So, Im not sure if this is the place to post this, or if anyone can help, but I have always gotten good info from the contributors of this site so I thought it was worth a try.
The 2 days ago the 320 WD3200AAJS hard drive in my iMac crashed. I tried to un-rar some files and everything seized. Unfortunately, the computer was also running my once a month dual backup (normally I only backup one volume per week, rotating those out) and it corrupted all the data on both backups.
Thus began the saga of the WD3200AAJS. I first thought about a PCB swap because the drive seemed to sound normal when I hooked it up to an external SATA to USB converter. The iMac would only say that the drive couldn't be read and would display a non name 2.2TB drive in Drive Utility. Then, suddenly after taking off the circuit board and replacing it, it began to work again. I was able to recover about 35GB of the 110GB I needed before it stopped working again. This is why I was considering a PCB replacement since it seemed the physical drive still worked. Although I am told that the PCBs on thee drives are "tuned" to their physical hard drive counterpart, and thus swapping is likely to fail.
Then, tonight, I took the drive to my brother who works in IT. When he hooked it up to his Windows machine, it mounted, showed the correct drive space and name. I was able to use HFSExplorer to see the directory structure and even navigate it. But the second I tried to pull data from the drive the program locked up. Next I tried Macdrive 8, it too was able to load the drive as a Windows hard drive, and I was able to navigate. Again, when I tried to move data into my brother's computer it froze. Currently, he is planning to try to use a blind bit-for-bit copy program they have at work to try and recover the data.
I have a duplicate drive, same size and firmware available to me for free that works. So as a last ditch effort my brother and I have discussed the possibility of doing a platter transplant into the donor drive. We have access to a clean room so Im not too worried about it if that is what it comes to. However, I would like to fix it through less invasive means if possible. Given what I have said here, does anyone happen to have some any ideas. I just don't understand how I can access the drive and navigate it on a Windows machine and yet a Mac refuses to do anything with it.
Any advice/suggests would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
The 2 days ago the 320 WD3200AAJS hard drive in my iMac crashed. I tried to un-rar some files and everything seized. Unfortunately, the computer was also running my once a month dual backup (normally I only backup one volume per week, rotating those out) and it corrupted all the data on both backups.
Thus began the saga of the WD3200AAJS. I first thought about a PCB swap because the drive seemed to sound normal when I hooked it up to an external SATA to USB converter. The iMac would only say that the drive couldn't be read and would display a non name 2.2TB drive in Drive Utility. Then, suddenly after taking off the circuit board and replacing it, it began to work again. I was able to recover about 35GB of the 110GB I needed before it stopped working again. This is why I was considering a PCB replacement since it seemed the physical drive still worked. Although I am told that the PCBs on thee drives are "tuned" to their physical hard drive counterpart, and thus swapping is likely to fail.
Then, tonight, I took the drive to my brother who works in IT. When he hooked it up to his Windows machine, it mounted, showed the correct drive space and name. I was able to use HFSExplorer to see the directory structure and even navigate it. But the second I tried to pull data from the drive the program locked up. Next I tried Macdrive 8, it too was able to load the drive as a Windows hard drive, and I was able to navigate. Again, when I tried to move data into my brother's computer it froze. Currently, he is planning to try to use a blind bit-for-bit copy program they have at work to try and recover the data.
I have a duplicate drive, same size and firmware available to me for free that works. So as a last ditch effort my brother and I have discussed the possibility of doing a platter transplant into the donor drive. We have access to a clean room so Im not too worried about it if that is what it comes to. However, I would like to fix it through less invasive means if possible. Given what I have said here, does anyone happen to have some any ideas. I just don't understand how I can access the drive and navigate it on a Windows machine and yet a Mac refuses to do anything with it.
Any advice/suggests would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!