My music--save it!!!!

October 26, 2005 8:45 AM

Aaauuuuuugh! Help me save year's worth of archiving work and my large music collection which I love too dearly to lose!--"The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."

About 54 gigs of MP3 stored on a Maxtor 80 gig external USB drive. I was in the process of editing all of the tags--a job that I wanted to complete before investing in a backup.

Any attempt to plug it into a PC results in the following: The drive shows up in MY COMPUTER, but any attempt to open it results in an hourglass then evntually the following message box: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. Plugging it into a Mac results in nothing.

Is this the drive itself? Is this perhaps the IDE/USB interface that resides in the box with the power supply? Removing the drive from the box and installing it into another PC would be difficult as I only have laptops.

In short, can my songs be saved? I will be around to answer follow-up questions.

posted by sourwookie to computers & internet (11 comments total)

I would recommend getting another identical drive, hooking both up to a desktop PC, and using Knoppix or another Linux distribution to copy one entire disk over to the other blank one. Then, work with the blank one.

Also, use it as little as possible before you do that.
posted by odinsdream at 8:52 AM on October 26, 2005

Note that I mean taking the actual drive out of the USB enclosure and hooking it directly to a desktop.
posted by odinsdream at 8:52 AM on October 26, 2005

As always:

1) http://www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html
2) Attempt to mount the drive under Linux / Knoppix (may require Linux expert, though if you're really in a pinch for one we can try to take care of this remotely)
3) www.ontrack.com . NOT CHEAP, but you will get your data back.
posted by effugas at 8:55 AM on October 26, 2005

I had a similar situation, and I was able to completely recover my data using R-Studio's software. I first heard about them from a previous AskMe thread, and now I pimp them every chance I get because I was so happy that I got those files back.
posted by amarynth at 8:57 AM on October 26, 2005

Also: SpinRite. It brought a 40G ex-TiVo HD back from the dead and let me use it on another system.
posted by mrbill at 8:58 AM on October 26, 2005

Any chance of mounting the drive into another USB enclosure with success?
posted by sourwookie at 9:00 AM on October 26, 2005

Someone step in here if this is a bad idea but what about running check disk on it? Right click the drive, choose properties, tools and run an error check. Then let it fix any errors.
posted by gfrobe at 10:07 AM on October 26, 2005

That won't help with hard errors of the type the wookie is experiencing, unfortunately, and by exercising a marginal drive it may actually accelerate its failure.
posted by kindall at 11:01 AM on October 26, 2005

Actually, I did that right before this all happened. It didn't offer me a detailed view of the process, so I assumed all was kosher.

My next attempt to open the disk resulted in the above error message.
posted by sourwookie at 11:08 AM on October 26, 2005

If you get despareate, you can freeze it overnight before you begin the final transfer. It worked for one of my dead 60GB disks.

And yes, it will be the last time you use that drive.
posted by Four Flavors at 2:26 PM on October 26, 2005

Put it in a plastic bag first!

and yes, this has worked for me once
posted by blag at 2:38 PM on October 27, 2005