Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with computer and drive

EIEIOmega

rleamon — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:04:20 -0800

My Iomega external hard drive died... Any chance of getting it going again? Or getting the drive(s) out and into another case? It's an Iomega HDD2H, 640GB, silver case, and I'm pretty sure it's two 320GB drives in a RAID 0 configuration. (Specs are hard to come by for this, sadly.) The case has four screws attaching the outer enclosure that mainly serves to provide feet, but the inner enclosure holding the ddrives defied my initial attempts to open it -- no apparent screws or other modes of ingress. I found a suggestion to try another external power supply with it and happened to have an exact twin that came with another drive -- but no go.

I'd rather rescue the data somehow and have a hard time believing the drives themselves are the problem; it seems more like a power issue. But even if I could get the drives out, what are the chances I could use another RAID enclosure (which I happen to have) and retrieve the data?

Lastly, yes, it's out of warranty, and Iomega quoted a minimum $900 to get the data back. Yikes!

How can I access files from a fritzed Windows Home Server?

Hartster — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:28:15 -0800

How can I access files from a fritzed Windows Home Server? Yesterday, we had a power surge at home followd by a a power outage. When the power returned, the Tranquil WHS wouldn't boot: turning the power on just got a fast blinking blue light and nothing else (no drive activity or boot up etc). Unfortunately, I urgently need some files of that drive.

So I removed the SATA hard drive and stuck that in my (Windows XP running) desktop. I thought that had worked, but while my desktop can see the drive and all the files, clicking on a file or copying it gets nowhere, I get a "this file cannot be accessed by the system" message or some sort of variant depending on how I try and open the file.

Have I just not installed it properly? Is the file system corrupted by the power surge? Is sticking a drive with its own operating system in another desktop the issue? Is there another way to get hold of the files I need in the short term?

To an extent, I'm more bothered about getting access to the drive than getting my WHS up and running again, as I've not been using it as anything other than an overspecced external harddrive for a while now anyway.

(Also as a bonus question: if I do get it up and running as another internal hard drive, is there a way of mapping a folder on a drive to its own drive letter: e.g. map "F:/shares/music" to "M:")

At least for once, I have good backups...

tkolstee — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:46:01 -0800

iMac drives failing - first external, then internal. Seems to be hardware in both cases. Questions about troubleshooting or replacement inside. My 1TB external media drive (usually connected via firewire, but has USB as well) on my iMac went bad last week, randomly dropping off until it's powercycled. It was a WD MyBook, which I have now come to understand has an overheating issue. The firmware upgrade didn't help. I bought a new (1.5TB Seagate USB 2.0) external and migrated over the files using rsync. Opening the external case and pointing a desktop fan at the drive seemed to help it stay up longer, but SEVERAL times during the process it crashed, sometimes hanging the host computer with it. Several forced powercycles and hours later, I had all my data moved. One of these crashes happened in the middle of a Spotlight index job which I tried to kill to no avail.

I was just about to "retire" the old drive when it crashed once more, again hanging the iMac. I held down the power button on the iMac and forcefully rebooted it, and this time the system came up to the "question-mark-within-a-folder" icon. Booted from Snow Leopard install DVD, and tried to run Disk Utility. Disk Utility was having some problems detecting the filesystem/partitions on the internal drive, so I tried to repartition it to restore my Time Machine backup and found that its capacity was listed as 0 bytes.

I've gotten the drive to (briefly) recognize properly once, but most of the time the drive begins clicking as it's trying to read. When it was recognized I attempted a verify and repair, but the drive stopped working (and again hung the computer) in the middle of the process.

Is there any possible correlation (unstable power, magnetic interference, sunspots?) between the external and internal drives failing so closely together? It seems like this is a hardware failure where both drives are concerned; the external due to heat intolerance, and the internal due to unknown causes but making a telltale click. Could the internal drive have failed due to my powercycling the machine? I would think the machine should have brains enough to gracefully kill off its drive before shutting itself off....

Secondly, is there anything else I can do to save the drive? I'm assuming the click generally means the drive won't ever be good again. I know about the freezer trick and other temporary methods, but I don't care about the data on the drive as it's backed up and easily replaceable.

Third, if the internal drive is permanently dead, how easy is it to replace it with a new one? I have a 3.5" 250GB SATA drive that I can use to replace it, but have never taken apart an iMac before.

Lastly, is there anything I can do with the overheating external? It seems to work fine, so long as I direct a lot of airflow at it, but otherwise it crashes within 30-60 minutes of use. It seems to be getting more intolerant of heat as time goes on.

The receipt lists this as an "iMac 17/2.0/1G/160/SD/AP/BT/WLKBM, Part Number MA758LL/A". It was purchased July 29, 2007 so is not still under any warranty.

DVD/CD drive feeling unwell - suggestions?

AllieTessKipp — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:50:54 -0800

My DVD/CD and CD drives only work a little bit. I apologize in advance as this is very long and tedious. I am trying to be thorough so that maybe someone can read this and have a suggestion or ask a question to get more information that might prompt a suggestion for me.

I have Windows XP Home and I bought a Dell. I've been very happy with this machine. I am still happy with it, just puzzled by this issue. The computer is perhaps 5-6 years old.

My computer used to happily read, rip, and burn CDs and DVDs with no problem. A few months ago, I started getting errors occasionally when burning a CD. The last couple of months it has gotten worse and now when I put a CD, over half the time it will not burn. I was using Easy CD Creator that came with my machine, and then I got DeepBurner, which is free. They both work about the same amount of the time.

Now the DVD/CD drive that reads and writes will not automatically bring up the disk I put in like it used to do. I like for that drive, when I put in an audio CD, to just start ripping the tracks. I do this mainly for audio books I get from the library. I rip them to play on my little player while I walk, and then I delete them when I'm done listening. Sometimes if I buy an audio book on 10 CDs, I prefer to rip all the CDs and then burn all those tracks, after sticking them back together with Windows Movie Maker, to ONE CD instead of 10. This makes it easier when I want to listen to my book again. This works well for me. But now I am having all this trouble with the drives.

If I open Windows Media Player (I have 11), and click on "rip" it will let me choose from the two drives and then I can rip the CD. So on some level, Windows knows the CD is there. But if I double click on the CD drive listed under "My Computer" it just opens a blank empty window. If I right click and select "autoplay" it will ask me if I want to burn a CD (the answer is no, since the CD has stuff on it...).

My other drive, which is just one for reading CDs, still seems to work okay but it also is not showing up with the name of the CD in the My Computer list like it used to.

I started to have these problems about 6 weeks ago in earnest. Recently I started a new job and had to download some software, which mostly works fine except for some occasional glitch where the sound stops working on my entire computer. I don't know if these things are related. I did not have that issue come up today, where the last 3 days it happened multiple times each day. Last night I upgraded to Windows Media Player 11, and the software for work uses that program to play the sound files (I'm a medical transcriptionist).

I have done lots of looking around on Google and such and have followed many suggestions and none have offered a solution. There was some kind of upperfilters/lowerfilters thing to delete in the registry, which I did but that did not help. I have one of those disks with the little brushes on it for cleaning DVD drives and I used that but it did not seem to help. I did notice that the picture was a bit wobbly on that DVD, which did not happen before.

I am not a person who just takes the computer apart and looks inside. When it comes to the actual hardware I don't usually mess with that stuff. If I had specific directions, my husband can probably follow those and help me out. :) But he is at a loss here.

Thanks for any help or ideas you can provide.

Best backup options for iMac?

jammy — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:49:34 -0800

iMacFilter: Recommend a good external drive? I have an iMac G5 networked with an iBook G4. Memory on both has been getting a little tight.

I'm looking for two things:

1- a place to backup & store files from both computers

2- a drive that could host & stream my music to both computers to help free up memory on both

Is there a kind of external drive that would serve both these purposes? Or should I be looking to get two separate drives? Or am I going about this all the wrong way? Maybe there's an alternate setup that would work?

Tips on good automated backup software &/or software for streaming music from external drives for iMacs are also most welcome...

Thanks!

Which USB Mass Storage Device is which?

msbrauer — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:19:26 -0800

How can I change the generic name "USB Mass Storage Device" in my Vista system tray "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog? It's not uncommon for me to have a couple of external harddrives plugged in to my Vista laptop alongside a memory card and an mp3 player. While all of these devices have unique drive letters and unique names in windows explorer (one of the drives is always called 400gig, for instance, another is always called 500gig), they're all called "USB Mass Storage Device" in the system tray's "Safely Remove Hardware" menu. So when I need to unplug one but not all, I find myself taking a stab at which device is which and usually I pick the wrong one. I can solve the confusion easily enough by opening the "my computer" window and figuring out the drive letter from there, but that's an extra step that I'd love to get rid of. Ideally, the dialog would always say something like "Safely remove 400gig - Drive (x:)" and stay the same for each device each time it's plugged in.

So, is it possible to change the menu options from "Safely remove USB Mass Storage Device - Drive (x:)" to something unique for each device?

Better safe than sorry

chickaboo — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 07:37:07 -0800

My four year old desktop has started crashing on a semi regular basis and now I belatedly want to start backing up the things I have on it... help me choose an external hard drive This is mostly four years' worth of pix and music... I would like to spend less than $100... any and all suggestions welcome, someone told me to find one below 500 GB but a rudimentary internet search didn't show me many smaller ones.

How should I prepare my Mac before selling it?

micawber — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:49:13 -0800

What are all the things I should do to prepare an old iBook of mine before I sell it to another person (who I don't know and isn't related to me)? I just got a MacBook and therefore and selling my old iBook G4 to someone on Craigslist. Here is my list of things I am doing:

1) clearing off old files (including images and documents and bookmarks)
2) Removing any programs I installed
3) Removing any fonts I purchased and installed
4) Creating a new admin account and removing my account

I never downloaded mail or sound files to this machine - I never even used iTunes on it. I never installed or used any kind of financial software, such as TaxCut or Quicken. This was mainly a machine for writing and internet (and occasional image processing in Photoshop, which I am of course deleting from the machine).

But what else do I need to do? Do I need to wipe the whole machine and reinstall? I am not highly confident in my ability to do that with a Mac. Is my list of precautions sufficient? Is there software I can purchase that will scrub my hard drive of personal files? It is my understanding that Macs are not like Windows and writing personal settings willy nilly all over the HD, but I wouldn't be here if I was 100% certain.

Also very happy to be sent in the direction of various links and reference points. Thank you.

New system, Old HD?

Marky — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:22:28 -0800

New computer, how do I keep the old programs? It looks like my computer has finally bit the dust. It crashes to no video and beeps one long beep. Then it must be switched off at the power supply, and won't restart for 10-15 minutes. The crashes come randomly. It can die in 5 minutes, or run all day. "One long beep" is supposed to mean memory problems, but I've had it tested, no problems.

So I guess it's time for a new box. I want to just move my current hard drive into the new box, but I know that won't work, as any new motherboard will want different drivers. I could install the old HD as a D: drive, but I don't think the old programs would work without the proper Registry entry's. Moving the data is easy, but I want to keep my programs as well, and having to reinstall everything isn't possible. I don't have some of the disks, and haven't a clue where I downloaded some things.

What is the highest memory capacity of USB flash drive available in the market?

omaralarifi — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:25:59 -0800

What is the highest memory storage capacity for USB portable Flash drive in the market right now? I heard that the highest right now is 64GB by BUSlink, but I am not sure if there are any higher.

ATA-7 to replace ATA-6?

stopgap — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:57:41 -0800

Can an ATA-7 hard drive be used as a replacement for an ATA-6 hard drive? My laptop's current hard drive is a 60GB ATA-6 (PATA) 1.8" hard drive. I would like to replace it with a 120GB hard drive, but the only 1.8" 120GB drive I can find is ATA-7. I just want to be sure that this will be backwards compatible. The computer is a Dell Latitude X1 if it matters.

Bonus question: before I order the new drive and pry open my computer, does anyone know whether the PATA connector on 1.8" drives is the same size as on 2.5" drives? I want to know if I can use a 2.5" enclosure temporarily while I clone my old drive onto the new one.

Computer problems? Just reboot and return to out of box state.

KI6ILS — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:21:41 -0800

I went to a community college and the computers they had were able to reimage them self each time you rebooted the computer. You could trash the whole OS and render it useless but when you turned it off and back on it was in an OOB state. Where can I find something like this? It would be perfect for work.

Help me connect a 20 yr old hard drive.

damiano99 — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:04:47 -0800

Old Computer Filter: I was cleaning out a few boxes the other day from my closet and found my ST-251-1 MFM drive that I had in my first IBM based PC. It had a whopping 40MB. Even though I know it may not boot up after all this time, I still can't help but wonder if it will and would love a chance to see a snapshot of what I was doing computer-wise in 1986. Does anyone in the Hivemind know if there is an adapter/card/whatever to plug an old MFM drive into IDE or USB?

Hard drive failure = insurance fraud?

titans13 — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:42:37 -0800

Here is the deal. I have a client who brought in a hard drive with a "smoked" circuit board. He is filing a claim on his insurance for it AND the data that was on it. Fine. BUT...he wants us to "prove" that the circuit board failure happened as a result of a power surge and NOT as a natural failure of the board. I don't believe that is possible at this point. I am a computer tech, so I am looking for input from attorneys, electricians, and anyone else who can proffer and opinion. Thanks in advance!

Smart disk management

mphuie — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:59:42 -0800

Disk cleanup/management tool, with flagging, a la Tivo/MCE. I have about 1TB of space on my NAS.

When I'm getting low on space, I hate having to dig through the drive to figure out what I want to keep and don't want to.

I'd like some kind of tool that would check when drive space was low, and delete the oldest files/folders on it (up to a threshold than you can set).

However I'd like Tivo/MCE functionality where i can flag files I dont want to delete. Bonus would be able to flag for time restraints (ie. keep for 3 months). Or even to prioritize file extensions.

Sounds pretty simple and probably can be done with a basic script but I wanted to see if anyone knew of a program out there like this?

Hard drive data recovery: Possible to get a reasonable price for it?

mikeand1 — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:05:07 -0800

Hard drive data recovery: Possible to get a reasonable price for it? A couple years ago, I lost access to an internal hard drive (not the boot drive) when it started making clicking sounds. I removed it and set it aside. It has some personal data on it, and I'd like to recover it.

Problem is that every place I've talked to wants a lot of money to do it (at least $1,000). Moreover, they can't promise me it won't cost a LOT more. And once they've opened it up, that's it -- either I pay whatever it costs, or I get nothing back (including the hard drive itself).

Can anybody point me to someone who can do it for less than a thousand, and who is not totally unreliable?

It's an IBM Deskstar, 41GB, ATA/IDE, 7200 rpm, nothing fancy. Product code is IC35L040AVER07-0, if that makes any difference.

Wiping a drive.

517 — Sat, 05 May 2007 07:40:58 -0800

I am trying to wipe my hard drive... so that I can sell it. I have a copy of Killdisk and a copy of my OS but I get the feeling there is more to the task than wiping the drive and reinstalling the OS. Does anyone have any experience with this?

Freeze HD or Knoppix?

thinktwice — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 15:57:14 -0800

I turn computer on then drive spins up and then a very low click and the machine turns off! My question is will I benefit from putting this drive (120GB) in the freezer in a plastic bag then trying again or should I try and read from Knoppix, though I don't know if the machine will even boot enough for me to get to the BIOS to change the drive order and boot from CD.

CD-RW drive won't connect to laptop.

UKnowForKids — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:43:23 -0800

My CD-RW drive will not firmly attach to my Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop. If I push it with my thumbs, it will make a connection, but as soon as I remove firm pressure, it loses its connection. Basically, no matter how firmly I push it into the case, it never gives that satisfying "click" of connection, and can be removed again without pushing the switch on the underside that should be required for removal. I've looked at the connections, but given that I don't know what I'm looking for, it's unsurprising that I didn't see anything. Any ideas?

Help me fix my cd/dvd drive!

nosophoros — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 14:44:03 -0800

LAPTOP HELP!? I have an alienware laptop, whose warrenty just expired and am now having problems with the removable cd/dvd reader burner. the cd just spins and slows alternatively, unable to load or read? Anyone have any ideas, before I shell out 40 dollars for customer service?

I am going to eat my own left leg if I can't sort this.

angryjellybean — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 10:00:33 -0800

How can I access my hidden external Hard Drive data? PLEASE HELP or I might have to cry my ass off, and that's harder than it sounds I bought a Maxtor External Portable 160GB Hard Drive 3 months ago and it's been working fine in my Windows XP PC. Yesterday I used it in a Mac OS X. Only because I knew it was compatible with both operating systems because it SAYS SO IN THE PRODUCT CRITERIA.

So anyway. I came home and tried to use it in my PC and guess what? It isn't working.
Basically it recognises the drive absolutely fine. I can open the folder, and if you view the drive Properties, it informs you that 70GB has been used, which is correct. I have 70GB of data saved onto the drive.

However.

*The folder appears empty.* It looks like an empty folder. I can't do anything to make the files in there appear. It's almost like they're set to hidden or something, except they're not, obviously. I've tried 'showing all files and folders' (a really stupidly obvious one but I was desperate by this point) which didn't work. I've tried using a different USB cable. I've tried it in a different PC.

And to add insult to injury, I went back to try it in a Mac again today, and the files don't show up in there either.

So, sob sob cry whine cry and all that. Can anyone please PLEASE help me here? It's not even like they've been erased, they're just being invisible! It's like being told there is a really cool lollipop in the cupboard but nobody will give you the key for the door. Or something.
I just want my files back dammit!!

Thanks in advance =D

How to get an External Hard Drive to show up in WinXP SP2 again?

mdbell79 — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 15:26:37 -0800

How can I get an External Hard Drive to show up in WinXP SP2 again? I have a 60GB Western Digital hard drive in an ADS tech USB enclosure. It worked up to a few days ago, when it abruptly stopped showing up in My Computer. The drive was assigned disk letter I:, which is still skipped by all my other devices (iPod, Canon printer, etc.). The drive shows up in Device Manager as a 60GB Usb Device under Drives, but does not show up in the Disk Management utility.

So... why isn't this showing up in My Computer? The drive is formatted and is less than 20% full, I'd imagine. It's mostly used for data backups and disk images of files I'd need if I had to reinstall Windows.

Hw can I transfer Mp3's from my Ipod to an external hard drive?

TwilightKid — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:47:10 -0800

I have a 60gig Photo Ipod. In order to keep my computer's hardrive relative clean, I do not keep my MP3's stored in the Itunes library. All 9500 are strictly on my IPOD. I know I run the ris of losing all that upload work should my ipod get lost or break, but it was by choice. I recently bought a 250 gig external hard drive for the sole purpose of keeping all of my MP3's and important computer files on there....What I want to do and havent been able to figure out is, how could I go about transferring all the MP3 files from my IPOD to my computer and then to the external drive. (more inside) I have been told that Apple incodes their MP3's so that if I was able to transfer the MP3 data to another drive, it would come up all discombulated. This was done to thwart sharing of mass amounts of MP3's. I think thats it at least. So, is there any safe way, to transfer them, while keeping them sorted in files like they already are? thanks. long time reader, first time question asker.

Please help me move my files from overloaded laptop to external drives

thewhynotgirl — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 10:41:02 -0800

I've overfilled my laptop and want to move files to external drives. But moving keeps getting stopped for various reasons (and what the hell is a cyclic redundancy??) and I'm going nuts. Please send me your speed tips and procedure suggestions! The specifics: Toshiba satellite running windows xp; total c drive size 55.8gb, free space 12.6. External drives: f (in fat 32 which I'd like to reformat to ntfs) has a capacity of 152gb, and has only 66.1 free. Newest drive g (i've just formatted it to ntfs) has a capacity of 111gb, with 103 left after my abortive attempts to put an image disc of c on it. Thanks ... I'd LOVE to move all from c to f or g, then wipe c and reinstall only what I use regularly, keeping movable media on f or g to use while working on c or listening on e (1 gb flash mp3). But c is heavily fragged, f is pretty full but not formatted to ntfs (but you know ... it accesses much faster than my ntfs drives ...). Defragging is taking days, image mapping is too and keeps stopping; direct moving runs me into the cannot move due to cyclic redundancy nightmare; I have no screen saver running but wonder if it all stops when the screen blanks ... and I can get no speed to DO MY WORK while it's defragging or (trying to) image map.

Thus, I've had g for 2 weeks now and still have not emptied my c drive onto it.

Sorry. I sound pretty whiny here. But I'm just so frustrated.

Back it up...I'll take it

Wiggo — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 10:37:31 -0800

I've taken the role as a graphic designer at a small company, and I also wear the IT hat sometimes. That being said, I'm more of a Mac Guru than (blech) XP. BUT, we have a small file server (40 GB, half full) of data we would like to backup nightly. #1: What's a good tape drive (or other media) for that much data, with room to grow, of course. #2: What software? #3: What's a "typical" backup schedule. I'd prefer just to do incrementals, but how often to rotate tapes/etc...? Thanks!