Help me, Oblue One, you're my only hope!

March 5, 2009 2:40 PM

Bad drive... but I can read files from it!

My 750-GB drive has gone wonky, and I'm trying to save the data on it. Some of it has been transferred, some files won't go, but no matter what, after about a few hundred MB have been moved, the drive starts refusing to answer, and needs to be powered down & reconnected. Rebooting the computer itself doesn't help, unless the external 750-GB HD is "rebooted", too - which means that's the only part of the reboot that mattered.

But here's the weirdest part: even the files that can't be moved nor copied can still be accessed. I can't move a particular VOB file, for instance, but I can watch it on video software!

OK, I just read this recent thread on the Blue, and used the suggestions of using SpinRite and HDTune, to no avail. I also ran CheckDiskGUI several times, which implicitly runs chkdsk. Various bad sectors have been found & corrected (supposedly). HDTune found 3 of the first 7 blocks were damaged; after that, *every* block was marked damaged (which is probably the unresponsive drive problem I mentioned above).

Any clues as to why I can access files, but not move them? Or any direction how to save my GB of stuff? Help!

posted by IAmBroom to computers & internet (9 comments total)

You can watch it in video software because VLC or whatever you're using doesn't care that the file is damaged *somewhere* it only cares that it can read enough for the currently displayed video. If you wanted to, you could try watching the whole VOB file, but at some point, you'd (99% certainly) get an error. You can't move the file because windows is trying to ensure consistency of the file it's writing but is getting whack data since the physical disk is failing.
posted by beerbajay at 2:52 PM on March 5

Any chance you could boot into a Linux liveCD and perform the copies from there? I've had success in the past doing that with failing drives.
posted by tapesonthefloor at 2:59 PM on March 5

beerbajay, that makes sense. I randomly forwarded to various spots in the movie, but perhaps I just jumped over the error section.

tapesonthefloor, I'll try that later tonight, & report back. Thx.
posted by IAmBroom at 3:51 PM on March 5

Rebooting the computer itself doesn't help, unless the external 750-GB HD is "rebooted", too

Am I correct in assuming that this is an external hard drive? If so, I'll bet the enclosure has a flaky USB controller. Try hooking the drive up to an internal bus or get a new USB adapter/enclosure
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 3:52 PM on March 5

This worked for me last time I had a drive fail: stick it in a ziploc bag and then stick that inside the freezer for a few hours. Take it out, insert into computer, and copy everything onto another drive. It should work long enough for you to get what you need.

I read various nerd articles debating whether or not this is possible or just a myth or whatever, but in my experience it definitely does work for whatever reason regardless if people understand why.
posted by bradbane at 3:52 PM on March 5

bradbane - It often works, but it's best to save it as a last resort. You can easily fry the drive's electronics from condensation accumulation. That said, I use the freezer method successfully and often.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 3:55 PM on March 5

Are you 100% sure it's the drive? Because I had the EXACT SAME problem, and it actually turned out to be the USB cable. I replaced that, and the drive is still happily humming along on my desk as I write this.

So, I'm going to echo Cat Pie Hurts above and vote for some sort of USB-related weirdness. Try sticking the drive in your computer and see what happens, or borrow an enclosure from a friend.
posted by wsp at 5:08 PM on March 5

Just an addendum regarding the VOB thing: I found that it was continuous reading/writing that did it for my drive (copying files between disks, torrents, etc.). VLC (I presume) would buffer some of the content in memory and only fetch from the disk as the buffer is almost empty, and therefore wouldn't kill the drive.
posted by wsp at 5:13 PM on March 5

Sigh. I haven't updated, because the drive stopped responding altogether.

Boohoohoo. But, I can learn: I'm backed up online these days. Pity about the dozens of movies I lost.
posted by IAmBroom at 7:38 PM on April 20