Need some serious advice

[hatab]

yes i know i should have taken the time to back the disks up. Its all new to me and the retailer didnt give much advice at the time. i didnt really think that a few months down the line i would have a major catastrophe on my hands!!

your retailer, doesn't have much in the way of customer care skills.

ok some customers would resent them asking why they wanted a nas setup in that way (raid 0) but many customers will not know the full implications that that particular configuration poses. As a responsible seller of hardware it shouldn't be difficult to determine those who are technically savvey and those who are not up to speed.

if you have to go down the route of data recovery expense then your retailer is a better bet than the manufacturer if you are trying to get assistance in the costs, they wont be happy but if you bang the table it might get results especially if you can show they mis-sold you the kit.

Many system boards now offer raid 0 as an option in the disk configurations in pc's a mistake in my opinion as many members of the public will find a single drive failure will render their systems useless, and the loss of o/s and data.

 

[Deleted member 6259]

also looked on there website and they only seem to have two stores, one in newcastle and one in gateshead, im sure they had more though.

Yeah mate they only have the 2 stores,I only live 2 minutes away from them and its where i shop most of the time.

Nawabasif mate does the hard drive show up in the bios screen ?

Also found some reviews on data recovery programs if you want to try yourself

http://data-recovery-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

 

[Paul542]

Seagate are usually relaible but recent firmware version has let them down as you have found out.

I'd go for some 500gb/1tb SATA 3.5 drives mate set as RAID5 all the same.

If your really worried and paranoid however buy different brands or at least different batches of disks e.g. from different stores aria, ebuyer. There have been cases where several disks of the same brand fail within a very short time of each other and you wouldnt want that again.

 

[scooby do]

Hold on surely these two drives are identical, why not try and swap over the controllers on the hardrives that way you know if it is a physical problem. Hopefully this will mean that you just need to find another disk controller for the faulty drive. Or am I barking up the wrong tree

 

[DodgyTech]

your retailer, doesn't have much in the way of customer care skills.

ok some customers would resent them asking why they wanted a nas setup in that way (raid 0) but many customers will not know the full implications that that particular configuration poses. As a responsible seller of hardware it shouldn't be difficult to determine those who are technically savvey and those who are not up to speed.

if you have to go down the route of data recovery expense then your retailer is a better bet than the manufacturer if you are trying to get assistance in the costs, they wont be happy but if you bang the table it might get results especially if you can show they mis-sold you the kit.

Many system boards now offer raid 0 as an option in the disk configurations in pc's a mistake in my opinion as many members of the public will find a single drive failure will render their systems useless, and the loss of o/s and data.

I dunno mate, i mean i paid for 1TB of space and I got that, but just with 2 x 500GB drives. So i had option given to me of Mirror or just full 1TB space.

I didnt ask for any advice on this field, nor did he offer any. So I doubt I got a leg to stand on. I just went along with the instructions that came with the NAS enclosure.

Man i am kicking myself. I knew I shouldave just gone for data redundancy!!

 

[DodgyTech]

Yeah mate they only have the 2 stores,I only live 2 minutes away from them and its where i shop most of the time.

Nawabasif mate does the hard drive show up in the bios screen ?

Also found some reviews on data recovery programs if you want to try yourself

Data Recovery Software Review 2009 - TopTenREVIEWS

Nope, the good one shows up in BIOS and in device manager, but the bad one doesnt even do that. I posted in an earlier post about how it does make the computer hang for a bit, indicating to me that the computer is reacting to the HDD being present. But it doesnt show up at all.

You ever seen that program Jake 2.0? Wish i was like hima nd could just "think" my way into the computer and fix it!! oh and then i would do a whole host of other things all over the world!! lolz

 

[DodgyTech]

Seagate are usually relaible but recent firmware version has let them down as you have found out.

I'd go for some 500gb/1tb SATA 3.5 drives mate set as RAID5 all the same.

If your really worried and paranoid however buy different brands or at least different batches of disks e.g. from different stores aria, ebuyer. There have been cases where several disks of the same brand fail within a very short time of each other and you wouldnt want that again.

this jogs my memory a bit, im sure I had a maxtor drive once where the part where the power cable goes into the internal HDD jsut came off its solder points! very poor build.

The drives came from the retailer. So I had no say in that.

I should really be thinking of Banging my fists ont he table as hatab recommended. I will have a look where this goes.

 

[DodgyTech]

Hold on surely these two drives are identical, why not try and swap over the controllers on the hardrives that way you know if it is a physical problem. Hopefully this will mean that you just need to find another disk controller for the faulty drive. Or am I barking up the wrong tree

You mean the motherboard underneath?

That is a great idea. My cousin mentioned that on the way to footie tonight too.

Doesnt that require a delicate touch? I dont wanna break the drive further

 

[scooby do]

have a look at the physical drives. You hopefully will find they are the same, swap the controllers over. Normally held in with t8 screws, you will then be able to identify if it is a faulty controller. If that is the case then if the manufacturer is going to send a replacement drive then hopefully you can just put the controller of the replacement one into your broken one.

 

[scooby do]

No delicate touch required just make sure you haven't been rubbing balloons on your chest or moonwalking across the carpet for static reasons.

 

[Paul542]

have a look at the physical drives. You hopefully will find they are the same, swap the controllers over. Normally held in with t8 screws, you will then be able to identify if it is a faulty controller. If that is the case then if the manufacturer is going to send a replacement drive then hopefully you can just put the controller of the replacement one into your broken one.

very good point

 

[DodgyTech]

No delicate touch required just make sure you haven't been rubbing balloons on your chest or moonwalking across the carpet for static reasons.

LOOL!!

I gotta check the bottom side out first.

i just dont wanna end up muffing this controller up coz i dont know what went wrong in the first place. I will defo keep this idea in mind tho

 

[Dazza]

Find and download Hiren's Boot CD. Losts of useful data recovery tools on there. It can be a bit of a hit and miss process, but you may get lucky. And it'll be free, just not strictly kosher!

Remember to be careful though, write anything to wrong drive, and you'll be fecked, if you over write the data on the drive, you'll have a job recovering it.

R-Studio was a tool I had the most success with.

 

[DodgyTech]

Find and download Hiren's Boot CD. Losts of useful data recovery tools on there. It can be a bit of a hit and miss process, but you may get lucky. And it'll be free, just not strictly kosher!

Remember to be careful though, write anything to wrong drive, and you'll be fecked, if you over write the data on the drive, you'll have a job recovering it.

R-Studio was a tool I had the most success with.

Damn, looked at this CD last night, got some serious amount of "non-kosher" proggies there!

I am deffo gonna keep this for future use.

Nice one mate and yeah thanks for heads up, will not do anything ever to risk writing to drive

 

[DodgyTech]

GUYS!

Just saw this page in regards to what scoby_do mentioned: How to Swap a Hard Drive Controller Circuit - wikiHow

I have another Maxtor drive, DiamondMax 20 (mine is a 22) and i took off the circuit board just to see what it is like andi t was easy enough. Although, I am worried about invalidating my warranty on my DiamondMax22 drive. There doesnt seem to be anything that could indicate I have take the board off.

I have replied to Maxtor/Seagate to see what they say, have asked whether or not it is a wise idea to take off circuit board from good one and try on bad one.

I pray this will fix it. Im sure seagate will be okay in sending out just a replacemtn controller board if it is

 

[DodgyTech]

I think i got it!

I said what the hey and took the board off from the good one and put it on the bad one.

It did make some clicking sounds and after a while it was detectable is BIOS!!

So that is a good sign. What i forgot to do was try the bad drive's baord on the good drive.

Because it is detectable i BIOS, i am assuming it should work provided Seagate send me out some replacement boards as part of my warranty.

U think they will do that?

 

[davidh]

I think i got it!

I said what the hey and took the board off from the good one and put it on the bad one.

It did make some clicking sounds and after a while it was detectable is BIOS!!

So that is a good sign. What i forgot to do was try the bad drive's baord on the good drive.

Because it is detectable i BIOS, i am assuming it should work provided Seagate send me out some replacement boards as part of my warranty.

U think they will do that?

i had a 500gb seagate sata that died on me
same as u not being seen in bios or windows i wrapped it up in a towel and put it in the freezer for a few hours it worked enabling me to get the info off the hdd
may work for u

 

[DodgyTech]

i had a 500gb seagate sata that died on me
same as u not being seen in bios or windows i wrapped it up in a towel and put it in the freezer for a few hours it worked enabling me to get the info off the hdd
may work for u

lol cheers mate, will try that if all else fails on me!!

Did you thaw it out later? :angelwing

 

[hatab]

Hi Nawabasif

you are not out the woods yet but that does sound encouraging.

A word of advice though don't tell Maxtor/Seagate you have done this, ask them if you can do it to eliminate board or enclosure , if you tell them you have done it it sort of gives them the out concerning the warranty.

"normal" practice with Seagate is they give you a rma number and you send the drive off and it goes away to Holland overnight via a specific dhl depot.

You then get an e-mail by the end of the following day to say new drive is on its way, this is after they have checked it out at there European testing centre.

 

[scooby do]

Best thing is to try the motherboard if it works then do a full disk acronis backup or ghost to another drive. This should be done sooner rather than later. Note there are special hardware devices that can sit in between the disk and the doner PC that stops any data from being written to the drive although as long as you are careful and choose the correct drive you should be fine. IF you dont have a drive to back up to then back it up to DVD's just make sure you verify.

I would not mention about the controller thing to the warranty people. They are not interested in getting your data off.