Recovery

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

hiya fellas!

so I got my new external hard drive in the mail

and I’ve got my fancy recovery program

to recover my computer. 

now i’ve got the process all but finished

and I’ve selected the new hard drive

to put all of the recovered info onto it.

however, I’ve noticed something and was

curious if this is normal.

first is this: the amount of time for this to finish (so says my program is) 1099031154.8 hours

and 24 hours has past.

also: the small LED light connected to my new external is flashing or rather blinking…

I hope this isn’t trouble on a new device.

the external is:

2TB MY BOOK ELITE.

2

I read your previous threads. Quite a bit of stuff going on I’d say. And I won’t guess as to what state the original disk is in right now.

1st, what is the program you are using? The time on these scans can sometimes be totally inaccurate. You aren’t clear on what operation is taking the 1099031154.8 hours. Is this a scan operation, deep scan, file-carving, copy operation, sector verify and re-write? Exactly what’s the task? Has the data recovery program already completed the scan and is now copying found files to the new drive? Perhaps some screenshots would be beneficial?

2nd, I have no idea what the flashing lights are indicating. My guess is it’s an in-use and read/write indicator. As that’s how all my MyBooks and Elements behave. I would hope that the specific behavior is described in the manual or an online knowledge database article. Maybe a MyBook Elite user can speak up here?

3

yes, you’re right I forgot to include information that is needed:

I’m running iCare data recovery on the old RAW drive.

the recovery scan had finished… and from what I understand what’s going on here

is that it’s trying to take the found information and porting it over to the new hard drive.

though, nothing is running on either externals. the old RAW drive isn’t spinning

and the new one isn’t spinning, however it is blinking at me.

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/1592/alotofhours.png

that’s the screen shot, best I could do, however that’s from yesterday

the count now is 11899999.8 and STILL CLIMBING.

4

It looks like you have about 250GB to save and recover. I will estimate the copy operation would take 6 hours on a USB 2 connection. Perhaps  a little faster.

Why either of the disks isn’t spinning I have no clue. Why your system shut them down I don’t know. Perhaps powersaving routines in the drives are just kicking in and the computer (for whatever reason) isn’t sending anything to them. Perhaps you can wake up them up by tickling them with the windows explorer or disk manager. But the data recovery program should do this as a matter of course anyways! Someone want to suggest something?

I wonder if something isn’t locked up in the system? Anyone?

We might have to stop this operation and find out why the disks aren’t spinning up.

Is this a homebuilt system? Is it a stable system?

5

say thanks Keith for helpin’ out…

so a mini update, up where I am Zeus was fairly angry and got me worried about

getting struck by lightning and loosing my externals and laptop because

I don’t have any spare surge protectors, NOR do I have the cash to go

and get one, however, they looked down fairly upon me and allowed

the “Small” portion of my recovery to go through a-o-kay…

Though, it did take roughly 5 hours to recover under 80 gbs.

Now comes the massive and daunting task…

Recovering my music files…

I’ve got about 130 gbs of music on this ol’ thing.

and I’m nervous about shutting down the iCare program and loosing this

awesome “bridge” i have currently.

this “bridge” is my bum external’s recovered data. I’m just nervous that if

I shut down the program that it wouldn’t be there for me to go and recover

at a later (and let’s be honest) safter time for me to allow my computer

to be running sans Zues stromin’ about!

Currently, I am able to access and select the recovered files on the bum drive

and that I can select them and ask them to be moved over to the new drive…

6

Ohh Great… data recovery operations during a thunderstorm!! Where’s the facepalm smiley?

This sounds like a “logical” recovery, especially since the disk is holding up and running for hours on end… I bet *if* the power died, you could start over and continue where you left off. It’s not like the heads or motor is dying out here. And when you have everything back you can try that as an experiment! Furthermore, run some extended diagnostics and verify the “Faulty” drive and see what the problem is. If it shows nothing, then you just had a glitch.

But from now on you’ll keep two copies of everything at all times. This means having a junk temporary disk to hold a 3rd copy as you update your backups.

Update us as you progress through this stuff.

7

well thankfully the storm didn’t create any problems.

I should note also that I wasn’t aware that a storm was coming (dispite what Ms. Kyle whispered).

So far I’ve managed to get the brunt of my music off, by brunt I mean two particular artists whom

I had to convert my vinyl collection into digital form as I wanted to hear those LPs in the car and

they are vastly out of print and as a cause take up massive amount of space (hence the external drive).

but that’s the good news, is that I saved those! boom!

now comes the work to re-collect (read recover) the other albums that i’ve amassed

over the course of my days on this marble.

you know the one and two records.

all other data has been saved, all the other important stuff. so that’s it

I’m in the final stages. sweet!

I’ve found it to be slightly easier to just do one album at a time

as I wouldn’t be stuck with wacky recovery times (aka 120001277654.3 hours)

the extra dignostic tools… excuse my ignorance, but what types?

8

When you are done with the disk, you can go ahead and format and use WD DLG to do a surface test and write zeros. You can also use HDD Regenerator to re-write weak sectors. But really, I think WD DLG would be enough.

What caused this failure in the first place? I forget already…

9

from what I can recall the disc had gone RAW…

what had happened when it did was I was creating a folder within the external hard drive

then POOF the window I was working in closed out and I attempted to access the hard drive

to no avail.

I did some snooping and that’s (the fact that it was a RAW disc) was the best conclution I could get.

10

Were there any special circumstances or actions just prior to it going RAW, other than what you just said…?

Well, I’d just zero out the disk with WD’s DLG utility and then Full Format it in Windows. It should be good to go.

If there are any more problems with the disk - then it would be time to try a full scan and repair/bad with HDD Regenerator.

11

no other circumstances nor actions… other than what I have mentioned here and in the past.

thanks for the advice and the suggested programs… I’m going to get them after work…

say real quick, do you happen to know of any better music orginiztion programs other than

iTunes???

12

Ok, good. Use WD’s DataLifeGuard. Do the QUICK & EXTENDED tests, and write zero’s.

Then do Windows Format, the long version, not the quick 5 minute jobber.

As long as those pass without problems then everything probably just fine.

HDD Regenerator costs $60.00 usd, so perhaps use it only if you need to or if you really want to be as thorough as possible.

 There is something called DRevitalize that does something similar to HDDRegenerator and SpinRite. It is a little cheaper. I have not tested it extensively, having always used HDDregen almost exclusively. It is cheaper and comes with a nice pdf explaining how some of this stuff works.

13

Regarding iTunes. I’m not the guy to ask about iTunes if you’re looking for alternatives!

I began messing with .mp3’s and digital music in the 1990’s and have tried a lot of music managers with plenty of tedious frustration resulting. When I came across iTunes my experience was just like the late Mr. Jobs stated, “It’s like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in **bleep**"…

I’ve been using iTunes since 2004, and my sister also uses it extensively. So I recommend nothing but iTunes.

In conversation with others about digital music management, I often hear good things about Media Monkey and WinAmp. These have been around a long time too and may be better suited for you than iTunes is… You’ll have to see for yourself.