External Hard Drive Failure?

I am not having a good week with computers...I think my 4 month old external hard drive (used for back-ups) has failed.

It is a 250G Western Digital MyBook. Over the last few days, when I connect it the computer it powers up and I can hear the disk spinning. On Explorer, I can "see" the drive listed as Local Disk (F) but the little WD blue logo I used to get isn't there any more. When I try to access the drive, I get error message:

"Disk in Drive F: Not formatted

Do You want to format it now"


It's never done that before. I have tried both USB and Firewire connections and still the same problem. The back-up software that came with the disk "Restropective" also doesn't recognise the drive any more.

It's not a big deal as it's simply backing up data that existis on my laptop and server (i.e. I haven't lost any data).

If the things buggered, I need to get a warranty replacement ASAP though.

 

Hi, I am not sure how PCs work but on the mac it will show its SMART status, are you able to retrieve that?

It could be the difference between a simply corrupted harddrive which needs formatting or a knackered one.

 

Yes,

I hope it just needs reformatting although I can't think what would have caused the corrupt.

I don't want to rush into reformatting it as I will loose all the back-up data and expose myself to potential total loss if my laptop or server HD's go on the blink (highly likely knowing my luck).

Will investigate.

edit: SMART status is showing up OK and am just running an extended test with WD's diagnostic software.

 

Can you examine the external disk with something like Partition Magic or Gparted (available on some Linux live cds) as this I think will allow you to get an idea if data does still exists on your external drive? You may then be able to use a disk snooping utility to apply a fix to the disk that will render the data visible once more. The data may well still be on your disk but be hidden by some form of corruption in the file system that could well be fixed.

 

I ended up just reformatting the drive and that solved the problem.

All the data on the drive is replicated elsewhere on my systems so have just started-up the back-up process from scratch.

 

I would RMA it now anyway as you have lost your data and the fault has not been identified. This could happen again so would recommend getting it replaced to be safe.

 

why? how do you know it is the fault of the drive? Fallibility of hdd's has turned into urban myth. They aren't that bad - most of the time its a software issue. If you use the hdd vendors test tools and it passes, then its a good drive. No need to send back.

 

I don't know it's the hardware at fault, but like I said it would be reasonable to get it replaced while there is no data on it to be sure. External drives are somewhat less reliable than internal and I was only saying what I would do if it was mine. Also if a drive is formatted using 'Quick format' it is more likely to suffer from corruption than when formatted properly with 'Full Format'.