So...the WD BLACK 2TB, bought 2 years ago, collapsed since monday. Partitions disappearing at first (2 out of 7), then folders and data... and there is no black hole near me. I can't believe it. Software, data and VSTs are gone; a dozen of FL Studio projects wipedout too. It happened after i bought True Image 2018 and before I use it. Damn it. Murphy's Law is really cruel. I need a new HD now. No more WD BLACK of course. I think it's time to give HGST a chance. What do you think about HGST HDS723020BLA642 Deskstar 7K3000 HardDisk - 2TB Has anyone used it in his production PC? Pro? Cons? Last edited: May 3, 2018
I'd recommend an SSD for storage (Samsung ones tend to be reliable) and a larger HDD for the backups. You'll be spending a little more but you will be grateful for the additional performance. Also, use CrystalDiskInfo to regularly check your HDDs and SSDs health. If one drive shows up as yellow you need to back up all the data and replace that drive as soon as possible. If one of them shows up red even, you should be very concerned and you can be thankful if any data can be saved from that drive at all.
Have you tried accessing the drive before the OS via boot disk? Active Boot Disk will allow you to do this and you may be able to recover some of it if not all of it. Also, you could put the drive in the freezer to see if it helps too. Hard drives are finicky!
Ive recovered many HD's bro ! replaced heads and all >>>i have all the tools and a clean room in my house to do so ;) i wana make sure i understand you correct first >>> you say your computer wont read the hard drive or the Data on it just vanished ? and also does it make any noise wen you fired it up like clicks or anything ? it could be the heads or the board its self is why i ask... dont throw it out untill you know forsure... ive saved many of my own by replacing heads and board on them ;)
heads can sometimes stick or stop working not reading the data on the drive.. faulty boards can cause same issues.. their is Data recovery software that i have but most times its a hardware problem in the drive its self... i want to add that ive herd of people putting drive into freezer for a few hours and then using USB to connect and it did work lol no BS just long enough for them to copy all their Data off of it...BUT this was for a drive that computer stopped reading all together... I wouldnt suggest this in no way tho lol cause like i said theirs better ways to save this drive my man \m/ before you do anything i would power down and remove the connection sata and connect to another sata see if it reads... leme know what happens if anything at all Last edited: May 3, 2018
HGST are good, they get hotter than the black drives. If I were you get a 2 or 4 bay nas and back your stuff up to it.
I really hope you backed up eberything before this. Anyway I bought 2 x 3tb hgst reconditioned from Amazon and they work amazing.
@Jaymz No noise and no clicks at all before monday. It worked fine sunday when I save a Live 9 project. I'm 99,99% sure is the HD 'cause unplugging it all works fine. I tried Ubuntu Live (last version) to access the HD and saved 10 folder more or less (there were more than 10 folders...) Gparted shows the damaged partitions but cannot fix errors.
Very sorry to hear your problems mate. Partitions not appearing doesn't necessarily mean the hard disk is damaged. Crystal Disk Info will tell you if the disk is ok or not (if the disk is still spinning and appears in Windows). There is a chance the partitions got fkd (Disks appearing in yellow have bad sectors etc,if your disk appears in blue should be fine). It's free, here: https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/ R-Tools R-Studio Recovery software has worked for me 5-6 different times in recovering a lot of crucial data from fkd up partitions (working "fixed" version in PB). That is if the disk is still spinning but partitions got corrupted. Original soft here: https://www.r-studio.com/ Apart from these, the fastest cheap hd lately is the Seagate Barracuda running at 7200rpm (2tb@ ~55euros, 4tb@ ~95eu). If you have to make as many partitions as you mentioned though, it would be better to do it on an ssd and keep a cheap hd just for backup. Partitions don't take a toll on an ssd's performance, whereas hdds are prone to enough problems overtime to avoid partitioning single hd drives. I understand that a 2tb ssd is very expensive even at the cheapest, so perhaps you can split the data between a 1tb ssd and an hd. Best buy Sata III (6gbps) ssd is the 860 EVO 1tb at around 250 euros and cheaper but still respectable at around 220eu is the Crucial MX500 1tb. Hope you sort it with as less loss as possible Last edited: May 3, 2018
This may help a bit with decision about new HD https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-q1-2018/
sorry to hear bro, but something i leant a few years ago following the same hdd failure, but back up back up and back up, i have 4 ext hdd with a disc image and all data, btw you can just do a disc image and still have access to data in that image, but remember all hdd fail, some can just be faulty from the factory, clicking is a sign of the read heads going wrong,if as someone said you can replace the read head all might not lost, but for peace of mind back up all the time, i have had disc image backups fail also, so every month i back the pc drive on all 4 ext hdd. Bckup is your best friend, sorry to hear your issues again bro, hope you get ur data back, if you think how long it takes to get a music production pc the way you want it with all the vst`s ect, all the best djk
People... hard drives don't last forever. In fact, they are not guaranteed to survive past the 2, 3 or 5 year warranty's. You pay more for the better warranty/product. If you don't backup and are that ignorant, then you deserve the consequences. The internet (for which most of you believe has been here forever) is full of information with regard to hard drive failures... but yet, knuckle-draggers continue to be amazed that their hard drive failed! I'm not immune to the catastrophe as I've had 6 or 7 failures now in the last 40 years. Completely lost the data on 2 of them in spite of backed up drives (because the backup failed along with the master drive)... but I now have a 2 RAID systems in place (with 24 TB of redundant backup/storage) but I also realize that I could still lose everything in an electrical storm. THAT happened to me 2 years ago. I lost 2 computers, 4 hard drives, 2 monitors and the UPS that was supposed to protect everything from that very circumstance, a lightning strike across the street. Had to sue Tripp-Lite because they did not stand behind their promise of "up to $25,000 Guarantee" and that's still tied up in litigation. The phrase "you get what you pay for" also applies here...
Putting the drive into a refrigerator (not freezer because of chance of condensing humidity) is a good idea. It worked for me many years ago when I had to rescue a dying HDD. Really check it out. But the drive is not reliable anymore. If you've got a lot of data you always need at hand I would suggest a NAS with smaller HDDs (mostly more stable than the bigger HDDs) configured RAID5 (quick and secure). If one drive breaks, you'll be able to exchange it without downtime and loss of data. Best would be a second NAS of same size for mirroring. Last edited: May 3, 2018
Fk yes, happened to me in a slightly different way back in 2002. Lightning hit the power station near where my old studio was and my main pc got fried lol. I couldn't believe it. Only the cpu and hdds remained intact. Mobo, ram and gfx card were dead from the power surge overload. I had no ups back then, taught me a good lesson... Rebuilding a raid 5 or 6 partition takes a long time bro. That's why cheap nas arrays are only for backup imho. Also raid partitions get corrupted too and there is always the chance of rebuild failure. Lol, i know i am mentioning catastrophical events but all these have happened to me. Last edited: May 3, 2018
@LuckySevens You're damn right. There is no such thing called absolute security. I've got quite the same setup as you with the NASs, additionally I've placed the both NASs in different buildings (in case of fire hoping only one building will burn down), doing frequent backups into the cloud and on top on HDDs at my sisters home. I've had damages from an electrical strike, have had water in the basement some years ago where the NAS resides and a fire in the other building where the second NAS lives. Next time it may be a burglary!? The only thing one can feel "quite" secure with is backups, backups, backups of valued data. After at least 10 to 15 defective HDD the last 20 years I LOVE backups! P.S.: Almost all of the dead HDDs have got too hot one ore more times in their lives, so today I would suggest to be careful not to overheat HHDs as this seems to be the major cause for premature death. Last edited: May 3, 2018
I can relate to this very well my bro...im sure most of us old heads can lol haha... its like Vodo magic how data just gets corrupt and or vanishes >>> 10 years ago i spent 4 days tracking drums for an album an had 8 songs complete out of 9. Day 5 on a friday we recorded last song saved everything was fine...The following monday the bass player an guitarist met me at my studio to start tracking bass to the drum tracks... an guess what ??? their was only 3 songs out of the 9 we recorded in the folder on the drive ??? Shit just got gone like a ghost lol ... Nice so to make long story short we had to re record the drum tracks... to a new HD to be sure lol ...i use SSD drive these days but i make backups of every drive i have now and im starting to get a pretty huge library of HD's haha... i use HD's for backups only ... I have lost alot of data in the past for HD's just crashing for unknown reasons >>> i purchased the tools to fix them an learned how to do so, but like others have said an ive learned in the past>>> any Hard Drive SSD or whatever can go in the blink of an eye with no warning fuckin sucks lol
Testdisk can: https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download For data storage, a NAS configured as RAID1 is my recommendation. You can replace a broken HD on the fly with no data loss. In addition, regularly differential backups to external HD on partition basis. Fine software for that is Drive Snapshot: http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/down.htm Last rescue: Professional HDD recovery service (expensive!). Last edited: May 3, 2018