External HDD likely dead. Data recovery service?

[HeartsOfFire]

So I am 99% confident that the .25 TB external hard drive storing all my iTunes music has crapped out.

Can anyone recommend a good data recovery service, and give me a ballpark figure on what I may have to cough up?

[Flames89]

What brand and model is it?

[Burninator]

Did you download your music from iTunes? If so, I would give them a call and tell them what happened. They might let you re download your purchased music.

I've heard the data recovery services are crazy expensive. It might end up being cheaper to re-buy all your music before you use them.

[ricosuave]

Ive got a copy of spinrite6 if you want to try it

www.grc.com

[Regulator75]

.25 TB? What an odd thing to type.

[HeartsOfFire]

Update: Yesterday evening I managed to get it spinning again. PC recognized it as a valid hard drive. First thing I did was copy everything on it and move it to a different drive. Now, in the event of a failure, at least I'll have a backup.

And yes, .25 TB. Same thing as 250 GB.

With spoken word, I find it easier to say 'a quarter terabyte' as opposed to 'two hundred-fifty gigabytes'

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by HeartsOfFire

With spoken word, I find it easier to say 'a quarter terabyte' as opposed to 'two hundred-fifty gigabytes'

You’re the first person I’ve ever heard fractionalize a larger unit of storage. 22.5 gigabytes is the typical way of expressing it, not 0.225 terabytes.

Would you call 25 terabytes 0.02 petabytes? Is your 10 megabit internet connection 0.0098 gigabits?

[HeartsOfFire]

First for everything, I suppose.

Aside from using the term here, I've only ever used it in two other situations: A conversation with a co-worker and a conversation with my dad.

Both time I got funny looks for saying 'quarter terabyte,' but after they processed it in their heads they got what I meant.

I only fractionize it with easy round numbers too, like 250, 500, 750, etc. Quarter, half, three-quarter, etc.

[sclitheroe]

Terminology aside, if you can afford to replace the drive you probably should, regardless of whether its working well now or not. Drives don’t just fail - they are failing from the second you first use them, it’s just a question of rate.

[Azure]

Makes you think how long until we stop using the term gigabytes when it comes to HD storage.

Our wholesaler sells nothing under 500gigs anymore, and a 1TB HD is like $10 more than a 500gig. Both are WD. Amazing how far HDs have come in the past few years.

[Buzzard]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Drives don’t just fail - they are failing from the second you first use them, it’s just a question of rate.

That's an interesting little tidbit sclitheroe.

I didn't know that, but considering how many computers I've been through, it makes sense.

Could you expand on that a bit for the uneducated like myself?

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Buzzard

That's an interesting little tidbit sclitheroe.

I didn't know that, but considering how many computers I've been through, it makes sense.

Could you expand on that a bit for the uneducated like myself?

It’s a mechanical device. From the second you turn it on, bearings are wearing, lubrication is drying out, the drive is expanding and contracting as it heats and cools, etc. In fact, the air turbulence generated in the minute space between the heads and the platters actually causes wear too, which is sometime visible on drives that have been in use for a very long time, when you disassemble them.

Given that there are zero replaceable parts in a drive, and not even any post-manufacture maintenance you can do to extend its life indefinitely (unlike say a car engine, which can be maintained, parts replaced, and overhauled indefinitely), the entire drive spends its life slowly wearing out, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Even worse, with today’s exceedingly high density drives, the magnetic fluxes encoded on the platters that represent the 1’s and 0’s that make up your data are prone to spontaneously flipping due to the influence of their neighbors. This problem is exacerbated by high heat, as I understand it.

Every single hard drive in existence will eventually manage to die or otherwise mangle your data.

How is that for grim?

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

It’s a mechanical device. From the second you turn it on, bearings are wearing, lubrication is drying out, the drive is expanding and contracting as it heats and cools, etc. In fact, the air turbulence generated in the minute space between the heads and the platters actually causes wear too, which is sometime visible on drives that have been in use for a very long time, when you disassemble them.

Given that there are zero replaceable parts in a drive, and not even any post-manufacture maintenance you can do to extend its life indefinitely (unlike say a car engine, which can be maintained, parts replaced, and overhauled indefinitely), the entire drive spends its life slowly wearing out, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Even worse, with today’s exceedingly high density drives, the magnetic fluxes encoded on the platters that represent the 1’s and 0’s that make up your data are prone to spontaneously flipping due to the influence of their neighbors. This problem is exacerbated by high heat, as I understand it.

Every single hard drive in existence will eventually manage to die or otherwise mangle your data.

How is that for grim?

Not as grim as when you consider our bodies are in much the same situation.
Don't dwell on it though, enjoy your hard drive and your life.

[Buzzard]

Sorry...don't mean to derail here but, one question. I leave our computer on all the time. I'm not sure if that's the cool thing to do anymore. I know at one time I was told it was easier on the lifespan of a PC to do that, rather than turn it on and shut it off a couple times a day. Should it stay on all the time?

[mykalberta]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

you’re the first person i’ve ever heard fractionalize a larger unit of storage. 22.5 gigabytes is the typical way of expressing it, not 0.225 terabytes.

Would you call 25 terabytes 0.02 petabytes? Is your 10 megabit internet connection 0.0098 gigabits? :d

22.5 gb != 0.25 tb
0.25 tb == ~250 gb
22.5 gb != 250 gb

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Buzzard

Sorry...don't mean to derail here but, one question. I leave our computer on all the time. I'm not sure if that's the cool thing to do anymore. I know at one time I was told it was easier on the lifespan of a PC to do that, rather than turn it on and shut it off a couple times a day. Should it stay on all the time?

Doesn't make much of a difference anymore one way or the other, in my opinion, given the reliability of modern machines and their typical useful lifespan.

Most people don't keep a PC more than 5 years or so, and any modern machine can generally run that long continously, or can be power cycled regularly and still be reliable over 5 years..

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

22.5 gb != 0.25 tb
0.25 tb == ~250 gb
22.5 gb != 250 gb

Yeah I slipped up on a decimal spot

See, this is why we don't fractionalize storage.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Vulcan

Not as grim as when you consider our bodies are in much the same situation.
Don't dwell on it though, enjoy your hard drive and your life.

Yup. My point was that flaky drives don't get better, they only get worse. And you need to plan for failure with a backup strategy, because its unavoidable.

It's surprising to me how many people (not necessarily in this thread, just in general..) consider a hard drive failure an anomaly, something random and unlikely to occur to them again, and as a result, they tend to be victims of data loss at least twice before they learn the truth about it.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by HeartsOfFire

Update: Yesterday evening I managed to get it spinning again. PC recognized it as a valid hard drive. First thing I did was copy everything on it and move it to a different drive. Now, in the event of a failure, at least I'll have a backup.

And yes, .25 TB. Same thing as 250 GB.

With spoken word, I find it easier to say 'a quarter terabyte' as opposed to 'two hundred-fifty gigabytes'

How did you manage to get it spinning?

[HeartsOfFire]

Honestly, I don't know, but here's what I did:

When I tried to get it running in the morning, I noticed the shell was hot. REALLY hot. So before I left for work, I powered it down.

When I came back from work it had cooled off, but still refused to maintain a steady spin. It would start to spin, then it would stop, and retry a couple more times before giving up and flashing the red error LED. I powered it down again.

I tried a couple hours later after my girlfriend got home to demonstrate what it wasn't doing. Powered it on, drive started spinning, made a quiet 'thunk' inside the case, and has been running like a river ever since.

If I were to make an analogy, it was like a car that would turnover but just wouldn't engage... and finally after giving it enough gas, it engaged.

Like I said before, with it working I immediately made a copy of its contents and threw it onto the internal HDD, which had plenty of space. I then said 'enough is enough.' I've already had one hard drive failure and this was a close second, so I ordered a NAS and two 1.5 TB WD hard drives from Memory express and hooked it up late last week as a RAID 1 device. Took nearly 24 hours to back everything up, but at least I now have perfect data redundancy for all my media; movies, TV shows, and music.