i have an enclosure w/ a 160 gb hd that i store all my music on. it was starting to get pretty full, and had about 5gb left and now my computer is not reading any of the files at all.

i can hear a scratching type sound and the red light comes on like my computer is trying to read it but i get nothing...is the problem probably the hd or the enclosure? and is there anything i can do to fix it?

2/7/2006 7:41:58 AM

do you hear click, click, click?

2/7/2006 7:47:46 AM

I'd shoot for the drive being the problem unfortunately--the scratching and griding is a dead give away. The bad news is that data recovery is stupid expensive and unless you are housing military secrets, it's not worth it. You can try the freezer trick in one last desperation move (seal the HD in a ziploc, put it in freezer for bit, then try to copy as much from it as you can) but if you can already not read anything from the drive, then the odds of you recovering everything are minimal. :-(

2/7/2006 7:49:39 AM

yeah, it was a clicking sound...i was in the middle of updating my ipod and then all of the sudden it started making those sounds.

wow, i cant believe i probably just lost all of my music.

is 2 years the avg life for what i was doing w/ the hd, or was it just a piece?

2/7/2006 7:57:53 AM

Ehh, depends... i've still got drives that i had from my freshman year at state, but then again i've had some melons. See if you can RMA the sucker if it's still under warranty.

2/7/2006 8:44:00 AM

wow, you werent kidding about the price of getting my files recovered. one company wants anywhere from $600-$3600.

2/7/2006 11:55:34 AM

I had an iomega external hdd fail twice the same year.. first time it failed I sent it back and they sent a new one.. next one gave out and I threw it away and bought a seagate external.. it's been working fine so far, had it for about 6 months.. but I keep extra backups on dvds after the iomega failed the first time and (as its seems you did) I lost all my music..

so yeah
life can be varying on these things

2/7/2006 12:08:11 PM