Hard Drive Failure

[Appalachian Boy]

I've been trying to get some important videos and pictures off of a hard drive that is simply unresponsive. It is a ExcelStor J240 ATA100 drive.

Mechanically it spins up, and sounds normal, but it doesnt show up in System Profiler, Disk Utility, TechTool deluxe, Disk Warrior, Data Rescue II or anything else ive tried.

Also note that it is the 3.5 drive from an external firewire drive. ive put it in 4 enclosures, a Lacie Firewire case (i think its for IDE though), its original case, a Powermac G3 B&W REV 1, a Powermac G4 sawtooth. and still nothing!! this is killing me

Besides the original case, i don't know if it is supposed work in any of these other ones i've tried. whne i put it in the original case it wont spin up until i unplug the firewire cable from on of the ports and replug it in to the other... its so confusing.. and priceless memories are stuck inside it

Can someone please help me?

thanks in advance

[Frodo]

I've been trying to figure this out.

I'm no expert in IDE vs ATA enclosures, but there is one type of device another U-nation member recommended I try. It's a "sled", to coin a term, that allowed me to remove my laptop HD and connect it to my desktop without an enclosure.

It's the Apricorn Universal Hard Drive Adapter:
http://www.techpin.com/apricorn-drivewi ... e-adapter/

That should at least address connectivity format incompatiblities.

If it's a header or directory corruption, and the usual utilities didn't do the trick, you may need some kind of professional data recovery service.

I'm just not sure what else to suggest-- saw this post yesterday and was stumped, but then say a couple of dozen views today and sensed a measure of remorse intensifying.

Good luck, Appalachian Boy. I hope someone else can chime in with some suggestions as well.

[rcannonp]

Are there any jumpers on the disk? I seem to remember having to switch those around to get disks to work properly in some enclosures.

[AlMacMeister]

IF you're sure it's not a cable problem or jumper problem in the enclosure, or a software issue, or an issue with the enclosures or the computer, and if professional data recovery is too expensive or not practical, you can try putting the drive in a plastic bag in a freezer till it's good and cold (like an hour or so). Yes I know it sounds nuts.

You can then take the drive out and connect it and quickly try and get your data off. And I do mean quickly. The idea is that freezing the drive causes stuff inside to contract, sometimes causing intermittent connections to reconnect or mechanically misaligned or damaged parts to reseat themselves.

Alternately, if the cable is long enough, keep the drive in the freezer while trying to read the data off of it, it might buy you more time. I did this, except I put the drive in the refrigerator first and then to the freezer to try and cool it down gradually to avoid condensation.

I have tried this; it does work. (Yes, I should have had a backup...blah blah. I did have a backup. I temporarily, like for a day or so, needed some extra drive space once and deleted the main copy; temporarily. As bad luck would have it, the backup drive tanked shortly after. It had irreplaceable photos on it. Anyway, I digress...)

I first tried it with a known bad drive (with un-important data on it) as a test. It worked. I was able to get at all of the un-important useless data. I tried it again with the drive that had the uber-important irreplaceable photos. Of course it didn't work.

Whether or not it works depends or just how bad the damage is. However, if at all possible, I'd try all other measures first before trying this one. I'd only try this as an absolute last resort.

Good luck!

[emulatorloo]

Are there any jumpers on the disk? I seem to remember having to switch those around to get disks to work properly in some enclosures.

Yes, AFAIK most all of the external firewire or USB enclosures expect the drive to be set up as MASTER.

SLAVE won't work.

CABLE SELECT won't work.

Has to be jumpered as MASTER.

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[Appalachian Boy]

thanks so much for your replies, I think i will get the universal HDD adaptor, It will for sure do a ATA100 drive?

I'm mostly stuck in a rut because the disk is just nonexistent, not visible in any Utility, Data Recovery service is so pricey as well!!

Thanks again for the help, i will order the universal adaptor and then post my results.

Appalachian Boy

[Frodo]

Be sure to also check out this thread:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25663

gearboy posted a link to a similar device by Newer Technology.

[papageno]

...and the most important message for future:

Please do back up everything regularly(all works at least).

Since 1990 when I forst started to use a computer for making music (MacPlus + 46MB HD) I have had 4 HD failures. When the first one happened, I was young and "green". I am still greatful to Finale for the feature of saving 3 copies of files. I was able to rescue 1 of 3 files and the project I was working on was saved. After that I started regular backups.

So the thing is: today can be the very last day for your HD. For any HD.

Backups have to be automated, I have invested some money in the system and I know: if my HD dies, I have 2 more places to get my works back. If the house burns... (I hope not), I still have most important stuff backed up.

[emulatorloo]

ive put it in 4 enclosures, a Lacie Firewire case (i think its for IDE though), its original case, a Powermac G3 B&W REV 1, a Powermac G4 sawtooth. and still nothing!! this is killing me

I just wanted to note that if it is bigger than 120 GB it makes sense that the G3 and G4 cannot see it. As they cannot use bigger drives than that.

I have not seen anywhere that you confirmed that the drive is jumpered properly. Every external firewire case I have REQUIRED me to jumper the drive as MASTER.

It seems possible to me that you may have switched the jumpers to SLAVE or CABLE SELECT when you put it in your macs.

By the way ATA = IDE

from wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_T ... Attachment

The name of the standard was originally conceived as PC/AT Attachment as its primary feature was a direct connection to the 16-bit ISA bus then known as 'AT bus'; the name was shortened to an inconclusive "AT Attachment" to avoid possible trademark issues.

An early version of the specification, conceived by Western Digital in 1986, was commonly known as Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) due to the drive controller being contained on the drive itself as opposed to the then-common configuration of a separate controller connected to the computer's motherboard ••” thus making the interface on the motherboard a host adapter, though many people continue, by habit, to call it a controller.

Enhanced IDE (EIDE) ••” an extension to the original ATA standard again developed by Western Digital ••” allowed the support of drives having a storage capacity larger than 504 MiB (528 MB), up to 7.8 GiB (8.4 GB). Although these new names originated in branding convention and not as an official standard, the terms IDE and EIDE often appear as if interchangeable with ATA. This may be attributed to the two technologies being introduced with the same consumable devices ••” these "new" ATA hard drives. [1]

With the introduction of Serial ATA around 2003, conventional ATA was retroactively renamed to Parallel ATA (P-ATA), referring to the method in which data travels over wires in this interface.

Good luck, I have been there. . .



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[papageno]

ive put it in 4 enclosures, a Lacie Firewire case (i think its for IDE though), its original case, a Powermac G3 B&W REV 1, a Powermac G4 sawtooth. and still nothing!! this is killing me

I just wanted to note that if it is bigger than 120 GB it makes sense that the G3 and G4 cannot see it.

This is true only if the drive is attached to IDE bus of G4 itself. The latest G4 desktops, however, do recognize drives bigger than 120GB. This limit does not apply to drives attached to Firewire bus. In this case it is FW drive. Whether it is IDE or SATA drive inside FW box, does not concern G4 at all.
Read more about this the keyphrase is "48-bit LBA".
Anyway, even if a bigger drive than 120GB is attached to older G4's motherboard IDE bus, the CPU should still recognize that there is a drive. It cannot use more than 120GB from the drive though.

[emulatorloo]

This is true only if the drive is attached to IDE bus of G4 itself.

His original post suggests that he put it inside the G4 and G3. Reformatting his post a little:

ive put it in 4 enclosures

-- a Lacie Firewire case,
-- its original case,
-- a Powermac G3 B&W REV 1,
-- a Powermac G4 sawtooth.

You are ABSOLUTELY right, the G4 should be able to at least SEE the drive

However, I still think it may be predicated on whether the drive is jumpered correctly. I don't know for sure what the G4 could see it if the drive were jumpered incorrectly.

I think I recall a friend jumpering his drive wrong in a Sawtooth G4 and his machine not seeing it.

Additionally i *think* I recall that the "cable select" jumper position does not work right in those machines.

--
Thanks also for the updating Appalachian Boy on the newer G4's.

Old Mac History is fun! Well at least I LOVE IT, and I have way too many old macs to show my love to -

I believe I remember that the second revision of Quicksilver was the first able to see bigger the 120GB drives. If I remember right Apple never advertised that but people figured it out.

http://xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/big_ide_drive_support.html

I've had several iMac G4 and Quicksilver G4 (2002 model) owners note they're using large IDE drives with 10.2 and the onboard IDE interface

The MDD's were the first to actually have that as a spec.

I have a sawtooth like Appalachian Boy mentioned, and it use the full capacity of drives over 120GB on the internal bus. (without a third party solution like INTECH's software driver)

Also, B&W G3 rev 1 had some kind of weird problem with the IDE controller so that drives over a certain size (was it 40?60?80?) ended up with corrupted data.

And they didn't handle slave drives either at all or very well:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/yose ... tures.html

. . .the latest shipping (revision 2)Blue and White G3s have the following improvements <SNIP> - the most important one by far is the revised IDE chip on the motherboard to add slave drive support/address data corruption issues with rev 1s that have updated/modern hard drives.

So the fact that Appalachian Boy is testing his drive with a rev 1 B&W further complicates the issue of jumpering.

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[Appalachian Boy]

i dont think this is a matter of slave and master ... as i have tested Slave, Master, Cable select, etc.

Also it is a 40GB drive, i have put a 80 gig seagate drive in both comps and it worked flawlessly.

So.... I still dont know whats wrong with the damned thing!!! Grrrrrrr

[bongo_x]

If you've tried it on other computers and are sure it's not a hook up problem, I second the freezer trick. I've used it a couple times to save some data.

bb

[Appalachian Boy]

i back up my data now, but this is old stuff, and it died quite a while ago and i just left it alone cause i was stumped