Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with HDD

Cloned drive won't boot

willcosgrove — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:56:43 -0800

How do I get a new hard drive, that's been cloned from my primary drive, to boot as the new primary drive? A few weeks ago I started seeing the signs of my primary drive starting to fail. So I bought a new drive. My old drive was a 300GB IDE, and my new one is a 500GB Sata drive. I used DriveXML to clone my primary to the new drive. After that was done, I took out my old primary and tried to get my computer to boot off of my new cloned drive and it's not working. I can see the drive I want to boot off of in the BIOS, and I tried setting it as the first choice to boot off of (I have 4 drives in my computer). Even with that it's not working. The screen will sit there, then it says "Boot from disk:" or something of that nature, and then an Nvidia and Intel copyright something or other pops up, and then it has a very small error message, and then it just loops over and over (But minus the post. It only posts once.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Humpty Dumpty played with a drive...

Static Vagabond — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:17:45 -0800

Damaged harddrive-- need to recover one particular file, but due to the damage, only perhaps 30% of the file is intact. What tools are available to just pull that 30% back? The drive is working to a degree-- if I freeze it I can get directory listings and see the file I want, but when I drag the file off the drive, windows errors out with a CRC error after about 30% and so the file fails to move/copy.

I'm looking for a tool that will keep what it can from the file.

So if the file is like (where G is good and B is bad) :

GGGGGGBBBGGGGGGBBGGGG I'd ideally like to 'recover' the good portions, so I'm left with either
GGGGGG___GGGGGG__GGGG or even just
GGGGGG

I don't care about the bad areas, or want the system to think too hard about querying them (drive only stays nice and chilly for so long).

I thought about installing an FTP server and ftping the file off the drive, but I'm hoping some mefites know of a more speciailized tool for the job, which might also grab those later good parts of the file. Windows options preferred.

Computer Pony Request!

Bonzai — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:49:53 -0800

I would like to find a hard drive enclosure that isn't enclosed. I would really like a USB -> IDE 3.5" hard drive enclosure that I don't have to open up. I'd like to be able to take out one drive and put in another kind of like those old Atari 2600 cartridges.

Every enclosure I find online is a slim little box which looks like I'd have to open up to put the drive into it.

Does such an animal exist?

Please help me decide where to start fixing my BSOD issue

ClarissaWAM — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:53:41 -0800

Blue Screen of Death hell and I don't know where to start... is it software? Hardware? HDD? RAM? Drivers? Any pointers would be appreciated! Hi and thank you for your time. Here's the story so far:
I started getting BSODs last week - first sporadically and the PC would still run in between, but by now I can basically only boot into safe mode without getting a BSOD pretty much straight away. Here's a blurry example of one.

Potentially relevant information:
- When I upgraded to iTunes 8.2 my PC (esp. Firefox) slowed down to a crawl. As one measure (possibly stupid) I disabled a number of services in msconfig to keep stuff running to a minimum (which I do often, but I was particularly drastic this time. I did not disable any MS services however.).
- After that (I think - might be coincidence, tho unlikely) boot up time increased tenfold. That is, at the very beginning, when all I can see is the silly Pentium logo anyway, so can't determine what is holding it up (or am too stupid to figure out how to get rid of it). It literally takes around 3-4 minutes to get past that stage.
- A few days later (about a week ago) the first BSOD. I first suspected the HDD, but more out of my tendency to expect the worst, for of course I hadn't backed up in ages (have however managed to back up the essentials now, so would be happy enough to reformat & reinstall).
- Now for the odd part. I figured I'd re-enable the services I'd disabled to see if that would help - however I get error (I paraphrase) "you do not have authority to do this for some of the services (won't tell me which one), please log in as admin" - needless to say I am admin.
- When booted into safe mode & trying to get to the event viewer, I get "unable to complete the operation.. the interface is unknown." Calling up the Device Manager, it comes up blank! There are various other similarly baffling errors. It's like I'm locked out of my own system! This of course makes me suspect soft/malware rather than hardware.
- I also did try system restore before the BSODs became all-invasive and it told me it was not possible to restore to any earlier restore point.
- Oh yeah, here is my HijackThis log - one, two (pics, sorry, since I can't get the damn file off the PC). I ran Avira too with no worrisome results.

So.... where do I start? I am prepared to reinstall, replace the HDD, remove all memory sticks one by one, update the BIOS, whatever else you can think of, but I'd be really grateful for some pointers so I don't start at the wrong end and waste hours & hours when it might be something really obvious.

System Specs: Win XP Home SP2 5.1, Build 2600, 3GB RAM, Intel Pentium 4 3GHz, Mobo Medion MD 8088, 2 HDDs & the system one is 120GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 and reasonably old.

Many many thanks!!!

What's left to try on a dead SeaGate before paying for data recovery?

Avenger50 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:30:53 -0800

500GB internal SeaGate hard drive disappears from Windows, Linux, and the BIOS. What can I try before I pay to have the data recovered? Tested it with a few different operating systems and a few different machines, and though it always "spins up" this year-old SeaGate drive, configured with no operating system and a single partition, doesn't show up anywhere to mount or browse, like it's just not there. Besides the well-documented freezer trick, what's left to try before I send it to one of several MeFi-recommended recovery companies for $1000 or more?

Quiet Please!

nam3d — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:32:33 -0800

MacFilter: Help me choose a quiet internal hard drive? I have an iMac (24-inch Early 2008) and would like to upgrade the internal hard drive to something a little quieter.

I currently have a 500GB hard drive of which I have only used 50GB of space so really I only need a hard drive with capacity of 100GB's or more.

Can someone please reccomend which hard drive I should purchase I'd rather not spend over £100 but all suggestions are welcome.

MacBook HDD size upgrade to increase speed and overall performance?

cosmic osmo — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:22:42 -0800

Will upgrading the size (but not RPM or cache size) of my laptop's hard drive increase performance? I have a MacBook with this hard drive currently inside of it (320 GB, 7200RPM, 16MB cache). I am thinking about upgrading to this one (500 GB, 7200RPM, 16MB cache).

I'm trying to find a way to speed up my MacBook. I have a large (~150 GB) iTunes library and as it has grown I have been getting a lot of spinning beach balls, mostly only affecting iTunes itself (i.e., Safari will be responsive but the cursor will change to a beach ball when hovering over the iTunes window behind it), but it's started happening with other apps, too. I generally have about 30 GB of the actual 300 GB of my hard drive space available, if that's relevant, and I have a few external hard drives already, so I'm not looking to upgrade my storage space, only the speed of my computer.

Will upgrading only the size of the hard drive (and not RPM or cache size of the drive) boost performance? Failing that, is there something else I can do? (My RAM is already maxed out, running the latest software updates, etc.)

Should I get a hard drive for the Xbox 360?

wastelands — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:19:32 -0800

Xbox 360: should I get a hard drive for it? I'm a cheapskate. I plan on playing only single player games and I don't need Netflix streaming or movie downloads (already use my PC for that). All that said, is it worth paying extra for something more than the "Arcade" version of the console? If so, is the "Pro" version the best bet, or can I score a hard drive and install it for a lot cheaper?

(I'm a longtime PC gamer, so this console gaming world is very mysterious to me.)

Largest external HDD w/o power supply?

jstarlee — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:48:47 -0800

External HDD shopping : Helping co-worker pick a external HDD. Trying to help a coworker find an external HDD that suits her needs. storage bigger than 100GB, costs less than $100, no power adapter required. What's the largest size available, 320gb?

Looking for a hard drive adapter/box for an IBM Travelstar laptop hard drive.

mjklin — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:22:26 -0800

Looking for a hard drive adapter/box for an IBM Travelstar laptop hard drive. Looking for an adapter for an IBM Travelstar laptop hard drive, so that I can connect it to a PC and get data off. (Yes, I'm still working on this same problem)

I've already ordered two adapters online, and neither has fit (even thought they claimed they did). It is an IBM Travelstar model IC25N030ATCS04, very small (from an Acer TravelMate C100), with a female connector that runs along a center groove. See pictures here and here.

I'd appreciate any help on where I can buy an adaptor that fits. Thanks!

MLC SSD for OS install ?

Oneirokritikos — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:53:27 -0800

I'm building a new PC, and I'm eyeing a Transcend ts64gssd25s-m SSD drive to put WinXP Home on (64GB); However, since it is MLC based, I have a few questions... MLC means 10.000 cycles of lifespan, so how long will my drive last? I plan to implement various life-saving schemes (disabling indexing, relocating the swap mem, disabling the file access journal...) on top of the built-in schemes (wear levelling) but i still feel anguish at the thought of the drive dying on me in a year or two, even though the builder says in theory it shouldn't be the case. Do you have experience with this drive, or any MLC SSD drive? What can you advise me? Should I put an OS only on a SLC drive or are the dangers of MLC exaggerated?

Thank you , hivemind !

Hard Drive Limited to 1.5 GB/sec?

Avenger50 — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:59:27 -0800

So I'm installing a new Seagate 500GB SATA HDD in my PC, when I notice, for the first time somehow, a jumper that limits the drive to 1.5 GB/s. What's that all about? Limits to 1.5GB/s as opposed to, I'm assuming, the 3.0GB/s advertised with most modern SATA drives, including the one I bought. Upon further investigation, both my other drives are running with the jumper on, limiting my transfer speeds.

I understand that 3.0 GB/s isn't even considered possible really, but why 1.5GB/s? And do I want it limited for just your standard, non-RAID gaming configuration? What does it all mean?

Where did my other 200 GB go?

WilliamWallace — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:25:49 -0800

How do I recover a 320GB drive that only reads 110GB now? Similar to this This is my first time posting a question here on MeFi, so I apologize for any formatting mistakes.

I bought a 320GB Seagate 2.5" SATA HDD to upgrade my laptop storage. I got a cheap enclosure to clone my existing HDD so I could just swap the drives out. But it seems that when I cloned the drive using Acronis TrueImage, it cloned the 110GB (from the 120GB drive) to the new drive and now the drive is only recognized as 110GB. I tried a low level formatting tool to no avail. Can someone help me or direct me to somewhere where I can recover the storage on this drive, and suggest how I can avoid this problem in the future? I googled it and it seems to be an issue with something called LDA, and how it should be 48-bit to recognize drives over 137.5 GB, but I'm not sure what that means and the explanations on how to fix it were less than helpful.

Additional Information:

I told Acronis to automatically upscale my partitions, which may be one of the causes of the issue. There is an 80GB partition and a 30GB partition on the drive currently.

If it helps: the laptop is a Dell Inspiron 9400 with 2GB RAM and running XP.

La Cie external drive failure

gen — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:27:01 -0800

Mac, Leopard, La Cie external hard disk drive spins but does not mount. What's my best option for getting data off this drive? I've got an external La Cie drive that won't mount. I've tried 3 of the 4 interfaces (USB 2.0, FW400, FW800) but cannot get this disk to mount. What are my best options for getting this data before retiring this drive?

I just wanna buy the drives naked and have one adapter to rule them all

GleepGlop — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 10:19:54 -0800

What is the best solution for having a whole bunch of hard drives and being able to easily swap them around? I find myself with more and more hard drives, and right now I have a 2.5" and a 3.5" enclosure that require a lot of screwdriver action to swap the hard drives out.
My ideal solution: bus powered, supports any size of 2.5 or 3.5", and easy to swap the drives.
I've seen things where you stick the HDD in like a nintendo cartridge but I understand that more capacious hard drives may take up more physical space and maybe not all drives would fit inside.
I've also seen cheap USB 2.0 to SATA cable adapters on newegg where the drive just connects and sits there with no enclosure around it but they are low priced and perhaps low on reliability, and I don't know if I should be worried about having an exposed hard drive. Maybe I would need some kind of snap case to go with that option.

Man Attempting to Move Leopard

indiewizard — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:41:38 -0800

Great MeFites, I come bearing but a humble request. I bought a MacBook Pro about six months before Leopard was released. When it finally came out, I installed it on a partition on an external drive, which I would boot from (because OS X is awesome like that, amirite?) so I could test out all my apps. Now I'm ready to commit to Leopard full-time - what's the best way to go about transplanting my Leopard partition? In my head, I would copy everything precious to the external drive, and then go into Disk Utility and select "Restore" (I'm not in front of my Mac right now, so I don't know the exact option, but it's a tab that comes up in the main pane when you select the root drive in the left-hand pane), where I would select Leopard as the source, and my internal drive as the destination. However, the internal drive is just slightly bigger than the Leopard partition - would this present a problem?

Also, what are my other options? Specifially, Carbon Copy Cloner comes to mind - is this what I need?

Also also, I would like to merge my Adium chat logs - any programs available? If this isn't possible, I'll settle for simply copying them to my Documents folder, and using Spotlight.

A thousand thank-yous in advance.

Instant search solution for an external hard drive?

greenknightwatch — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 08:54:09 -0800

Is there a desktop search solution that will index my external hard drives? So far I have had no luck with Google Desktop search.

Can I replace my dead old Thinkpad HDD with a generic one?

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:18:07 -0800

I have an ancient Thinkpad 570, and the hard drive finally died. Hardware not recognized. I've pulled out the old one (it rattles ominously) and am wondering if I can replace it with a new generic laptop drive, rather than having to go with overpriced proprietary stuff. The laptop model number is 2644 3AA, and the HDD model is DBCA-206480 E182115 T, if that makes a difference. I've been building computers for years, but this is my first go with laptop repair.

Thanks!

Ubuntu 8.04 on a portable hard drive?

penciltopper — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:37:58 -0800

Ubuntu 8.04 on a 40 gb portable HDD: LiveUSB w/persistence, or install straight to HDD? I'd like to be able to carry around a portable USB HD - NOT a flash drive; too small, and I'd wear it out too fast - with an Ubuntu install that I can boot to on any of the 9 or 10 machines I end up being in front of fairly often.

I've got an old install of Dapper on a 10 GB portable HD that I made work this way after some wrestling.
But every time I use it, I have to reconfigure Xorg. Doable, but annoying.

I haven't used it (or Ubuntu) in a while and I've missed it; I also figure it's time to update to Hardy Heron.
I did so researching and found that Heron has a LiveUSB installer all wrapped up now, which is cool.
Q#1: does that set up persistence too?

Q#2: Given that I'd like to do one install to a portable HD, and have that install boot from various different machines without reconfiguring X (or anything else if I can help it), would I be better off:

A) doing a LiveUSB install on the HD, with a partition for Persistence
or
B) just doing a straight install to the USB HD, because Ubuntu has some new cool thing that will adjust for different hardware now - no more reconfiguring X, etc.
or
C) some third thing I've never heard of but is supercool?

Move HDD with OS to a new computer?

ian1977 — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:38:39 -0800

Can I move a HDD with Windows 2000 to a new computer and expect it to load Windows 2000? The USB ports on our current tower went caput and we bought a new PC. It was a great deal from newegg but it comes with Linux and we want Windows 2000. But, I don't feel like taking 3 bajillion years to download service packs and stuff.

Question is this....can I just take the HDD from the old PC and put it in the new PC as the master drive and expect Windows 2000 to load? Or will it get so choked up with "Found New Hardware" messages that it won't be worth it?

Lazarus?

popcassady — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:25:16 -0800

I still have hope for my dead HDD. How do I bring it back to life? The other day, in an attempt to connect an external CD drive to my iBook, I decided to rip open my LaCie.

When it came to reconnecting the HDD to the LaCie hardware, I was stupid enough to do this with the power flowing. I was also stupid enough to try and connect the molex the wrong way round. A few sparks and a terrible odour later, I plugged the LaCie into the iBook. ...Not a whimper from the LaCie.

I took the HDD out of the chassis and connected it directly to my PC. Still dead. I know little about HDD repair but as I can't afford to send it to a specialist, it's DIY all the way.

I assumed that the problem was with the PCB. Luckily I was able to track down a board that matched the model of my HDD: Seagate Barracuda, model: ST3250823A, p/n: 9Y7283-511, firmware: 3.03.

The new board arrived today. I swapped it for the old one, reconnected everything, and plugged it in.

It spins up fine, which is an improvement at least. But after that, nothing. It doesn't do the clicky, clicky thing and neither will it mount. I've tried other HDDs in the LaCie chassis and they work fine. I connected the seagate to my PC, it spun up but still no clicky, clicky. I assume the problem is with the board... not an exact match? But, as I said, I know very little about HDD repair and so I'm worried that the problem is worse than I expected.

The new PCB was rather pricey but as a last resort, I'm considering taking a 12w soldering iron and swapping the suspect component. (I've located the component, the crack and the smell give it away, but I'm not sure what it is. It's a small black square with two thick legs at either end. The one on the old PCB is marked: QE R524, and the new one is marked: AE GP519 -- are these resistors? Do they share the same value?)

So, where do I go from here? Is the problem with the PCB? Will I see my work again? Is no clicky, clicky a bad sign?

Can this be fixed or is it better to move on?

forallmankind — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 11:10:22 -0800

My laptop either doesn't see the HDD on bootup (cannot find OS), or stops seeing it a few minutes into use (BSOD). Could this type of problem: a) be reasonably easily resolved by me for small amount of cash b) be easily resolved by a professional for a reasonable amount of cash c) be best resolved by selling it on ebay for parts or repair for a reaonably small amount of cash? The laptop in question is a Thinkpad X31 - I asked about this before when I was at the troubleshooting stage (I then thought it was the RAM, but it wasn't).
It's not the HDD itself as I've swapped it out with another and I get the same problem. I have already posted to the Thinkpad forum, but I didn't get any answers. (And I've already bought an X40 as a replacement so I'm not looking for recommendations - thanks!)

Back to The Grind

Danelope — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:54:24 -0800

Every night at 12:10AM, the brand new primary hard drive in my computer begins grinding away for a duration of 10-60 seconds. Why? Observations:

1. It's a pronounced sound and fairly loud compared to normal drive seek noise, but doesn't sound mechanically destructive.

2. It occurs every night at 12:10AM on the dot.

3. It occurs regardless of how long the computer's been on.

4. It occurs whether I'm actively using the machine or not.

5. The machine performance seems unaffected by the process.

6. Examing both the running processes via Task Manager and the filesystem activity via sysinternals' Filemon reveals nothing untoward.

7. I don't have any automated tasks (e.g. virus scan, defrag, backup) running at that time.

8. This also occurred on my previous machine using a different operating system (Win2K Pro then; WinXP Pro now) and a different hard drive (though both drives were manufactured by Western Digital.)

Is this some sort of maintenance routine hardwired into the WD firmware? I've been meaning to Ask this question for quite some time, but I've generally forgotten by the time I finished doing whatever was interrupted by the grinding.

Syncing up 2 USB Hdd on a Mac and Font converting software (PC to Mac)

spinko — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 07:48:58 -0800

Syncing up 2 USB Hdd on a Mac and Font converting software (PC to Mac) Today I decided to update the office to Macs, use them at home for games and web with no problem. The office Macs are used for Design, Print and web. We have no problems with the design software its little things like our fonts.

---Q1---
We bought the most of the library at Adobe Fonts, they are PFB and PFM format. Works on Windows, doesnt on a MAC.

We have VMware fusion installed, for windows apps, etc. Im thinking of purchasing Crossfont for windows, and converting. However costs $49 does anything know any free converters for PC fonts to Mac friendly as I will only use the app once to convert the whole library?
---EO Q1---

---Q2---
Backing up, on Windows we used an app that sycronised both USB harddrives (one on Network for everyone, second on my PC). This worked a charm, is there anything similar on a MAC.

Our setup.
We are using Airport Extreme with a USB HDD on it. The office can read / write files, no problem.

Im using 'Time Machine' only seems to back my Mackintosh HD and not the network usb drive.

I dont mind paying for this, but I have thoughts that there is software I need already on my machine without me knowing.

This is my fav so far:
http://propagandaprod.com/dejavu.html
from this list.
http://www.pure-mac.com/backup.html
---EO Q2---