|
. . . continued from September 25 , 2005 Show Notes
Dead External Hard Drive
You've got yourself a conundrum . . . so try any or all of the following at your own risk.
If the drive is making grinding noises, but remains accessible via Windows Explorer or whatever file manager you're using, simply copy everything off the drive and store it elsewhere (on your main drive, on another external drive, or onto a drive somewhere on at network). First make sure that the new data storage location is up and running and accessible. Then cross your fingers and hope that everything you need can be copied before the drive fails.
|
|
Podcast Donation
We love doing the Kickstartnews Revue podcast and we hope you love listening. Please help us cover bandwidth costs. A $2.00 donation helps!
|
|
As long as your drive is inaccessible to Windows, try accessing it via a DOS or rescue boot disk. If you can get at the drive, copy as many files as you can to floppy disk or to another location if you're on a network. In any case, grinding noises emanating from a drive that's not being recognized by Windows usually means the drive is kaput.
SpinRite 6 will analyze platter surfaces and make repairs, but that grinding noise likely has nothing whatsoever to do with the platter surfaces. In fact, because SpinRite tends to work drives fairly hard, it's quite likely that the grinding drive would fail while being addressed by SpinRite.
Drive warranties won't help you recover lost data. On the other hand, don't be put off by the manufacturing date of the drive despite the fact that the warranty is technically stale-dated. Quite often, drive manufacturers honor their product warranties from the date of purchase from an authorized retailer.
BIG NOTE: Before doing anything else, make sure that the grinding noise is actually emanating from the hard drive itself and not the cooling fan built into the external case. While it's most likely that the drive is the culprit, those little cooling fans are quite delicate in some cases and are also known to make a terrific racket when knocked even slightly out of alignment. To check the fan, open up the external case and disconnect the ribbon cable and power cable to the hard drive. Switch on power to the case and listen to the fan. If it's quiet, your problem is definitely the hard drive.
Big City Byte—Compatibility Lists
Just like your neightborhood contractor (Call Before You Dig!), smart business people check software publishers' compatibility lists before installing new system software. Here are a few lists to get you started:
. . . and if you do a search online using the phrase "[product] compatibility list" where "[product]" is the name of the software or hardware you're buying, installing or using, you should come up with the right information page quite quickly.
Download the Kickstartnews Revue - Podcast 20 - September 25, 2005
Grab the Podcast Feed (XML link for your podcast software)
Grab the direct download link (MP3 - 14MB)
Back to Hot News!
|
