Help desperately needed with HDD problem

[jeanpave]

Hi.

Please, I really need some advice with this hard-drive that is not recognized properly anymore.

It's a TrekStor of 500 GB.
I performed a 'chkdsk /r' on the first partition of the hard-drive. (It has two partitions, both NTFS.) It fixed a few files, and then it said that there was no more space to fix the next file needing fixing, and that it has stopped at 11%. Then, later, chkdsk closed.
I ejected the disk afterwards, but when I try to connect it again, to any computer, the TrekStor hard-drive is recognized but the partitions are not. It's as if no additional HDDs have been connected at all, even though the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon appears. (So, instead of seeing like two new hard-drives in 'My Computer', I see nothing.)

WTF? I thought chkdsk was supposed to fix errors, not cause them...

In Windows 7, I get told that I must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it (when I go to 'My Computer'>'Manage'. But I am afraid to click 'OK' because I really must not lose the data on the HDD.

Any advice is appreciated, please!

[redwudz]

When a HDD is built, it has some spare sectors for repair. If you use up all those spare sectors, you can run out of room, at least for repair. That's just a guess, though.

I would try using a data recovery program on it and hope you get everything off it before it fails completely as it sounds like it's dying.

[betwixt]

Just somethng to try, I refuse to 'downgrade' to Win 7 so this is based on XP but I'm sure something equivalent exists:
Navigate your way to 'Administrative Tools',
Click on 'Computer Management',
in the 'Storage' section click on 'Disk Management'.

This should give you a text and graphic of how the OS sees the physical disk and partitions on it. It won't fix it but it will give clues about the state of the disk and if the partitions are still accessible. You also have the option of booting Linux from a live CD image and looking at it from there. It's very easy to do, all you need to do is download an ISO file (suggest Ubuntu.com is a good place to start), burn it to CD and boot the computer from it. You should be able to see the disk and partitions directly from the Linux desktop. I find Linux can be your best friend when dealing with Windows problems!

Brian.

[pandy]

Connect this disk as second, copy data to different disk, buy even some USB HDD, now it is like 60E for 1.5TB HDD, after copying data from HDD to different HDD try to reformat disk with help of the MHDD software - http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

also this site can be very useful http://hddguru.com/

also You may use one of Linux bootable DVD with NTFS support - thus You should be able to access HDD with different tools - but at first make copy of HDD - if from some reason You are not able to mount partition use sector to image copying software.

[Nelson37]

Sounds like this is in a USB enclosure. If so, remove the drive from the enclosure and attach as standard.

If still no good, try a data recovery prog like GetDataBack. Love that program.

In the future, use a simple, single partition structure. The more complex the structure, the more likely it is to fail, and when partition structures fail, all data is lost. No good reason for multiple partitions, I avoid them at all costs.

[jeanpave]

Thanks for the advice. I don't know which one to try first, though - Linux or GetDataBack...

Let me say what happened in the meantime, though. I connected it to another computer running Windows XP, and the structure was recognized. But it still works like crap. I tried to copy some of the files, and right away it told me it couldn't copy the files because of cyclic redundancy (!) [What the hell did chkdsk do to it?...] Then, I went into 'Properties'>'Tools' and asked it to do 'Error Checking'>'Check Now', but after a whole night it finally spit out "Windows was unable to complete the disk check". And, just now, I went to the second partition trying to navigate the folder structure of that one and, as I clicked on a folder, it said "The drive is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?" Of course, I said 'No' to that.

I'm definitely going to try the Low-Level Format tool from HDD Guru, but first I must save the data somewhere. Afterwards, I'll format that piece of shit, but not now.

Oh, and, finally, I don't think it's in an enclosure. If it is in an enclosure, then the enclosure says "trekstor" on it, too, and it was sold to me as external hard-drive.

[jeanpave]

Even with GetDataBack, I get "Unknown error <some parameter here> reading sector <insert sector here> ..." when copying files. I had to say 'Yes to All' to make it stop giving me this error.

So, I wonder if the files recovered with GetDataBack will be any good. (But I guess I'll see soon.) And, failing this, what else can I do, please?


On a very much related note, I hope the sons of bitches who work for trekstor burn in hell for all eternity!

[lingyi]

Second Nelson37's suggestion to remove the drive from the enclosure and connect it directly as an IDE or SATA drive.

All external hard drives are internal drives in an enclosure.

Once you're attached it directly to your PC (to eliminate the enclosure as a possible cause of the problem), open Control Panel, Hardware and Sound, Device Manager, Disk Drives and you should see the drive manufacturer. Go to the appropriate site (Seagate, WD, Hitachi, etc.) and download and run their drive utility to check the status of the drive. If you get a SMART error or other error message from the drive, it's pretty much a goner.

[alegator]

jeanpave, this is the best tool I ever tested and it works wonders, I have recovered partitions of internal and external drives in a snap. It will always work unless physical damage of the drive is extensive. The tool is called TestDisk and here is a link:
http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f16/have-you-lost-a-hard-drive-partition-or-fil...er-194492.html

[jeanpave]

Thank you very much. I'll give TestDisk a try.

GetDataBack was able to see most of the structure (I think), but it only recovered 16.6 GB of the 288 I had. When I saw that it was able to copy only 16 GB in that new folder, I don't know how I managed to not smash the damn hard-drive with a sledgehammer.

NEVER BUY ANYTHING THAT SAYS TREKSTOR, people!

[jeanpave]

But, Alegator, if I use TestDisk, and it writes a new partition table, or a new MBR, or something, and it's not correct, will it not mess it up even more?...

[jeanpave]

Oh, and, by the way, Lingyi, TestDisk identifies the drive as "trekstor WD5000AAKB-00YSA". Does this mean it's a western digital? Do I still have to take it out of the enclosure?

Thanks.

[jeanpave]

I'm awfully sorry for posting so many messages in a row, but here's what TestDisk says, at the "Structure: Ok" screen:

Partition Start End Size in sectors
* HPFS - NTFS 0 1 1 38244 254 63 614405862 [LOCAL DISK]
P HPFS - NTFS 38245 0 1 60800 254 63 362362140 [LOCAL DISK]

Does everything look okay? Should I select write?

I'm afraid not to cause even more damage, that won't be fixed by chkdsk, if I use this third-party program.


P.S. Also, I thought I should mention that so many of the files (that weren't recovered by GetDataBack) are now showing up as being all 0 kB. What the hell is that all about, and can TestDisk fix that by just writing a partition table?

[lingyi]

Sorry, was in a hurry in my last post. Here's more details about testing / recovering your drive and data.

Yes, your drive is a IDE Western Digital drive. And yes, I highly recommend removing it from the enclosure:

1) The drive enclosure's connection may be bad, causing the initial errors.
2) The Western Digital software listed below, may not recognize the drive if it's in the enclosure.
3) Heat is the enemy of hard drives. Running recovery or test utilities on the drive generates a lot of heat and may cause the drive to prematurely fail or cause errors. A bare drive will always run cooler than one in an enclosure.
4) Testing / recovery will be much quicker with a direct IDE connection.

Whether you choose to take the drive out of the enclosure or not, I highly recommend having a fan blow cool air over the drive / enclosure. When I'm running SpinRite (more below) I've had the recovery stop because of drive overheating. When I cooled the hard drive with a fan, the recovery was able to be completed.

I'm not familiar with TestDisk, but I recommend running Western Digital's disk utility to test whether the drive is physically bad or not. If it's physicailly failing, running stressful data recovery software may cause it to completely fail. http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=502&sid=3&lang=en . Again, take the drive out and run a fan on it to keep it cool during any testing or recovery.

If the drive passes the Long Test, it may be a candidate for data recovery. If not, you may not be able to save it. But at that point, it's all or nothing anyway.

I can't find the source right now, but I believe chkdisk /r can cause a hard drive to run out of spare sectors as redwudz said. That's because once chkdsk marks a sector as bad, it never tries to recheck or reuse that "bad" sector again. Get enough "bad" sectors and you run out of spares.

On to SpinRite. First, it's not free or cheap! It's currently $89.00 (used to be $59.00 when I first got it), but it's saved/recovered a couple of dozen hard drives for me. There are those who will disagree with me, and I really, really don't mean to sound like a spokesperson for SpinRite, but this software is amazing! None of the software recommended seems to do what SpinRite does. Basically, it tests and reads each and every sector on the drive multiple times before it either succeeds or determines the sector is really unrecoverable. If the read is successful, it moves the data to a known good (i.e tested and passed) sector.

I've been using SpinRite for over 8 years and haven't come across a drive that unless it was critically physically damaged (e.g. head crash, stuck actuator) it couldn't recover. I run the manufacturer's drive utility to test the drive's integrity, then SpinRite and copy the data immediately to a good drive.

While I don't recommend using them for any critical data, I've had drives with SMART errors and multiple 'bad' sectors (marked 'bad' by chkdsk), continue to work for years after running SpinRite.

*Major warning* Running SpinRite is probably the most stressful thing you can do to your hard drive. Depending on how bad the condition of the drive is, it can take days to repair a hard drive. It can easily be the death blow to an already failing drive. The worst drive I ever worked on was one that was clicking and took over 48 hours straight to complete, but I managed to recover nearly 100% of the data and of course immediately trashed the drive after.

[pandy]

sector by sector copy at first http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/ or something similar

[jeanpave]

Thank you very much, Lingyi, I will definitely use what you said, probably very soon.

But it is very hard - I have to open a computer, open the enclosure, connect the drive inside... And I do have SpinRite, but I don't like using it if there are other methods. (I used SpinRite for like a week on one very old 30-GB drive, and it only told me that it's busted; it didn't recover anything for me or make it work.)

So, I wanted to see first if the easier option (TestDisk) will work. You can't offer me any advice on that, right? ('Cause you said you weren't familiar with it.)
Maybe I'll just try it, anyway?

Based on the information I've provided (files 0kB, etc.), can anybody say whether I should use TestDisk to try and write a new partition table, or whether it is too risky and I should just go with recovery?...


Also, I have to change my warning: DON'T BUY WESTERN DIGITAL! Aside from this trekstor garbage drive, a couple of weeks ago, I've had a western digital Elements drive almost fail, too. I was able to copy the files, though, and I used the Low-Level Format Tool. But, yeah, if you ever move to another apartment, even if you carry your western digital hard-drives like eggs, apparently they're still crap and very prone to failing. I also carried some Seagates, but those are fine, apparently. So, my conclusion is that WESTERN DIGITAL MAKES CRAPPY HARD-DRIVES!

[alegator]

I'm awfully sorry for posting so many messages in a row, but here's what TestDisk says, at the "Structure: Ok" screen:

Partition Start End Size in sectors
* HPFS - NTFS 0 1 1 38244 254 63 614405862 [LOCAL DISK]
P HPFS - NTFS 38245 0 1 60800 254 63 362362140 [LOCAL DISK]

Does everything look okay? Should I select write?

I'm afraid not to cause even more damage, that won't be fixed by chkdsk, if I use this third-party program.


P.S. Also, I thought I should mention that so many of the files (that weren't recovered by GetDataBack) are now showing up as being all 0 kB. What the hell is that all about, and can TestDisk fix that by just writing a partition table?

Yes, everything is alright, don't worry about having TestDisk write the MBR, let TestDisk do its job, it will reconstruct the partitions and even the MBR, I'm telling you it's the BEST tool out there, and the safest.

[lingyi]

Alegator seems sure about Testdisk, and reviews of if seem positive so I'd give it a try. From what I've read, it's not for recovering corrupted data though, so you may be able to access the partitions, but still have corrupted files.

As for removing the drive from the enclosure, I'd still highly recommend going through the trouble of connecting it directly. It's possible that the connection (USB or Firewire) is intermittently faulty. I have several external drives (Seagate, Iomega, WD) and IDE/SATA to USB connectors and sometimes they don't want to work first time, every time. I've had drives not recognized on one USB connection, switch to another and it magically works.

Another possible cause of the errors is that the power supply is faulty, again leading to connection errors or errors when you were running chkdsk. I've had a couple of external power transformers cause intermittent connection problems.

Finally, all hard drives will fail, it's not a matter of IF, it's a matter of WHEN. Sorry that you've had a bad coincidence with two WD drives gone bad (it's possible that the external drive really isn't bad, but it's the enclosure), but that's not an automatic fail for WD. The same thing could have happened with Seagate, Hitachi, Samsung or any other drives.

Once you hopefully get your data recovered, BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP! Sorry to yell, but I've learned the hard way over 25+ years of PC use that it's always your most valuable data that's on the drive that just failed.

External hard drives can be hit and miss, you never know when the drive inside may be replaced by cheaper, less reliable one. I've taken to buying my external drives by warranty. They WILL fail, hopefully during the warranty period and since I have a backup of it, I'm ready to send it back.

[alegator]

Yes lingyi, TestDisk is just for recovering a disk that is not recognized by Windows due to corrupted MBR or partition. It will make the disk recognized by Windows (it will show both in Computer Management (Administrative Tools) and in MY COMPUTER. It will NOT however recover corrupted data written to the disk. For that you always have to make regular backups for safety. Some programs recover certain corrupted data but it does not always work

[jeanpave]

If TestDisk keeps saying "Read error at <cylinder number here, ranging from 11 to 60800>/0/1 (lba=<208845, to give an example>)" - not for all cylinders, but for very many - and it has taken more than 2 hours to reach 33%, is that very bad?
EDIT: Oh, man, now it's saying every cylinder has a read error, at 52%, for the past hundred or so cylinders...
The first time I ran TestDisk, it displayed what I pasted above extremely quickly, but I guess that's why everything was 0 kB then (maybe).
(These read errors all appeared during the Quick Search.)

EDIT: But, if TestDisk is encountering all these read errors, will the partition table have errors, too?
'Cause, then, maybe I'd better just take it the hell out of the enclosure (even though it doesn't seem too hot when I touch it), and try the IDE-connection method...

Thanks.

[betwixt]

It can take a VERY long time. Under noral circumstances, when the processor reads the disk, the data is either cached in RAM on the disk drive (very fast) or read directly from the magnetic surface and some extra is cached to increase the chance of the next read being from inside the cache (fast).

When errors occur, the cache can not be filled and reading from the media goes into retry mode. Essentially, it keeps trying for a set number of times, typically this is ten times in normal operation but the recovery software may make this number much higher. Each attempt requires the sector to pass under the read head so it can only try once per revolution of the disk. Unfortunately, even if reading one sector is sucessful, the drive will atempt to fill the cache and may be hung up reading subsequent sectors, even if they are empty.

Just leave it running - it may take days but you should be able to recover some of the contents. If the disk was badly fragmented before failing it will be more difficult to piece the files back together, it is good practice to defragment all your drives periodically, at least once a week, and of course keep full partition backups somewhere alse as well.

Brian.

[Nelson37]

First, GET THAT DRIVE OUT OF THE ENCLOSURE. NOW. RIGHT GODDAMN NOW, AND STOP DOING ANYTHING ELSE TO IT!!!

Second - Do NOT repeat NOT write to that drive IN ANY WAY. Your problem has nothing to do with MBR or partition structure at this point. Any writing OF ANY KIND will make the problem worse, rather than better.

The files that changed after running GetDataBack - please tell me you did not save recovered data to the same drive. SFAIK, that program will not allow that and nothing should have changed. IMO, this program absolutely blows Spinrite into the weeds, this from someonw who has used that prog over 20 years ago.

WD is imo the best HD manufacturer out there. You do not have enough of a knowledge base to make the kind of blanket statement that you did. I do.

The failures you are seeing could be interface or power related. Both of these are contained in the enclosure and not the drive itself, and can be eliminated in a few minutes. The data corruption may be unrecoverable, but the drive may still be usable after a re-partition and re-format.

[fritzi93]

Nelson37 is right, get it out and put it in your computer. It's likely enough the problem is just the enclosure, I've had a couple go bad. Nevertheless, it might be the drive itself, of course, and you shouldn't be screwing around.

A couple WD drives going bad is just bad luck, and not statistically significant. I had a couple Seagates both go around the same time, and heard rumors it was a bad batch. But rumors are always out there anyway, that one just happened to catch my interest at the time. I've had good luck with them since. And I have a few WD blacks too. [shrugs]

Yeah, sometimes a low-level format will bring a drive back.

Good luck.

[jeanpave]

Okay, everybody who's been nagging me to take the drive out of the enclosure: YOU WERE WRONG, unfortunately! I did take it out of the enclosure, and... Remember how I was telling you I treated the hard-drive like eggs?--Of course it wasn't the enclosure; it was the piece-of-shit drive that western digital made (or, actually, didn't make properly).

And stop telling me it's just bad luck and not statistically significant. That's bull. As far as I'm concerned, everything is statistically significant. western digital is shit; theirs were 50% of the drives I own (while the other 50% are just fine) and therefore I'm never spending money on another western digital product in my life!

But my newest problem is, when I connect this drive to IDE, my computer cannot perform whatever the recovery software is doing. My computer reboots itself during the "Determining block size" tests, which take hours after hours.

And this stupid western digital crap keeps deteriorating with every passing minute, apparently. Instead of at least staying as bad as it was at first, there are always more and more problems when I connect it the following time. For example, yesterday, Ontrack Easy Recovery (- GetDataBack and TestDisk are both useless, by the way, so I've given up on those for good -) allowed me to save a few files, but now it won't even detect the block sizes on the partitions, which is why it has to undergo another grueling test which makes my computer restart itself on its own.


In conclusion, unless somebody has some more great advice, I might just stop buying hard-drives altogether. I'll just save everything on DVDs, since the price is roughly the same per GB, and just store the content of one DVD locally temporarily whenever I need to do so.
This really is the last straw for me, as far as these unreliable, extremely transitory products go...


P.S. How can low-level format bring a drive back? Maybe back to a functioning state, but the previous data is irreversibly lost, isn't it? Please be clear with your meaning.

[Bjs]

System reboots generally are a sign there's a major fault with the control card on the hard drive ... and a replacement should be sought.

Testdisk is best loaded under linux os on a spare system where adequate space will be provided for file recovery ... on its own it is limited.

External Cases ... no ... even experts know not to use them when critical data recovery is required ... sure you can do it but when a drive is as bad as that there really is no choice ... physically connect to the main recovery system to reduce possible interference.

Low level format isnt what it used to be and no you cannot use this method with modern drives ... the method now is to fill the drive with "0" ... use the manufacturers tools to do this.

It would be a loss to format the unit unless the data is not worth recovery ... the control card would be about $75au (5 day business express)

Q: What "exactly" was the error reported by chkdsk ? ... if related to bitmap then you need to delete files to make more space available.

[Nelson37]

I apologize, I did not at first recognize that your vast experience of 2 or 3 years using PC's and massive buying numbers of 2 total hard drives made your knowledge and experience so much greater than my 25 years as a field tech repairing and rebuilding well over 1000 PC's and similar numbers of hard drives.

Since you obviously know what you are dealing with and which softwares will work best, I wll not bother you with any further suggestions.

Just in case you missed the sarcasm, you are a complete dumbass and have no clue.

[lingyi]

Sorry for the long posts, but hopefully this will help the OP and other visitors:

Post 1 of 2

1) Taking the drive out of the enclosure was and still is the correct thing to do. Welcome to the world of PC troubleshooting and troubleshooting in general. You’ve removed one possible variable that could have been causing the drive errors In addition, you’ve increased the throughput speed of any testing or data recovery.

2) As Bjs stated, external hard drives (actually enclosures since they’re all internal drives in external cases) are notorious for premature failure. Heat, shock and improper shut/power down reduces the life expectancy of external drives. An internal drive may have a 3 year warranty, but it’s reduced to 1 year when mounted in an external case. The drive is exactly the same, it’s just the conditions it will probably encounter that makes it more likely to fail prematurely.

3) I agree with Bjs’ guess that the hard drive controller board is bad. Run the WD diagnostics software first. You may have a negative opinion about their drives, but their software is THE best way to test hardware and firmware issues. Post any error messages you receive.

If the controller is bad and you decide to change it, do extensive research to be sure you get the EXACT replacement board (i.e. version, revision and firmware) for your drive.

If the WD software doesn't give a bad controller board error message, some other possible causes for the rebooting may be:

a. Bad IDE cable. You are using an 80 wire IDE connector, correct? Assuming you are, try a different cable. A cable that may be fine for a DVD drive may fail when used for a hard drive.

b. Single device per IDE cable only. If your DVD drive is connected to the same cable, disconnect it and run a single drive only. Multiple drives on a single IDE channel (particularly DVD drives) can cause odd errors.

c. Bad power connection. Use the molex (power) connector closest to the PSU. Also, single device only on the line used.

d. Bad IDE channel. If you motherboard as it, connect the hard drive to the second IDE channel.

3) STOP running any data recovery software. Your drive has some major (probably hardware) issues. Your files are probably spread over good and bad blocks, which is why you’re having difficulty recovering them.

4) Run SpinRite. SpinRite will attempt to read and move all blocks of your hard drive to a known good block. It may take 8 hours or 8 days, but barring physical damage to the drive (that it can’t get past) or complete drive failure, it will eventually complete its run.

Very Important! Keep the drive cool by running a fan. SpinRite will stress your drive to the max and will slow down if the drive reaches critical overheating thresholds or stop completely if the drive continually overheats. SpinRite was stopping during the recovery of the drive that took 48 hours to repair until I aimed a desk fan on it. There’s a temp monitor on one of the pages that shows current and critical drive temp as the program is running.

If you need help with running SpinRite, post it here and I’ll try to walk you through it. I’m no expert at SpinRite, but I’m pretty familiar with what the various screens mean.

5) Once SpinRite has completed its job, you may be able to copy the files directly. If not, run the data recovery software of your choice. Just because it didn’t work the first time doesn’t mean it won’t work at all. All your data should be on known good blocks (though still fragmented, but that’s a different story) and now able to be recovered.

8) As Bjs stated, there’s no way to “low-level format” a modern hard drive. The best you can do is wipe the partition table and MBR and optionally write 0’s to entire drive. Here’s a wiki link that explains why it’s not possible to truly “low-level format” a new hard drive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_formatting#Low-level_formatting_.28LLF.29_of_hard_disks

“Low-level formatting” won’t magically cure a failing hard drive. All it does is ‘reset’ your hard drive to factory fresh (minus any unrecoverable bad blocks / sectors).

While it may be possible to recover data from a “low-level formatted” drive, it would require FBI level computer forensics.

*Skip this section if you don’t want to be bored with an old nerdgeek’s ranting.*

In a nutshell,, modern hard drives have the controller board integrated (and specific) to the drive itself. IDE = Integrated Drive Electronics. No mixing and matching different controllers to different drives (which is why it’s imperative to get the EXACT replacement controller board for your drive).

Side note: ALL modern hard drives are IDE drives, whether ATA, SATA, SAS, etc., since they have the controller board as a part of the drive itself. It’s my old-timer force of habit to call ATA drives IDE because I come from an era before there were IDE drives.

Older hard drives didn’t have an onboard controller board and could be ‘mixed and matched’ to any number of external controllers (though still restricted to MFM to MFM, RLL to RLL, but not pertinent here). The drive would be ‘low-level formatted’ to match the external controller’s electronics. As an example of how out of hand this became, some CD-ROM drive and larger hard drives (60 MB!) would have their own dedicated plug-in controller card because the PC wouldn’t support it otherwise.


*Nerdgeek content <end>.

[piano632]

Try this free data recovery software:

http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/

I just used this recently on an old Maxtor HDD and was able to recover everything even though Windows said I needed to format the drive. It took several hours to scan through the whole drive but I was lucky I recovered everything because I didn't have backups for some of the stuff on it. While I can't guarantee it will work in your situation, it's still worth a shot.

[lingyi]

Post 2 of 2

Previous post continued:

5) ALL hard drives WILL FAIL. Whether out of the box or 10 years from now, ALL hard drives WILL FAIL. I won't get into a debate about which drive is better or worst. I've owned hard drives from almost every manufacturer and barring the infamous IBM Deskstar and Quantum Bigfoot, no manufacturer consistently makes a better or worst hard drive. The market demands cheap, but not at the expense of reliability.

If you want a reliable hard drive, don't buy an external for reasons I listed in #2. Buy a enterprise level drive, keep it on 24/7 so you minimize power on/off stresses and run a case fan on it.

I currently run 5 internal drives and 4 externals with the knowledge that I'm ready to replace them (hopefully within the warranty period) at the first signs of impending failure. Even if it fails without warning, I'm secure in the knowledge that I have backups of everything (2 or 3 backups for critical data).

6) The above having been said, hard drives are currently the the fastest, most reliable and cost effective method of data storage generally available.If a data provider giant like Google has multiple arrays of hard drives, then that's good enough for me to rely on them for my data.

7) If you decide to abandon hard drives in favor or DVDs, or CDs, or Blu-Rays, be sure to use only top rated media (Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim Datalifeplus for DVDs) and replace your DVD burner after several hundred burns to ensure you're not burning with a dying laser. And of course, keep an extra copy of everything you burn.

8) The only other alternative to hard drives is Solid State Drives (SSDs). The good: fast and no moving parts to break. The bad: limited write lifespan, high cost and relatively small <320GB sizes. Maybe in 5 years the technology will advance to where they're a viable replacement for hard drives, but not now.

9) Everyone on this forum is providing you advice for free. Of particular importance is that posters such as Nelson37 brings 25 years of experience to the table. While I don't have as extensive a resume as Nelson37, I too have been working with PCs for over 25 years, having built and repaired dozens of systems, and worked with dozens of hard drives amongst other components. Add Bjs and the other posters knowledge and experience and you probably have 75 to 100 aggreate years of useful (FREE) advice.

You've already caused Nelson37 to leave this thread because of your insistence that everyone else is wrong and your view of the necessity to remove your drive from it's case, the lack of usefulness of the recommended software (which HAS proven useful to others with different circumstances) and insistence on criticizing a well respected provider of hard drives is absolutely correct.

Please don't make myself and others leave this thread (and not solving your problem) by being so steadfast and foolhardy to ignore the sage and FREE advice from those who have experienced a similar if not exact situation as yours and will likely continue to experience situations that you may never encounter yourself.

Whether your choose to follow my advice posted above or not, I wish you luck with your endeavor.