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10 Ways to Revive a Hard Drive
Nov 26th
1. One trick I have learned as a technician, when the problem is data-read errors off the platters themselves, is to freeze the hard drive overnight. It makes the data more ‘readable,’ but for a one-shot deal. If this data is critical, and you have a replacement hard drive (which, if it’s a drive failure, you probably do), then you can hook up your frozen hard drive and immediately fetch the data off before it warms up.
2. If the problem is heat related, I put the drive in the freezer for about 15 minutes to cool it down…sometimes this gets the drive up long enough to copy any critical files.
3. Put the drive in a waterproof sealed bag, put it in the fridge for an hour or so, then have another go.
4. Well, I won’t start playing with your specific situation, too many steps or possible solutions where everything starts “If that last thing didn’t work try…” But I’ll give you one for free that was a nice hero moment for me. Had a drive where it sounded like the drive motor was engaging but not getting anywhere, so we stuck it in the office freezer for an hour!. I’ll be darned if it didn’t work. The drive was up long enough to get the data ghosted to another drive and we turfed it, even though it sounded fine at that point. I can’t really take credit for it though—I had heard it in some geek bull session but I thought it was some jedi-geek urban myth. Goes to show you that you know you’re really screwed when you say something to the effect of “Okay, hold on tight, I’m gonna try something I saw in a cartoon once but I’m pretty sure I can do it”
5. If this drive isn’t spinning up, putting it in the freezer for about an hour will usually get the drive spinning again so you can copy needed files before the drive warms up again. The first thing you want to do is run a disk utility like Norton disk doctor or wddiag (if it’s a western digital drive) to verify whether the drive is working mechanically or not. If it is a master boot record problem, sometimes running Fdisk/mbr will correct the problem. It could also be a virus, and a program like F-prot will look at the drive as a physical unit. As an A+ PC technician I have seen this problem many times. Usually if the drive is not making a clicking sound I am successful in recovering the data.
6. I’ve run into this scenario numerous times. One time it involved the main Novell SYS volume on our HP File Server. I was really sweating as the server would not boot. I took the drive out and put it in a freezer for 30 minutes. I then reinstalled it into the file server and Presto! I was up and running. Need less to say I quickly mirrored the drive onto another and got rid of the bad drive. In stand alone client systems, the method I’ve had the most luck with reviving drives from death has been removing the drive, firmly tapping the top of its case several times, and then re-installing it making sure all cables are secure. I’ve had a better than 60 percent success rate with this method.
7. If the drive is spinning and you are experiencing these kinds of errors, my experience has been that you are out of luck. If the drive is not spinning, I have been able to remove it from the computer and ’spin’ the drive on a flat smooth surface (much like spin the bottle). This will usually free the drive and when placed back in the machine, it will boot. You should immediately back up you data after a successful boot, because the problem will return. The next ‘fix’ was actually given to me by a Compaq technician several years ago. I had a drive that would not spin and he told me to put the drive in a plastic bag in the freezer overnight and then install back in the computer. Believe it or not, the drive booted. I have only tried this the one time.
8. In the past, when a drive has failed after it has been running for a short period, I have removed it from the machine and placed it in a freezer for a couple of hours, then hooked it up again. It sometimes will run long enough to remove the data to another safe storage medium.
9. One of the methods I have used before (sometimes even successfully) is to actually remove the drive from the PC, place it in the freezer for a day, then quickly put it back in the machine and try to access it. Why does this work? Who knows, but I heard about this tactic years ago, and it has saved my behind on a couple of occasions. (Of course, if it comes back up, back up the data immediately…. Guess that should go without saying.)
10. Hard drive revival: A technique I have learned is if you bring the temperature of the hard drive down to the freezing point by putting it in a freezer first and then taking it back out, somehow the condensation from bringing it back to room temperature helps revive it for about 20 minutes. It can be repeated about 5-6 times tops. Long enough to get out any important files that need to be backed up. It has been proven to work a number of times.
Using an External Hard Drive to Keep your Data Safe
Nov 26th
If you want to keep your data completely safe, you should look into types of data backup that do not require constant power supplies. While discs such as CDs and DVDs are a good way to make a smaller, permanent backup, external hard drives are another great way to back up your data safely. Just make sure that the drives do not stay connected to your computer and on – otherwise they’ll be as at risk as your normal internal drives. You don’t want your backup to be damaged in the same disaster that takes out your computer!
External hard drives are not actually new technology. In fact, these drives work in much the same way as a normal hard drive. Before external drives were affordable, there are some computer users who made external drives by setting internal drives into an outer casing. These worked fairly well, but they did not stand up to being moved around as much.
Over the last several years, external drives have become affordable, small, and easy to use. There are even some compact USB hard drives that can fit in a pocket. These drives are also much faster than they used to be, something that is being helped by the switch from serial and parallel connections to USB and firewire.
How much data can an external hard drive store? Most external hard drives are about the same size as a normal hard disk inside of your computer. In fact, one of the smallest capacities is just 60GB . However, there are many other disk sizes available at this point in time. Recently, external hard drives with as much as 1000GB of space have begun to appear on the market. It won’t be long before we move into true Terabyte territory. These huge storage capacities are the main reason why external hard drives are rapidly becoming the most popular form of computer backup for the normal computer user.
If you do not want to pick and choose through the files on your computer to determine which ones you want to save, don’t worry! Most of the hard drives will come with a CD that has drivers and some basic backup software on it. In most cases all you have to do is install the software, plug in the drive, and click “backup” and the software takes care of protecing your email, My Documents folder and all the most commonly backed up items.
Once again, if you are using an external hard disk for computer backup, do not leave the external drive connected to your computer. Additionally, you should also have more than one backup of your important information. You can do this by using an online backup service, or by burning your most important files to a DVD or five.
The best hard drives out there are going to be the ones built by major name brands. Maxtor, Iomega and Western Digital drives are known to be high quality and will last a long time. Purchasing a cheap, no-name external hard drive will save you money up front, but it is very likely that you will end up regretting it when it breaks down and you find out that your warranty is worthless.
Wanna know what the best external hard drives are? Why not visit BackupAdvice dot com for more information on external hard drives and computer backups.
Which is the best quality hard drive?
Nov 24th
Some of the best hard drives have a certain interface. The qualified ones that have been tested to have a good interface are SATA, IDE and PATA. Some of the reputable manufacturers that produce these kinds of hard disk drives are Western Digital and IBM/Hitachi Deskstar and Seagate. Hard drives from these manufacturers are quite good and I would recommend that if you have to purchase a hard drive, you can purchase from one of these places.
But is there any hard drive that is of high quality and will last forever? The answer is no! All hard drives, whether of great quality or poor quality, one day will fail. So whatever hard drive you buy, just know that one day it will fail. It has been found out that in every 15 seconds, a hard drive crashes. This is no exception for the best quality hard drives. So then, what do you have to do?
It is always important to backup your data regularly. This is very important because if we go by the statistics stated earlier that hard drives crash in every 15 seconds, yours could be following suite soon. As you work on your information and data, save it as regularly as possible. Put it on the company server, save it on external storage devices (external hard disks, DVDs, CDs, flash disks). These days, there are websites that offer online backup services. So do the necessary.
But what if the hard drive has already crashed and you didn’t have a backup system. You can use data recovery services. The data recovery expert will request for your hard disk and after a proper diagnosis, will give you a report on the data that can be recovered. It is important to note that not all the data can be recovered. It all depends on the amount of hard disk damage. More information about quality hard drives follow the link
The author is a data recovery specialist. Get more information on data recovery services here
Iomega Home Network Drive Review
Nov 23rd
Richard Vanderhurstdiscusses that for roughly $130 for the 500GB version, the Iomega Home Media Network Drive is a sound buy for any home user. Iomega NAS servers are accepted to be easy to use, and the Home Media Network Drive is the organization’s easiest so far. The Home Media Network Drive has a particularly fascinating way to prohibit users’ access to the share folder.
Each share folder contains a switch, with the choices of “Everyone” and “Secure.” The prior authorizes everyone to access it brazenly. Checking its box authorizes the account access to the folder. Not like the Iomega StorCenter ix2 that supports drives formatted using either FAT32 or NTFS file system, the Home Media Network Drive only supports those formatted using FAT32. This is disturbing as it’s tricky to format a difficult to format a tricky drive bigger FAT32 and most external disk drives are much bigger than 32GB. Sharing an external drive is very simple as plugging it in.
Once connected, Richard Vanderhurst notes that a share folder will be made for the drive and you can obtain access it as well as configure access rights for it the way you would with any other share folders. You can copy files that could be viewed and retrieved using Windows Explorer, or create revive points that could be used to recover the complete PC to prior working states. It is an example of the swiftest single-volume NAS servers we’ve tested. We test NAS servers’ throughput by timing how long it takes them to finish writing / reading a specific quantity of info. In comparison, the Home Media Network Drive was simply a little slower than the Western Digital My Book World Edition, which scored 120.1Mbps and 206Mbps for the write and read tests.
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Richard Vanderhurst also reviews many of the latest computer hardware and software products for professional servers and gaming. Richard Vanderhurst teaches the latest Search Engine Optimization techniques around the Globe and engineers from the country of India are no exception. This talented group has learned many of the tricks and techniques used in Western America to advance thousands of web and blog sites toward page one positions.
USB Thumb Drive Repair
Nov 22nd
USB Thumb Drive Repair
Pen drive data backup utility restores formatted data from major USB thumb drive
Monday, September 7, 2009:
USB memory stick file restoration utility performs in-depth disk scanning of devices and retrieves missing pictures, lost snapshots, deleted office documents, erased folders from all USB storage pen drive of any manufacturer (Moserbear, OCZ Technology, Patriot Memory, Philips, PNY etc). Thumb drive data rescue software salvages all your lost or deleted data files (pictures, audio and video clips, personal data, exe, zip files etc) due to drive formatting and unintentional deletion from USB drives. Comprehensive thumb drive data recovery application recover deleted data from recycle bin or by using shift + delete keys and displays recovered data in tree like hierarchy structure.
Thumb drive data undelete software provides risk-free retrieval of all erased data, files and folders, directories from all USB pen drives even when drive not recognized, drive not detected, abort retry ignore unreadable drive messages are displayed on your system while accessing USB drive. Memory stick data restoration application provides preview of all files and folders before actual recovery and also facilitates with log option to start and stop recovery process according to user choice. USB drive data recovery utility is compatible with all Windows operating system including Windows Vista (Vista Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic and Business Enterprise). Flash drive data restoration utility provides full support to most commonly used media drives like pen drive, USB drive, pocket drive, memory stick of all popular brands as Western digital, Jasco, Dell, Accessory Power, Brookstone, Geek Squad, Yego, Atafa, Corsair etc. Thumb drive data salvage program is developed according to user need and provides step-by-step help manual for understanding its features and working without any difficulty.
To know more about this Software visits this following URL:
http://www.datarecoveryshareware.org/data-recovery-shareware/pendrive.html
USB pen drive data salvage program recovers data from corrupted logically damaged or bad sector infected media.
USB Thumb Drive Repair Software Application
USB flash drive recovery tool supports for both type of formatting and deletion either by Microsoft Windows or Apple Macintosh OSX.
Contact Detail
Company Name: – Data recovery shareware
Email: – drshw@datarecoveryshareware.org
Website URL: http://www.datarecoveryshareware.org
We one of the growing organizations develops creative, innovative, user friendly and easy to use software with a sincere focus on our clients. We work on various technologies including Recovery software, Accounting software, Database convertor, Mobile Forensic, Chat utilities, Web tools that are applicable in various field. We provide users the most complete, timely, cost effective professional software services to achieve outstanding results.
Important tips of External Hard Drive
Nov 22nd
If you’ve never bought an external hard disk before then there’s a few pointers here that may help to have on your shopping list before you go and make that final purchase.
1. Buy A Brand
Do yourself a huge favor and buy a brand name that you easily recognize. Sure these may cost a little more than brand x but with computer accessories like this you really do get what you pay for. If a Maxtor 100GB external drive costs $200 and another brand x 100GB drive costs $80 why do you think that is? Because the company likes you? Because they like making smaller profits? No it’s because it’s a cheaper drive made with inferior parts that’s going to break a lot sooner than you might expect.
The other aspect of sticking with a brand is your warranty. For example Maxtor, Western Digital and Iomega are all reliable companies and well known for their external hard disks. If something goes wrong with your drive you can have it fixed. With brand x you’ll probably not even be able to find an email address that you can contact the parent company on. Is saving a few dollars worth that risk?
2. Connectivity
When it comes to external hard drives you’ll need to choose carefully when selecting your connection types. Your external hard drive will support either USB or Firewire. Firewire is the fastest option available at the moment but your computer may not support this. The vast majority of modern computers will, however, feature a USB port.
The next question now is what type of USB port do you have – USB 1.0 or 2.0? If your computer only has a USB 1.0 port then your external hard drive is going to transfer data VERY slowly. USB 2.0 is the minimum you should consider as connection options for both your computer and your external hard drive. If you don’t have a USB 2.0 port (also cal
3. Google It
Whatever brand or model you decide on make sure you do some research before purchasing. Always, always Google the exact brand and model of the drive you’re considering buying. Look for reviews and especially any feedback on how reliable a drive is. You’ll be very surprised to find that some companies have particularly bad reputations in terms of equipment reliability and what’s known as the “click of death” in the external hard drive industry.
Spend time in Google checking out your prospective purchase. You’ll be glad that you did.
led HiSpeed USB) on your computer you may need to get a USB 2.0 card fitted.
4. Speed
Now of course we need to talk about speed. The faster your hard drive operates the faster data will get transferred to your computer and vice versa. Without boggling you with comptuer jargon there’s a couple of technical things you need to include on your shopping list.
Seek time – this needs to be 10ms (milliseconds) or less
Buffer size – more is better. Get a drive with at least a 4MB buffer.
RPM – higher is better. 5400rpm as a minimum. 7200rpm being preferred.
Stick to the above basic pointers and you’ll do just fine.
5. Size
This is the simple part of the whole “buying an external hard drive” equation. Buy as much as you can afford. If you can afford 100GB then get it. However if you can afford 200GB then get it. Then again if you scraped together a few dollars more you could afford 300GB then do it.
This isn’t a sales pitch. Far from it. There is simply no such thing as having too much data storage space. The 160GB drive that I have here was filled up in a little under a month. Currently a terabye option sounds good for my future needs.
Always add 50% to your data storage requirements. Honestly. You’ll thanks yourself within the first 90 days of buying your external drive.
Hopefully now you’ll be better prepared for purchasing your new external hard drive. It’s one of the best purchases you’ll ever make.
So you’ve finally decided to buy an external hard drive as a backup option for your computer. This is a great choice for you because you’re making backing up your data faster and easier than you could ever have imagined. You’re also making your data far more portable in larger quantities than before.
You’ll no longer be limited to storing a few hundred megabytes or even several gigabytes. Nope. Now you can look forward to portable and reliable storage capacities ranging into terabytes. That frustrating desktop computer or network file server backup job just got a whole lot easier.
About the Author:-
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