Portable Hard Drive Help!
 

Ok, I am in a huge hole at the moment.
I had backed up the last year and half worth of my files on a school computer.
The computers got cleaned apparently, leaving me with one copy on my external harddrive.
Its a Wester Digital 160 "internal" hard drive in a portable enclosure.
This thing has worked fine for 2 years, now when I try to access my files, I get the spinning ball of death.
I managed to get one folder, about 30 GBs worth of stuff off the drive since it began failing.
The drive has about 140 GBs written and I need most, if not all of it.
The drive is mountable, spinning with no weird noises except a few chirps when it mounts.
I would like to just copy the data to a school computer as my laptop does not have 140GBs free.
The only problem is the computers have disk utility disabled.
The network admin is not too friendly and I doubt he will let me access admin.
Is there any way around this? or a alternative program which can do the same?
I am a college student so something which doesn't cost anything would be ideal. Best buy is quoting me at $600 to burn my disk to DVDs but I just can't afford that.
Any ideas on how I should go about copying data from my failing drive, please help!

update
 

I managed to get DiskWarrior and I am trying to rebuild my drive.
The only problem is, once DiskWarrior loads, everything freezes until I shut off my hard drive.

The same thing happens when I try to access the drive through Finder.
Everything will freeze until the drive is shut off.

Is there anything I can do to remedy this?

Portable Hard Drive Help
 

Please tell us more about how you're trying to connect the WD 'external' hard drive to your computer ie. are you using an IDE-USB adaptor from the bare drive; or is the WD drive in an enclosure with USB or Firewire connection?

My WD hard drive is in a USB enclosure.
The drive starts up slowly and reads for about 5 seconds and then the drive mounts.
Once I try to access the drive, Finder freezes.
Everything else works fine, I can view web pages but Finder stays frozen.
It is not until I turn off the hard drive that Finder un-freezes.

I have tried running Disk utility and Diskwarrior, both freeze when I try to do anything.
I am going to try my luck on a Windows machine sometime this week.

Do you think a new enclosure could help any?
I feel like it wouldn't mount if the enclosure was the problem but I am only speculating.
My main goal is to get everything I can off the drive and onto another drive.

Try connecting the drive to a different computer.

Try a new USB cable. Cables fail far more often than people think they do, and many hard drives are thrown away as bad when in fact it's just the cable that's flakey.

If these steps don't work, try mounting the drive in a PowerMac or Mac Pro. (If the drive that is internal to the USB case is ATA, then you'll need to find a PowerMac G4. If the drive that is internal to the USB case is SATA, then you can use a PowerMac G5 or a Mac Pro.)

Trevor

windows machine
 

I'm on a XP machine at school and the hard drive is recognized but will not appear in my computer.

I've tried going through device manager and computer management.

Device Manager is telling me nothing is wrong.

Computer management is telling me that I have 149.05 GBs of unallocated space.

I cannot defrag and I cannot convert to a Dynamic Disk.

I can add a partition but I am hesitant to do this as I need the data on the drive.

Is there anything I could do to let windows access my drive?

reply to trevor
 

Wouldn't the drive not mount if the USB cord was the problem?

I have a powerbook G4.

I will reply later with the models I have available at school.

Not necessarily, it depends on the way it was damaged.

Trevor

School computers
 

The mac I was using when this problem first happened is a Mac Pro, Dual core Intel Xeon, 2.66 GHz, 2 GBs of memory.

I have tried to access this drive on multiple computers, 3 or 4 different Mac Pros, a power book G4 and a Windows XP machine. At the moment I have my Mac Pro attempting to open the drive, I will let it attempt this for my 3 hour class. Hopefully it is just hung up on something and will sort it self out. The one thing I have noticed is the activity light only blinks when the drive is first mounted, once it is mounted the drive spins at a constant rate and the activity light does not blink. Also the drive makes no searching sounds, it seems as if it's not listening to the computer past the mounting stages.

The USB cord is not the problem, I get the same result with a different USB cord.
If the drive is mounting am I in good shape for data recovery or is this a lost cause?
I'm beginning to think that $600 for geek squad to transfer the data might be my only option.
But if they are able to do that, then I should be able to do it, no?
Perfect timing for this, my thesis show is in two months and all my files are in lock down. great.

If you get to the point of trying recovery programs, I recommend DataRescue.
<http://www.prosofteng.com/>

What's great is that you can download it for free, check out to see if it will do what you want, and, if so, they will send you a key to fully enable the functionality to actually recover data after you send them payment. (within minutes after you pay online)

I have found it effective for file recovery even though the volume(s) on the drive will not mount, but, of course, it does require the drive itself to be recognizable, i.e., not totally dead.

Disclaimer: Other than being a customer, I have no relationship of any kind with Prosoft.

The only step that I can think of before following the recovery program route that iampete mentions above is to remove the drive from the external case and mount it in a computer that can accept multiple hard drives, such as a PowerMac or Mac Pro. That bypasses the USB to ATA bridge, or USB to SATA bridge, in case that is the problem, or adds to the problem.

You haven't mentioned yet whether the drive internal to the case is an ATA or SATA drive, or for that matter if it is a 2.5" or 3.5" drive.

Trevor

I believe it is a ATA but I am not sure. It's an Adaptec case, USB 2.0, High speed. 3.5 mobile drive. I will try the data recovery software as the drive does mount. I don't care about the drive as much as I care about the data on it. My thesis, portfolio and most of my work are on it not to mention all my music, photos and dmg files. Thanks for your help, I will get back to you guys on how the data recovery goes later this evening.

Do you have access to a PowerMac G4?

Trevor

I do not believe so. The other lab may have a power mac, I will check once I am out of this class. I don't have admin on any of these computers, so I may have to do any data recovery on my laptop which is a Powerbook G4. As for installing the drive in a computer, I can ask my friend if he is willing to let me do that. Doubtful, but if this data recovery software does not work, that looks like my last resort before geek squad. I cannot install this drive in a mac because they are all locked to desks.

nope, these computers are PowerPCs G5.

You could temporarily connect the ATA drive to the Optical drive bus on the G5 to transfer the data.

how would I go about doing that?

the G5s are locked to desks, so access is limited.
my friend is attempting to retrieve the data as we speak on his windows machine.
hopefully that works, will be in touch.

If you've run DiskWarrior on the drive, then I've got to assume that it's formatted as HFS+. Windows normally cannot read from an HFS+ drive (although it can with MacDrive: http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/ ).

So, I'm not sure what good a Windows machine is going to do for you. Your best method for retrieving data from an HFS+ hard drive is with a Mac.

On the other hand, if this drive is formatted as FAT32, then a Windows machine is the best way to retrieve data.

The way that you connect an ATA drive to a PowerMac G5 is to disconnect the data and power connectors from the CD or DVD drive in the PowerMac, and plug those connectors into the hard drive. Then boot the computer, if it's mountable, the hard drive should mount. If it's not mountable, you still have a better shot at it with something like Data Rescue II: http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php than if it's connected through a USB bridge.

Trevor

Re: Portable Hard Drive Help
 

If you've not managed to retrieve your data by now, and having read all the replies to your questions, I suggest the following:
1. Remove the hard drive from the enclosure (a simple enough procedure)
2. Disconnect the ATA (IDE) and Molex power connectors
3. Go to your nearest computer hardware store or to an online store and buy an IDE-USB adaptor. The kit should come with a power supply adaptor plus molex power connector. The kits are inexpensive (< US$20) and useful.
4. Hook up your now bare WD hard drive with the IDE-USB adaptor and power supply. Sit the WD drive on a soft pad (eg. bubble wrap).
5. Plug the power adaptor in but MAKE SURE it is to a switched power socket. Do not switch on yet.
Once you're sure all connections are correct ...
6. Switch on the power supply to your adaptor -> WD drive. You should hear the drive power up.
7. Now plug the USB connector into your computer (see separate post on this issue).
If your WD disk is undamaged, you should hear the familiar chatter of the disk being read and the disk icon should appear on the desktop.
If nothing happens, retry the whole procedure from No 4 onwards.
Hopefully, the above might let you retrieve your data. I cannot explain why it might work when other suggested methods have not. I simply believe in trying everything feasible until you've run out of options. Good luck! :)

Hate to bump this thread, but I've exhausted all my options. I am having the exact same issue with a WD internal drive that I was running through a HDD dock. I've been scrambling to get the files off of it, and nothing seems to work. I purchased diskwarrior and have had the exact same issues iwth it freezing. Contacted their tech support and they can't seem to get me any answers either. Same with WD's tech support. I've even tried swapping the control board with an identical harddrive, and that didnt turn out to be the problem. Hell, the drive sounds fine when it's running, it just doesn't seem to be doing anything after it initially mounts.

I got the prosoft software to work to a certain point, basically it could mount the drive and take a look at the files that are on there, then it froze up when attempting to actually retrieve the data.

I tried sending a PM to the OP, but I don't think he's been on the forum since when this was posted a couple years back. I would really appreciate some insight if he had managed to fix the problem.

What exactly do you mean by "it"? If you mean the DiskWarrior application, then are you booted to the DiskWarrior DVD, or to a hard drive with DiskWarrior installed on it?

Also, what exactly do you mean by "freezing"? The OP reported the endless spinning beachball (i.e. the wait cursor). Is that what you get, or do you get something where your computer is completely unresponsive to any input?

Trevor