connect the drives but the easiest to manage.
 
WoodPeckr said:
Have a buddy who does that.
He claims to have as many movies as Blockbusters on several T drives....:D
Click to expand...

What's the point? You couldn't watch everything anyway unless you stayed home 24/7 glued to the monitor !
It's like people that have piles of vhs tapes and dvds.
Once download speeds become affordable and fast enough, we'll be wiping all our drives...
 
Had 2 WD External HD fail, never will use them again, back to Lacie. One I was able to recover by switching it to a new $25 case the other sits and if the time comes that the data on it needs to be used, I'll look into pricy recovery. Off site storage is good but I'm a little concern about backing up to 3rd party sites as they may not be in business down the road. Then what?
 
blackrock13 said:
Had 2 WD External HD fail, never will use them again....
Click to expand...
Were they 1 TB or larger?
Seagate is also having higher than normal failure rates on 1 TB and larger drives. Drives < 1 TB hold up better for reliability. I like Seagate for their 5 yr warranty. Just make sure to properly back up, no matter what brand you buy.
 
Is there a "s.m.a.r.t" ( forgot what its called) thing on externals that tells you the HD is about to die? How can they be monitored for failure ?
 
Twister said:
Is there a "s.m.a.r.t" ( forgot what its called) thing on externals that tells you the HD is about to die? How can they be monitored for failure ?
Click to expand...

This is a very good question. Are there any HD's that are hour life rated like lightbulbs and TV's? For example, my TV is hour life rated at 60,000 hours.
 
Rockslinger said:
This is a very good question. Are there any HD's that are hour life rated like lightbulbs and TV's? For example, my TV is hour life rated at 60,000 hours.
Click to expand...

ALL drives have a MTBF number (Mean Time Before Failure). Check the mfg specs.
 
Twister said:
Is there a "s.m.a.r.t" ( forgot what its called) thing on externals that tells you the HD is about to die? How can they be monitored for failure ?
Click to expand...

One day my 500 Gb drive did exactly that. It told me on the screen it was about to die and that it would be a good idea to back the contents onto another drive, freaked me right out. I did and actually still use the 1st drive for certain things of little consequences. That was about 6 months ago and no problems since. LaCie all the way from this point on. It was too new to be near it's life span and I thought there may have been some serious conflicts going on inside.
 
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