Desperate in South Carolina (HD Crashed)

skettalee

Well-known member
Ok please someone give me a post saying they can help me! I sware if you can help I will paypal you some money for the help or anything really. Im a music producer and graphic design and video editor so any of my services I can offer for free to you for your help.

Ok this is something that makes me want to cry. Ill explain.

Saturday Sept 3rd, 2005 I booted up the computer only to see that it frooze before Windows XP SP2 (all latest updates) started. I did some troubleshooting only to find out my 400GB D2 LaCie Big Disk was the problem. It kept crashing or actually it would boot up (little blue light in front blinking until it became solid saying it was totally booted up) and then after a few seconds you would hear the sound of it rebooting up and the light would start blinking again. It kept on doing this over and over. I had to unplug (firewire & usb 2.0) the cord and reboot to get into Windows.

Once in Windows I would try to plug the hard drive in (it auto boots up when it finds connection to the computer) and let it do its AutoPlay by searching all the folders and files on the HD, it would start finding the folders cause the Search would show them and then you would hear the drive reboot and it would freeze the computer. The HD is 2 seperate 200GB HD's inside of the case. So the only way to stop the freezing would be to turn the HD off by pressing the blue button and also unplugging the HD. I do have firewire 800 on it but I think I lost that cable, id love to find it cause 400 and USB 2.0 sure aint working.

I even tried by plugging the HD with firewire and USB 2.0 to my Powerbook G4. Still no go, actually it started showing the HD like the windows machine did. But it only showed 1 of the 200gb HD's and when I clicked it, it frooze. Even in Windows Explorer it would show both HD's but clicking them to view contents would make explorer freeze as well.

I have a PCI Firewire card on the Windows machine and actually one of the times I tried plugging the HD in the second firewire slot and the drive booted up correcting and I was able to view the contents like normal. I was calm by then thinking it was back to normal so I didn't think to back all the data up on another HD on my sytem. Then when I rebooted agin, it was back to the same old crashing.

Now I figured out through LaCie that the drive is still under warranty but in order to fix it, they format it. They recommened Drive Savers for saving the data before getting the new one and putting the data on that. I called Drive Savers and they told me regretible that after hearing my complications it would run from around $2,500 to like $4,700. Now im a Senior Airman (E-4) in the US Air Force and by no means do I make any type of amount that would help me fit that bill.

They did recommend that I contact USAA (my renters insurrance agent) to see if im covered on Loss of Intellectual Property but they told me they have to get back to me on it. I called them today so they are calling me back today sometime. Im crossing my fingers and praying to god but I really doubt they would cover that price for the data recovery.

There has to be some sort of way around jut to get the drives to work long enough to backup atleast the most important stuff that I have on there. And believe me, most of whats on that drive is my most valuable data which is everything dealing with my music production. I need any help I can get. Can someone please help me out with this problem? I beg of you, anyone, please help me to recover this data so I can go on living life without being depressed that song I created and every other thing thats on there isn't lost forever.

Please view my website if you want to see anymore information about the types of services I do at http://www.337studios.com

I pray to god that this gets resolved for me. If you do not know how to help me, then please atleast say one prayer with me on this. Thank you everyone for your time!
 
I haven't opened a Lacie case(it may void your warranty) but the first thing I would do if i was having problems with an external is take the HD out of the case and plug it into a computer internally....
 
I was calm by then thinking it was back to normal so I didn't think to back all the data up on another HD on my sytem. Then when I rebooted agin, it was back to the same old crashing.

Doh! Don't do that again. :)

The best suggestion I have is that there's a slim, slim possibility that it's just a problem with the Lacie case. You could try pulling those HDs out of the case and putting them in another case, or just inside your box and see if you can get to the data that way. The only caveat there is that if the drives are RAIDed then that suggestion doesn't apply.

There are some commercial software data recovery programs available. I personally have never seen success with them, but I've seen others who were able to recover data. You can google for some of those programs. Almost all of them allow you to download a trial that will determine if they can get to the data before you have to shell out any money for a license.

I wish I could do more.
 
It sounds like you have your drive setup as a RAID0 configuration. That makes it tricky to recover the information since it's split across both drives. It might only be the controller which would be good since the drives and data may still be safe. There are data recovery services that handle RAID drives. A friend used Drive Savers and they recovered some of the data on his drive. Don't blindly go and install the drives into another system unless you know what you are doing. Especially if they have been setup as RAID drives.

I've been through your pain and that's why I now own an external firewire drive just for doing automatic backups. I use that along with DVD burns of data.

I wish you luck.
 
I've used DiscWarrior for OSX on Lacie drives before successfully. May give it a shot. Could work, but then again it may not.
 
yes, I second DW. It is worth a try..

((edit))
Disk Warrior is a mac repair program. maybe others out there know of something for the pcs..
 
There are several programs for PC's, but this is sounding more like a hardware problem that probably won't be able to be fixed in software. The prog at www.quetek.com worked well for me when my drive went under, but I was experiencing different sypmtoms.
 
If the video files are avi, mov, you can use Digital Video Rescue pro (pc program). This program is design to recover video files on a hard drive that the structure is defective.

ElvisNTSC
 
Check if you can hear the hard drive spin up. If it keeps spinning that's a good sign. MAke sure you firewire cable isn't damaged. Use a different cable. I have a Lacie DVD burner which I thought was defective, but the cable was damaged!!

Data Rescue X for OSX saved me , recovered 99%+ of files, when disk utility accidently erased my hard drive !!!

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/1133
 
Ok well I will look into trying another cable, I also have a powerbook that I can use to try DataRescueX or DiscWarrior. I appreciate all the help you guys are giving me so far though! I will go try what I can tonight after work. Pray for me please!
 
One option is to open up the case and unplug and replug the drives--you never know when a cable can get loose. Another option is to buy or borrow a second identical LaCie unit and remove the hard drives and replace them with your hard drives. If the controller went south, that might allow you to backup the drives.
 
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