Just had a Maxtor External 120G USB Hard drive stop working. It's only six months old. I was using it on one of my PCs as a backup of photo files. I think I've tried everything but nothing happens. Plugged-unplugged-tried on a different PC.
It makes me think I would be better off burning CDs or DVDs, any thoughts?
Rod
You should always archive desired files on a non-volitile media such as DVD but it is very unusual for a HD to fail in such a short period of time - definately not the norm but I would not use a HD for permanent archival purposes. The HD should be under warranty and they will replace it.
Does the drive spin up when power is applied and the computer doesn't recognize it? Or does the drive not even spin?
The power supply might have failed or something equally simple if it's only 6 months old. As Duncan said, it should be under warranty you can get it repaired or replaced.
It sounds like it's spinning. when i go to my computer and click on "K Drive", that's what the computer had assigned, nothing happened and I had to do the CTRL-ALT-DEL thing
JH reminded me of something that frequently leads to problems and even damage, and one thing nobody thinks of. Your computer power supply (PS or PSU) should be at least 350W, and the more gear you have or add, the higher it should be. I have a 550W PS in mine. The quality of the PS is very important too. Holding exact voltages and amps, with plenty of reserves, keeps things humming.
Can be your machine was just fine until you added a new drive, GPU or even a fan and suddenly all goes to hell and you can't figure out why. I've seen a whole editing suite go down 'cause somebody plugged in something simple and watch the techs go wild for hours checking everything but the PS. $20 PS caused Big Buck down time.
Not saying that is your problem Rod, but an underpowered PSU is a time bomb.
John_T. wrote:
Can be your machine was just fine until you added a new drive, GPU or even a fan and suddenly all goes to hell and you can't figure out why. I've seen a whole editing suite go down 'cause somebody plugged in something simple and watch the techs go wild for hours checking everything but the PS. $20 PS caused Big Buck down time.
I think his Maxtor is selfpowered... I have not seen a Maxtor that draws USB hub power.. I use WD but they are the same, the size of a large paperback book and with their own wallwart..
Right Dave. Just something that popped in my mind. I think Rod is in the throes of upgrading his old system so I thought that was a point.
Actually I have the Maxtor external USB2/Firewire 160GB hooked up to USB2 and have no problems at all, except in the beginning with the one button backup which is now fine. The unit has a fan inside, so that could be what he is hearing and not the drive itself. I would suspect something with USB before I would the drive itself failing, though it is possible.
I would suggest going Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management and see if it appears there and what its status is. If it is there, right click on it and check Properties. If it's not there, well, maybe buy some daisies.
I had a full 250 GIG Western Digital external drive crash last month. It was less than 4 months old. It may not be common, but when it happens it certainly gets your attention.
I suggest contacting the Maxtor customer support ASAP. Western Digital immediately sent a replacement, but of course data recovery is not part of the warranty.
When you have never experienced a major hardware failure, you can become complacent, and all the warnings about backup & redundancy may seem to be overkill. I had CD backups. Now I also have a DVD-R.
It just happened to me too with the same hard drive!
In my case I still see the drive in the file explorer, but the volume is inaccessible. I am currently trying to see if I can recover some data using this... http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm
no luck so far...
At the same time my internet explorer wouldn't start anymore because of a hijack by some plugin, which makes me think it could be virus or something related...
Any suggestions other than reformatting? This was my backup drive so nothing really important is there fortunately...
Maxtor is replacing mine. I explained the problem to the tech guy and he asked a couple of questions and said "yep, it sounds defective send it back and we'll send yo another one. Fortunately, I didn't lose anything that wasn't backed up elsewhere.
Are there better makes/brands of external hard drives?
I'm ordering a Mirra for our network. www.mirra.com. Continuous unattended backup and web access to the files.
Of course, offsite CD/DVD backups still need to be made, but the Mirra will be great for the in-betweens.
From what I understand, it's a Unix system.
From their website:
Safeguard your photos. Mirra is your digital photo shoebox, automatically centralizing and archiving your household's growing library of digital photos.
Do you do backups today with CDs but have trouble finding your photos? Mirra keeps a single file directory of all your files and photos. Makes locating last year's photos of the family picnic easy!
Find photo sharing services too time consuming? Once you set up a folder of pictures to share with Grandma, you're done. Every time you save new photos to that folder, Mirra instantly takes over and shares them with her.
Frustrated when photos you want to share are too big for email? No worries with Mirra. Just select the people with whom you want to share and Mirra makes it happen securely over the web. Friends can share your photos by logging on to the Mirra member web site at www.mirra.com from any Internet-connected PC and creating a free account. They can view thumbnails or download the photos of their choice.
I've heard that Maxtor is better than most. I've also heard it makes a difference where a drive was made. Singapore - good, Thailand - ok, Phillipines - not so good.
BTW, do any of you have GoBack installed? It will convert the boot sector to its proprietary version and under certain circutstances make the drive visible but inaccessable. If that is the case, I know the solution.
John_T. wrote:
BTW, do any of you have GoBack installed? It will convert the boot sector to its proprietary version and under certain circutstances make the drive visible but inaccessable. If that is the case, I know the solution.
I guess it needed to be installed before the crash, right?
The answer is no...
Have you tried to remove the drive for the enclosure and connected it to your pc directly? Maybe the enclosure is having problem, not the drive itself.
I while ago i wrote real-time background data backup and mirroring tool. The idea was to backup files on the background almost as soon as they're modified without user's intervention and without affecting performance of running applications.
Proved to be a success. If anyone interested i'd send a link.
glasdriver wrote:
I'm ordering a Mirra for our network. www.mirra.com. Continuous unattended backup and web access to the files.
Of course, offsite CD/DVD backups still need to be made, but the Mirra will be great for the in-betweens.
From what I understand, it's a Unix system.
From their website:
Safeguard your photos. Mirra is your digital photo shoebox, automatically centralizing and archiving your household's growing library of digital photos.
From looking at it, Mirra wouldn't really protect you from a hard drive failure UNLESS you are using it as an additional hard drive. Chances are, two hard drives (in two physically different machines) probably won't fail at the same time...
geir wrote:
[From looking at it, Mirra wouldn't really protect you from a hard drive failure UNLESS you are using it as an additional hard drive. Chances are, two hard drives (in two physically different machines) probably won't fail at the same time...
The Mirra's a mirrored unit, physically separate from my main computer. As soon as a file is created, or modified, the Mirra copies it over the network to it's hard drive. Added benefit is protected sharing over the internet of the backed-up files -- great for when I'm on the road and haven't updated my laptop.
glasdriver wrote:
The Mirra's a mirrored unit, physically separate from my main computer. As soon as a file is created, or modified, the Mirra copies it over the network to it's hard drive. Added benefit is protected sharing over the internet of the backed-up files -- great for when I'm on the road and haven't updated my laptop.
True, but as a backup device *ONLY*, it doesn't buy you much more than a second hard drive in a second machine would... Although it is a little easier... Seems kinda spendy though. What I would like is automatic backup to a machine on the internet somewhere, where I could pay for some storage space... That way, it could do the same as the Mirra device without having to have another machine to deal with...
Oh Wonderful! I just ordered a Maxtor External 120G USB just yesterday. Will be a few days till I get it. I just installed a second HD, an 80gb 7200 rpm Hitachi, tho I ordered if from Dell, and it was advertised as Seagate. I’ve moved my 6gb of photos over to the new hard drive, and am using it, but I heard these HDs aren’t very reliable, and it does make a funny noise. Maybe it’s just the Hitachi noise. That is what spurred me to order the Maxtor External 120G USB, which I have thought about for months anyway. Now, I have a new 80gb HD and an external 120gb HD coming, and it looks like I won’t be able to have much confidence in either of them. Storing stuff on CDs isn’t something I’m fond of doing.
