1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

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StowePhoto
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p.1 #1 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

One moment my 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive is running fine. I eject it from the laptop, travel some, return a few days later and plug it back in and it does not register. Try again, reboot a bunch, restart, finally run Disc Utility (I'm on a Mac) and it comes back with the message of 'your disc drive cannot be repaired, make an attempt to salvage anything you can, then reformat the disc'

Oh, shit. There are important photos on there. Really, really important photos. People's once in a lifetime wedding photos. Extremely important personal photos. This is the first time this has ever happened, so I'm not sure where to turn. I bought the drive from a reputable Mac dealer, that has service department. Should I start there?

Thanks for any help...

Jan 01, 2013 at 04:11 AM

Lars Johnsson
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p.1 #2 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

Don't you have any backup if there are extremely important once in a lifetime wedding photos

Are you a wedding shooter ? And are the photo's for clients?

Jan 01, 2013 at 04:42 AM

Bifurcator
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p.1 #3 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

Without testing I dunno but HDDs are not for travel - no matter what a manufacturer claims. These days solid-state drives are of course the way to go. Dropping an HDD three inches onto a hard surface for example can kill it. The most common thing that happens is the heads get damaged from bumping around in a bag or whatever. Without having it in my possession it's of course impossible to say. Does it make any sounds that you describe?

If the photos are all that important I would bring it to a reputable recovery service. They'll transplant the platers, spindle, and PWB into an identical drive with new heads most likely. It'll probably run ya anywhere from $250 to $500 depending. Doing this yourself is hard. Not that technically difficult but just physically and dexterously hard. Much better and safer to let someone with the practice and experience do it for ya.

If it is head damage don't turn it on at all anymore. Just send it in. Depending what happened to the heads it could scratch the crap out of one or more of the platter surfaces. And then no service can recover it.

Jan 01, 2013 at 05:45 AM

15Bit
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p.1 #4 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

The problem might not be the disk, but the box. Does the disk attempt to spin? Can you hear sounds from it or does nothing happen? Check there isn't some fluff or something in the power and usb connectors. My next move would be to pull it out of the external case and plug it directly into the computer and see how that works, just to rule out enclosure problems.

Most likely it is the disk though. As Bifurcator said, external drives are prone to hardware failure if used portably. It might be a head crash, but it might also be that the heads have got stuck in the parked position. On disks that try to spin up and fail (sometimes accompanied by a clicking noise) i have had success banging them against the table to "help" them spin up and unstick whatever is stuck (do this on the bare drive, not the case with drive inside). I wouldn't recommend doing this routinely, but it can work first time to get your data off.

Best option is a data recovery service though, as Bifurcator suggests.

I don't know how they are now, but the Lacie designs a few years ago were more style than substance and drive cooling was pathetic. The drives just cooked themselves. I read somewhere that they had something like a 30% fail rate on one of their external disks because of it. I don't touch them now.

Jan 01, 2013 at 11:56 AM

Paul Mo
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p.1 #5 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

Well, firstly, will the disk mount at all? Even if you have to try repeatedly/endlessly, try to get it to mount and get everything off it asap; it says salvage, can you get any files off it at all?

Jan 01, 2013 at 12:58 PM

Sagar
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p.1 #6 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

Based on your description I assume disk is only recognized through Disk Utility but its not getting mounted. If that's the case, you may still have hope.

There are relatively cheap data recovery software that can recover all the data if the HDD is not formatted after data loss. These software go at sector level and recover data. I have done that successfully on windows and I sure there will be some sw for mac as well.

Jan 01, 2013 at 05:46 PM

Bifurcator
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p.1 #7 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

Let it be known however that if the heads are damaged then you may only have one go at using such software. As the heads move across the platter(s) they leave scratches which potentially leave that area forever more unreadable. It's not the most common scenario but it does happen and is a potential to consider. If the images are really that important I wouldn't chance it myself. http://www.databe.com/articles/article5.html Here is such an example:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Jan 01, 2013 at 08:30 PM

Jan Brittenson
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p.1 #8 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

After you've run diskutil to repair it (even though it can't), you should be able to mount the drive and make a copy. Some files will likely fail to copy and may be lost.

Jan 02, 2013 at 01:07 AM

Brit-007
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p.1 #9 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

If it has a power supply then call Lacie. This happened to me and Lacie swapped out the supply and everything worked. Worth a call.

Jan 02, 2013 at 11:17 PM

wilt
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p.1 #10 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

The problem might well be that the power supply electronics or the USB interface electronics within the Lacie enclosure have gone bad, yet the harddrive itself is perfectly fine! I has happended to me, with a Western Digital MyBook...removing the harddrive and plugging it into a harddrive dock unit resulted in a fully functioning harddrive once again.

Jan 05, 2013 at 03:48 AM

Lars Johnsson
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p.1 #11 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

Oh, shit. There are important photos on there. Really, really important photos. People's once in a lifetime wedding photos. Extremely important personal photos

They where probably not that important, you didn't even come back to your thread even one time after posting it

Jan 05, 2013 at 06:32 AM

EB-1
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p.1 #12 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

wilt wrote:
The problem might well be that the power supply electronics or the USB interface electronics within the Lacie enclosure have gone bad, yet the harddrive itself is perfectly fine! I has happended to me, with a Western Digital MyBook...removing the harddrive and plugging it into a harddrive dock unit resulted in a fully functioning harddrive once again.

That may work on desktop drives, but many current portable drives no longer have a USB bridge board. The electronics are all integrated on one board connected to the drive. I prfer to buy separate drives and enclosures.

EBH

Jan 06, 2013 at 02:19 AM

Bifurcator
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p.1 #13 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

Lars Johnsson wrote:
Oh, shit. There are important photos on there. Really, really important photos. People's once in a lifetime wedding photos. Extremely important personal photos

They where probably not that important, you didn't even come back to your thread even one time after posting it

Too funny! Pretty common tho too. I read a lot of threads here where the cry is urgent and the participation/update is zippo...!

Kinda weird, and I can never figure out why... Like, maybe it was so dire that they just gave it all up, moved to Tibet, and became a monk or something.

Jan 06, 2013 at 02:51 AM

Lars Johnsson
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p.1 #14 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

Bifurcator wrote:
Lars Johnsson wrote:
Oh, shit. There are important photos on there. Really, really important photos. People's once in a lifetime wedding photos. Extremely important personal photos

They where probably not that important, you didn't even come back to your thread even one time after posting it

Yes it's getting more and more common

And it's strange/weird

Jan 06, 2013 at 02:55 AM

Grantland
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p.1 #15 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

Bifurcator wrote:
Lars Johnsson wrote:

they just gave it all up, moved to Tibet, and became a monk or something.

if they did Lars could take some pics of them

Jan 10, 2013 at 08:50 PM

Dickadam
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p.1 #16 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

If you want to recover the lost data of your Lacie Hard Drive then you can use Lacie Hard Drive Recovery Software which is capable of recovering all the lost data of the drive in very simple way. It will also help you to make damaged files accessible again. So if you want to restore your deleted files then download the software which is available on our website. It will also allows you to restore severely damaged with repairing it. So download the software without any delay.

Read More Information:-

http://photorecovery-mac.com/lacie-hard-drive-recovery.php http://photorecovery-mac.com/lacie-hard-drive-recovery.php

Feb 28, 2013 at 05:02 AM

justruss
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p.1 #17 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

Well, the OP seems to be still active in OTHER forums, including the wedding forum...

I guess this is more about the lesson than the solution once the problem occurred. Avoid being that wedding photographer who doesn't make redundant backups at all-- or in a timely manner. Avoid hiring such that photographer if you're getting married

Consider carrying enough CF capacity that you don't have to delete images or format cards until days after the wedding-- after you already have multiple copies of each file on internal/external drives. Or better yet, until you've culled, edited, and delivered finals.

Be prepared to drop cash to recover lost images that are uber important.

Feb 28, 2013 at 11:37 AM

3iron
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p.1 #18 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

Thought I might ask if any could suggest where to find a solid state 2 t drive for backup. What kind or brand do you recommend?
Thanks and best wishes

Feb 28, 2013 at 05:51 PM

justruss
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p.1 #19 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

3iron wrote:
Thought I might ask if any could suggest where to find a solid state 2 t drive for backup. What kind or brand do you recommend?
Thanks and best wishes

This is a joke, right?

Feb 28, 2013 at 06:17 PM

3iron
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p.1 #20 · 1TB Lacie External Hard Drive has failed...?

justress, No joke. I would have to say I am electronically challanged. I do know what a ST drive is, but do not know if there are some better than others or even if they are available in a 2T size.
I have one in my laptop, but that is about all I can tell you.
Any thoughts would be most appreciated.

Mar 01, 2013 at 03:00 AM

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