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General discussion

HDD dropped but still working

Oct 25, 2006 2:16PM PDT

Yesterday, a friend of mine dropped my external HDD. It still works but when I try to do scandisk on one of the partitions out of the three, it tells me that it can't perform such operation now and if I want to perform it when I restart next time. It never does so, even if I say yes and keep it connected.

Now my questions is, how do I make sure that my HDD is still in good condition as it was before? I don't find any change in the screeching sound that it makes. I would like to make sure that it is reliable and it won't ditch me in the middle of nowhere with all my data on it.

Discussion is locked

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MAKE COPIES NOW
Oct 25, 2006 2:21PM PDT

If you can retrieve your data, do so now. Hard Drives were not made to be dropped. It will be toast before you know it.

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(NT) (NT) Get your stuff out of that drive while you can.
Oct 25, 2006 10:10PM PDT
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I did it
Oct 26, 2006 12:40AM PDT

Yes, I have already done that but just to make sure that it is still in usable condition, is there any way? Or I should just stop using this HDD?

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Your choice here. But from your writings ...
Oct 26, 2006 2:26AM PDT

The drive sounds as if it was damaged. Maybe you could use it but never trust it?

If the damage is confined to the drive you can pop a new drive in it but shop around. Over at some Office max place a new 250GB USB 2.0 drive was 89 bucks today.

Bob

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Dropped??
Oct 26, 2006 3:14AM PDT

May be I used harsh word. He didn't actually 'dropped' like dropping from the table or from the hand and falling freely about few feets. The drive sort of fell by 90 degrees but I quickly grabbed it, still it didsort of got dropped. This is hard to explain but so far I managed to access all the stuff, copy all the stuff, except this one partition that I am not able to scan with windows Scandisk utility.

May be I could check with some other utility.

I use this drive for temporary storage anyways, like carrying it from work to home etc.

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Getting to your actual question
Oct 26, 2006 7:53PM PDT

I understand your diliema, I use several external 2.5" drives as data "mules" and have flipped them over on occasion not realising that they were powered up. To check the drive you will need to remove it from the case and connect it directly to a PCs IDE controller (you can put it in place of the CD if you don't have enough connectors). Then you will need as disk testing program such as this one: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
Create a bootable floppy, boot the system up with it, run the full (advanced) test on the drive. If the drive passes then you can trust it with your files again, if it fails the test then I would put it in the recycle bin to be melted down a turned into coke cans.

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Exactly
Oct 27, 2006 5:55AM PDT

what answer I was probably looking for.

I will give a try and post the results

Thanks a lot.

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Anything for USB drive?
Oct 28, 2006 3:24AM PDT

I was planning to use suggested utility today but I failed to figure out how to get the drive out. I just don't see any screws on the cabinet. This is USB Samsung drive with Samsung Spinpoint inside.

Do you have any suggestion for USB connected drive?

Many thanks

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Another good disk test/repair program
Oct 27, 2006 7:48AM PDT

Gibson Research (GRC.com) has a real good hard drive test and repair utility called Spinrite 6. It will check the entire drive for damaged or unreadable sectors, mark them as bad or unreadable and attempt to move the data to good sectors. I have recovered the data from several hard drives that were on their last legs with it. The only disadvantage is that it can take an extreme amount of time to run a large drive if you set it to one of the high levels of sector recovery.

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(NT) (NT) Backup everything now.
Oct 27, 2006 8:45PM PDT
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hdd tune
Oct 29, 2006 12:08AM PDT

i think you can find the HDD tune software .. and view the S.M.A.R.T data ... and you can view the data inside it. it might give u some information.

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USB drive
Oct 29, 2006 1:41AM PDT

This is a very good program but it fails to recognize my USB external drive and I can't get that drive out so I am stuck at that point.

Any help please!!

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I dropped mine also
Oct 30, 2006 3:51AM PST

I dropped my 300 gigger at a pool party I was DJing at. The case I carry it in flipped off a chair (unbalanced weight) and it dropped onto the concrete patio stones. OUCH... The cover almost popped of and I thought 'there's goes my show' BUT the important thing was that it was powered off (parked).. so that probably saved it. It has worked ok since (August) but I did make a backup anyway for that and other reasons. So now I 'mirror' them back and forth.
The new one I bought I also put together but it came with 'shock absorbers' built into the case... cool stuff....