Losing all hope for my FW800 drive...

DJ Precious · Post by **DJ Precious** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 3:27 pm

I've been dead in the water for over a month now. In the mundane process of opening a Final Cut Pro HD file a number of weeks ago, I hit a snag, got stuck on the beachball, and I haven't been able to Ableton since.

I'm losing hope.

The drive didn't crash, it would still mount sometimes, and I was able to back-up all of the files on it onto DVDs and onto the internal hardrive. It just won't let me actively use files from it with Ableton of FCP.

Diskwarrior took several hacks at it and it made no difference.

Disk Utility may as well be called Disk Futility.

Yesterday I went as far as updating form 10.3.4 all the way to 10.3.8 as was recomended by some random forum person. Upon arrival at 10.3.8 the drive wouldn't even show up on the desktop when powered up.

I know not what else to do.

krusty · Post by **krusty** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 4:00 pm

If you haven't done this try zapping the PRAM. Also, from the Apple discussion forum a tip on resetting the firewire port:

"Shutting down your Mac and disconnecting your firewire cable from both ends and letting it sit about half an hour then reconnect and try. Also disconnect the AC power, this helps to reset the FireWire port"

Might be worth a try.

SkeptikTank · Post by **SkeptikTank** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 5:50 pm

Some fw400 might also need a firware upgrade, such as lacie. Check your drives manufacturers site if you haven't already.

eisnein · Post by **eisnein** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 7:24 pm

yeah letting the cables rest on both ends lets them discharge or something of that nature. since the have power that runs thru them they sometimes need to be reset.

when drives arent mounting, or especially if they are having trrouble spinning up, you should try and turn them off and on as little as possible...

glad to hear you got all the info off the drive. been down that road many times and havent been able to save my shit.

disc warrior is decent, tech tools is rad, i found a new inexpensive drive saving tool- and of course the name escapes me....Data Rescue! thats it.

http://www.thecomputerstore.com/cgi-glo ... ms-2108602

(you can order direct from the company too) super handy program, it doesnt rewrite to a drive the way Disc Warrior does..

id say if you have everything backed up then you can reintialize the drive, or if it is defective, send it back.

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 11:50 pm

Probably not good advice, but, last week I powered up my external FW drive after not using it for a week and it wouldn't mount and was making this loud whirring sound. In the process of trying to figure out if the fans were running I accidentally banged it against my desk and it fixed the problem!! I thought it must be pretty random, but apparently other people have had similar situations. Its definitely a last resort, but better than trashing a drive that may still work.

DJ Precious · Post by **DJ Precious** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 4:43 pm

Krusty ROCKS!!!!!

Dudes- my drive is back alive and it's totally working and shit!

Thanks everybody! I guess it was either the PRAM zapping or the cable discharge that finally did the trick.

Keep hope alive people! Maybe in a hundred years or so computers will actually work. Until then, we have Krusty.

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 5:49 pm

ethios4 wrote:Probably not good advice, but, last week I powered up my external FW drive after not using it for a week and it wouldn't mount and was making this loud whirring sound. In the process of trying to figure out if the fans were running I accidentally banged it against my desk and it fixed the problem!! I thought it must be pretty random, but apparently other people have had similar situations. Its definitely a last resort, but better than trashing a drive that may still work.

A few months ago I was eating lunch at my office, and I saw a fellow sysadmin for our company casually walk over to the freezer and pull out a scsi hard drive from one of our servers. The drive had been sitting in there for a few hours and was frozen, but not frosted. He then held it about 3-4 feet above the counter and dropped it, then set it aside to thaw out. I asked him what on earth he was doing, and he said that it was an old trick he'd learned to recover busted drives long enough to recover data from them. I'm still a bit sketchy on the details of how this actually worked, but sure enough, he was able to recover data off of the drive where it had been completely unreadable before.

plonkman · Post by **plonkman** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 9:46 pm

sounds like a "cool" trick.

heh... heh.... heh...

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 9:49 pm

sqook wrote:I asked him what on earth he was doing, and he said that it was an old trick he'd learned to recover busted drives long enough to recover data from them.

So THAAAATS what those high priced data recovery services do!!!

their secrets are out! hahaha!

your co-worker isn't BSing...
http://www.datarecoverypros.com/hard-dr ... reeze.html
http://www.datarecoverypros.com/hard-dr ... -drop.html

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 2:27 am

also known by some techs as the two-inch method:

1. Install unit on workbench.

2. Lift front edge of unit two inches.

3. Release front edge.

4. Test unit. If unit tests OK:

5. Prepare lengthy and detailed invoice.