[buffheman]

So I've had this WD 500GB external for probably 3 years or something. It's started having a difficult time spinning. Once it's going, it's fine... but every time I have to start it up, it takes like 10 or 15 tries to get spinning without just giving up and disconnecting.

I'm afraid it's just going to die soon, and I will lose all sorts of precious data. Anything I can do to fix it? Or should I just invest in some new hardware?

I was debating getting an enclosure and buying an internal to plug into it. But from what I'm seeing on newegg, internal drives cost more than external these days... I guess there was some flooding in Taiwan screwing everything up. I wish I could wait, but I'm afraid to wait and have this guy just die on me before I can back it up.

[Horrerblade]

seems like your motor is dying i would buy a internal/EXTERNAL AND BACK IT UP ALSO SEE IF YOUR MANUFACTURER will rma it for you (sorry for caps cap lock was on)

[FX4]

Invest in new hardware. This sounds like it is the stiction issue and the drive will fail soon. As a matter of fact I wouldn't power it up again until you are ready to transfer your data off of it. If it does not fire up put it in a plastic zip lock bag then toss it in the freezer over night. Take it out of the freezer and connect it to your computer, as soon as it spins up transfer the data off of it. BTW: the stiction issue is when all the grease has spun out of the platter bearings. They have a hard time starting once this happens. Freezing the drive makes the tolerances looser so the motor can get the platters up to speed.

[buffheman]

Seems pretty crappy that a drive would just die after only three years. I'll take your advice and just leave it off until I get a new drive.

But back to the question of internal + enclosure vs external... do these external drives generally just get bad build quality?

[FX4]

No not really, they are often better because they have to take more of a beating. Hard drive quality in general isn't what it used to be, they are cheap now and are also cost reduced. I remember paying 500.00 for a 250Meg drive sixteen years ago. That drive is still running. Now it seems like on average I seem to get three to four years out of them before problems start showing up. I change them out as soon as I start seeing errors.

[buffheman]

So I got a new external. But things aren't going well. Even if I get the harddrive spinning, it's unable to transfer anything off of it. So I can see all the files and even listen to a song... but I've only been able to transfer small amounts off of it. So like little documents, no problem... but anything that involves a pop up box of "copying 1 file (19mb)" or something like that... it can't do it.

What do I do?! Am I totally screwed? I try this freezing thing.

[FX4]

Yes freeze the hard drive. Put it in a ziplock and plan what is most important to you first.

[buffheman]

I think some of the data is corrupted now or something. The freezing helped it to get spinning on the first try this morning, but some of my files just won't transfer, like one song off a ripped album won't go, but the rest will.

Is there anything I can do to repair the data?

[FX4]

Yeah, what you can try is a data repair utility. Get the data off the drive and then try to repair it. I had a mail server drive go down like this and I recovered about 90% of the data that was damaged using a repair utility. I wish I could remember the name of the software I used but it escapes me.

[buffheman]

The problem is that I can't get off these certain files. Some files will transfer over no problem. But these damaged ones won't copy, even in their damaged state. So I'm not sure that it's really the data... but something akin to a scratch on a CD, it just skips at certain points.

[FX4]

Probably a head crash. It can happen if the drive is bumped or the platters are moving too slow during a read or write. If the data is valuable to you, you can send the drive out to have the platters removed and installed in another drive to get the data off but it runs 500.00 to 1000.00 or more for that kind of service. If I recall correctly they charge 250.00 just to look at the drive and see if they think they can get the data off. So the data has to be valuable information to justify the cost of a data recovery service.

[buffheman]

Wowzers. Well that's certainly not worth it. I got all the important stuff through some effort. What's left is endless endless hours of effort spent ripping my CD collection in lossless format, thinking that the CDs would degrade eventually and I needed a backup. Well, look who's the backup now... good ol' non-crashable CDs.

Man, it is depressing to think of having to go through all that again. Takes like 20 minutes for me to rip a single CD.

Thanks for all your help. I'll keep trying, and eventually resort to punching the harddrive a few times before I officially give up.

[glazer1972]

I've heard that turning regular hdds upside down helps sometimes.

[kommanderkodiak]

get spin right (its a program to help keep the drive going) and get a second external and trasnfer it asap if youre already having trouble getting it going even freezing wont help cause you dont know where the next tiem you turn on if thats its last, better safe than sorry especially with precious data