Two hard drives died in 24 hours!

[eyezpy]

Couple of weeks ago I installed Windows on my old Maxtor hard drive for testing. It had been running fine for two weeks and last week while backing up data on to my Samsung F3 1TB from a WD Black drive something went wrong, the process hanged and could not continue. Tried to restart, but the Maxtor started to click and was unusable. After booting back in to Windows with the WD Black I saw that the Samsung is now recognised as a RAW drive.

It was sad to hear the dreaded clicking noise from a hard drive but the Maxtor being about seven years old, so I didn’t feel too surprised. I then found a program to restore the partition on the Samsung drive, the program ran for almost 9 hours before I started to hear clicking noises and this time it was from my less than a year old Samsung drive! All this happen the day after I was thinking of getting a NAS... sigh...

I would like to think there is a way of recovering the data without having to pay for an extortionate rate of £500, but I doubt there is.

Am I just really unlucky to have two drives failing within a 24 hours or could a faulty hardware or software cause hard drives to fail in this way?

[Joe of Loath]

How warm were the drives? If there wasn't much airflow that could have killed them off.

[eyezpy]

I didn't have a chance to take their temperatures, but I guess its about 40 - 45.
I did have them lying out on my wooden floor and not in a case as I had 5 drives plugged in at the time and the case was a mATX.
Don't think my room was very hot and no heating was on in my room.

[Pob255]

40-45c is in the hard drive killing temp range, hard drives don't generate much heat but they are far more sensitive to heat than other pc components.
Although outside the case like that shouldn't be an issue, however at the same time intensive recovery programs often work a hard drive far more than it normally would and generate more heat.

Personally it sounds like bad luck.

[eyezpy]

Recovery program working the hard drive too hard does sound like the most probably cause... but the Maxtor failed on its own.
I am just guess the temperature when it failed base on it operating at 36 degrees idle when in the case.
40-45 killing temp range some how sounds frightening low... This drive is suppose to operate between 0-60 degrees darn it! You would of thought they are clever enough to turn it self off if they are too hot, so much for SMART drives.

Bye bye data... sob, sob... >,<

[Attila the Bun]

g8ina, a hexus user, suggested I try a friend's site when I wanted some help in choosing a HDD.
He does data recovery and I got the impression that he doesn't charge the earth...google Retrodata. I can't give any recommendation myself but it might be worth a try.

[eyezpy]

Thanks, I will check Retrodata out.
I was just sitting here and thinking about opening the drive to give the read head a nudge
Ordered a bigger case over the week end, think my fling with mATX is over Also going for Raid 1!

[Pob255]

Oh yes Samsung do list it as 60c, normally it's around 40-50c with a max environmental temp of 35-40c

Also if you're running intensive data recovery software then it's doing a low level scan of the disk which means functions like SMART get ignored.

Well the drive should still be in warranty so you can get it replaced, just not the data.

[eyezpy]

Although I never want to see another Samsung F3 drive, at least it is still under warranty like you say.

I received a quoate from Retrodata, "if the data is personal or domestic will be between £450 and £495 and for business data, an extra £150 - all excluding VAT."
Don't know what you think qualifies as charging the earth, but that is a lot and on par if not more than other data recovery places I think ^^"

Looks like its mostly unlucky for me, but do any one think or know if faulty hardware like motherboard or software can cause complete failure to hard disks?

[jim]

I suppose anything is possible, so I wouldn't exclude it.

Having said that, as Pob pointed out, the stress you were putting it under could easily have killed the drive, so it wouldn't be at all surprising if it was just typical hard drive failure.

[Attila the Bun]

I received a quoate from Retrodata, "if the data is personal or domestic will be between £450 and £495 and for business data, an extra £150 - all excluding VAT."

Don't know what you think qualifies as charging the earth, but that is a lot and on par if not more than other data recovery places I think ^^"

Sorry eyezpy but nothing ventured nothing gained.

[eyezpy]

Well I guess it got its revenge on me Although I still feel it should of been within its limits, otherwise how can all those external drives cope, not all have an active fan do they.
It does make me lose some confidence in Samsung drives now, then again I have seen two new WD die as well though... no brand is safe. Raid 1 it is, then again considering the title of my post maybe Raid 6 is better lol

I have accepted that its lost (not like I have a choice really), but it was good to vent here. Thanks for all your comments

[jim]

RAID 1 won't help you much, really.

At the end of the day, you've been very unlucky. I think 2 unlucky hard drive failures would screw up the majority of our backup systems. If you're concerned, create a third backup disk... that's all you can do really, and it's what I intend to do when I get the chance.

Overkill? Probably, but then it depends how much you value your data!

[Pob255]

dvd's

[peterb]

Without knowing the precise model, it is hard to say what the specs are, but this page indicates that the operating range for a 1TB F£ drive is 0-60C so operating at about 45-50 is well within the spec. If you can access the SMART data Samsungs log the max temperaturte they have been subjected to (although if that is stored on the drive itself, rather than NVRAM, you may not be able to retrieve it)

I think you have probably been unlucky, unless you have a dodgy PSU that subjected the drive to a power surge, or you accidentally knocked it at an unfortunate moment.

Edit - just spotted the above has already been covered

As for data recovery - it IS expensive and there are a lot of dodgy companies out there.

You might find this useful. It isn't particularly well laid out, but might help you find a reputable company, or at leastr avoid the ones that are.. er.. less than reputable.

Good luck.

(One of the reasons for the expense is because the provision of a clean room for opening a disk is expensive, as are the jigs and equipment to recover the data from the removed platters, to say nothing of the time involved in actually performing the recovery)

[eyezpy]

I suppose if the data is irreplaceable and you can afford it, than a good data recovery company is the obvious choice, even than I think it is something like 75%-80% success rate (according to this guy at least http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how...en-hard-drive/)

In my case I think I will see if I can replace some of the data from friends. And in future hopefully a Raid 1 + one back up wont disappoint.

I actually dumped all my DVD back ups on to hard disks as I felt my DVDs are getting too cluttered and they are not reliable enough as a sole backup and blue ray disks is still pricey.

Looking through the link I think I will try the “freezing your hard drive trick” out of curiosity. Apparently there is a 60% it will work but at best it will only give you 20min to access the drive. Maybe if I surround it in an ice pack or move my pc to Antarctica when I do it, it will give me enough time lol