Oh god, both my harddrives.

I officially declare Seagate barracuda's the worst hard drives ever.
This is a follow up from my previous posting:
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=198105

I've temporarily unplugged the 2nd hard drive, but it would seem now my first hard drive is failing as well. This is really really stupid, as now I have to replace both.


I want to ask, could I use a different brand hard drive? Matching of course when I get them replaced.

Also, what steps should I take to backup all my files?
Is there any easy method to do this?

 

Backup your files as soon as you can to cd's or whichever asap

You could also use a external hard drive or flash drive depending on how many files you have.

I use Western Digital Hard drives

 

Well I had 2x250Gb HDD WD in RAID 0, one failed and within a month a 2nd failed thankfully I had a 3rd HDD (Samsung) at the time which I got all my data onto. I surmised that mine had been overheating for a prolonged time and then began to fail as I had them sitting outside of the case throughout the summer without any fan. It had also been suggested by retailers that I had 2 poor quality units from the same bad batch and that is why both failed??!??

I was experimenting with an "open case" build but have now put everything back into the case with a 120mm inlet fan over the HDD.

Open Build

Do you potentially have poor airflow over your HDD which may have caused them to fail? I believe they are covered uptil about 45-50C by warranty and will get rather warm especially if working in arrays..

 

I use Samsung and have not had a problem with them.
I had a meltdown with the PC a while ago and bricked the whole system but that was not the fault of the HDDs.

 

I'm sorry to ask but the Ide cables can go bad? like it could be the HDD cable instead of the HDD?

 

The cables in an IDE strap are very fine and sometimes with the heat and age they get defective so it's always best to try them before going to the expense of new HDDs.

 

Thanks for the replies.
For the time being I will try the provided solutions, however I am still under warranty from where I purchased it, and they will take it in to fix.

My main thing is now is temporarily recovering my 2nd hdd to retrieve the data on it.

 

When both of mine were failing I could use the tools from UBCD and rebuild the "Master Boot Record" (MBR). I suppose as they begin to slowly fail the generate transcription errors and the MBR becomes corrupted? Not sure but I did this 2-3 times and was able to get back onto the HDD each time before it died. Either way everyone should have a copy of UBCD!

 

I forgot to mention the Samsung HDD i had I bought 2nd of a forum for $10-20 and asked for it to have passed the manufacturers diagnostics tools. With HDD getting massive (1Tb) and moving to Solid State Drives (SSD) it is not uncommon to find 2nd hand decent HDD.

 

hi
I had a similar issue. I immediately booted knoppix 5.1.1 live cd and transfered my files to an external hd. if it is a hardware issue thats too far gone this may not help. may be worth a try if your data is critical. either way having the live cd is really worth it. I found knoppix bypasses a lot of barriers when it comes to data recovery
good luck
zsuiter

 

Thanks Halo, one question though, after i compress the image drive, when i get my HDD replaced how do I reopen and place it in again?