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Personal Rant against myself...
- Thread starter crjackson2134
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It's highly unusual that a problem on one drive would affect another. Once we enter the realm of "highly unusual," there's a raft of similarly odd possibilities that could crop up. Statistically, it is possible for two drives to fail at around the same time, for totally unrelated reasons.
Systems and chains of reasoning can resemble inverted pyramids. They may start from a single premise, and everything that follows balances on that one point. That makes the entire structure inherently unstable. In this case, the balance point seems to be, "the problems are interrelated." Consider the possibility that they're not. How would you proceed if only the media drive had failed?
You assume the media drive was inactive, because you weren't playing any media at that time. It doesn't necessarily mean the drive had spun-down/gone to sleep - that's a configuration option. And even if it had spun-down, the only way you knew something was wrong was after it had spun-up again. Any time a mechanical system is in motion, mechanical failure is a possibility.
Systems and chains of reasoning can resemble inverted pyramids. They may start from a single premise, and everything that follows balances on that one point. That makes the entire structure inherently unstable. In this case, the balance point seems to be, "the problems are interrelated." Consider the possibility that they're not. How would you proceed if only the media drive had failed?
You assume the media drive was inactive, because you weren't playing any media at that time. It doesn't necessarily mean the drive had spun-down/gone to sleep - that's a configuration option. And even if it had spun-down, the only way you knew something was wrong was after it had spun-up again. Any time a mechanical system is in motion, mechanical failure is a possibility.
Since neither you nor anybody else in this thread really understands how this mess happened, wouldn't it be wise to ask Apples technicians to know their opinion?
I do not know if you can ask for free, but if possible I would tell them the whole story and try to learn from them. If it happened once, then (God forbid) it could happen again.
By then you will no doubt have cloned the main drive and made all the possible backups in the world!
Still it would be useful for yourself and for others to understand HOW AND WHY this happened.
I do believe in "hidden forces" and "bad eye"...but technical explanations are by far more useful than supernatural ones, even if they might exist...
I join the others who congratulated you for already having saved almost all of the lost data.
You're replying to the wrong poster; it wasn't me this happened to. My post was a reply to the OP's predicament.
Actually I noticed that about 1 minute after I plugged in the defective drive, and it was flashing, flashing, trying to mount, the other drive blinked off of the desktop. I was never able to mount it again after that.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the drive hadn't spun down, but no user initiated reading/writing was taking place.
Weather or not the incident is related to plugging in a bad drive isn't a question for me. I watched it happen. It's related.
The drive has been repartitioned/formatted and is 3/4 restored now. It has been throughly tested and is performing well.
I agree that Data Rescue works. Have had to use it before too. Not sure if it was v2 or v3 that I used, but it was about 6 years ago. Recovered many, many GB of data.
It's not necessarily too late. That's the whole point of Data Rescue: recovering deleted files. Unless you did an elaborate security erase, DR could very well work for you, and as the other poster pointed out, it's apparently free to try.
I agree that Data Rescue works. Have had to use it before too. Not sure if it was v2 or v3 that I used, but it was about 6 years ago. Recovered many, many GB of data.
It's not necessarily too late. That's the whole point of Data Rescue: recovering deleted files. Unless you did an elaborate security erase, DR could very well work for you, and as the other poster pointed out, it's apparently free to try.
Since I can get it for free on trial basis I'll look into it tomorrow.
Okay great, please let us know if it works for you.
And FWIW, I thought the "sledgehammer-ectomy" comment was hilarious.
I actually did have the backup mentioned. The one that got took out as collateral damage was the backup and being moved to primary media drive. The drive that was failing had been the primary drive, but was just replaced with the second drive.
I have another on order but sadly it hasn't arrived yet. I also had another 1TB drive with a lot of the files. So, I've already replaced 3/4 of the media, but I'll have to replace the remaining files from optical media. The optical files are actually backed up files after encoding so it's just going to take some time to copy them all.
I actually lost the main drive and the backup all at the same time. I feel my mistake was plugging in the failing drive with the backup (moved to main media drive) connected, but as already stated, one failure shouldn't have had any affect on the other so I never considered that as a possibility.
It will take me less than 8 hours to transfer the files from optical, but I don't look forward to it, and I won't be doing it all at once. I should have just waited for my new 5T Seagate Plus to arrive.
What started the whole thing was that I purchased TechTool 7, and wanted to see what it could do with the dying drive. It never got that far because the mere act of waiting for the drive to mount is the point at which I lost the good drive.
I was and am backed up, just not in the most convenient or efficient manner.
Patients never was my strong suit. My new drives arrive by Fedex tomorrow. Oh well...
Now for the matter of the clothes dryer
Sorry to bore you all with my admitted stupidity, I just needed to vent and the wife wouldn't have a clue about the subject.
Thanks... I'm relaxed and back on point now.
Hi Crjackson2134. Sorry to hear about the failing HD. I probably would have also hit the HD with a sledgehammer as it can be disappointing. It was good you had some files archived in your disks. From third party disk utilities, the ones I've used most is DiskWarrior. Second is Drive Genius only for defragging. I rarely use TechTool Pro. Since the PowerMac G5 days I have been using DiskWarrior for either preventive or repairs in rebuilding directories. Diskwarrior is more reliable with repairs than OSX Disk Utlility. I would say DWarrior has a 70% success in repairs with HDs that could not mount. More often I use DWarrior as a Preventive move. A Mac tech guy told me preventive is better than "curing" or repairing. I have not tried Drive Genius for rebuilding or repairs so I could not comment on that.
With Data Rescue, I only used this years ago, in recovering files from a failing Maxtor drive. It took a couple of hours as the files were huge. The only thing is DRescue 2 changed all the file names after the process was completed so it was a hassle to sort them out. Maybe with Data Rescue 3 it will retain the original file names. Currently I keep 2 copies of my original work files for extra safety. The third backup is physically outside the Mac.
I've got most everything restored now. It was just a real pain. I think I now own just about every notable Drive repair/recovery tool out there. I just installed DR3 and activated it a few minutes ago.
One of these utilities installed OSXFUSE and I'm not too sure I want that. I've heard of FUSE causing some problems of it's own in the past. We'll see...