so as title says, my D: drive with all my tunes, samples and worryingliy my unbacked up SAGE folder has suddenly dissapeared. It was there earlier in the evening as I saved a file to it, but when I booted Cubase up it started going funny, and there were no recent projects in the list. I looked and found no D: in my computer. It's not showing in device manager or BIOS either.

I checked the SATA cables, swapped for a new one, checked all other connections and still not there. Tonight I have put it into a USB cradle but still nothing - and now I'm getting worried that if I keep trying to boot it I'll end up damaging it further if it is cooked. I say cooked, as when I was fiddling about I noticed that my case fans aren't working. I put a new PSU in a few months back, and I'm wondering if they havent worked since and I've cooked the HD (although it was bottom of the 2 drives and system HD is ok). Also tried deleting lower and upper filters in regedit, and initialising in disk manager but nothing.

I'm really worried here that I'm looking at data recovery and maybe lost work. How good is data recovery software if that's what I'm looking at? should I pay and get it done professionally?

Is there anything else I can try? Cheers in advance for any help (apart from the obvious 'you need to back up properly')

If you can't see it in the bios then that's a problem. I'd say try it in another machine to double check but the fact you've already tried a USB dock rules out a lot of potential internal problems (failed controller/cables etc...) so I'm not sure if the is anything to be gained there.

Date recovery software won't help you if the drive won't spin as it sounds like some kind of physical problem.

Can you hear it spin up or the needle moving internally?

If you can't then it's likely to be the logic board that controls it. If it is then you can try and track down a matching drive and swap the controller boards. Be warned through it will need to be the same make and model (and perhaps even the same batch) so unless you already have a matching drive somewhere around it'll be hard to locate another without speaking to the firm that made it.

The other potential issue there if nothing is spinning is a dead motor and that would be a return to manfacture job.

If the drive is spinning up but clicking away then either the needle is miss-aligned or damaged or the spindle itself could be damaged either way it's a cleanroom job at a professional repair center and the cost is going to be high I'm afraid.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

thanks Peter,

I can hear the drive spin and power up; no sounds outside the normal hard drive sounds - ie no clicks or anything unusual. I looked at a SATA - USB cable device but I'm guessing thats the same as putting it in the dock?

Is this a Seagate SATA drive by any chance? I recently had the same issue with a drive I was about to backup. I had to buy an RS232 to TTL converter and follow online instructions here http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html

It was a bit of a stressful time but the drive is working again and I have upgraded the firmware to stop it from happening again.

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I can hear the drive spin and power up; no sounds outside the normal hard drive sounds - ie no clicks or anything unusual. I looked at a SATA - USB cable device but I'm guessing thats the same as putting it in the dock?

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It's still fixable then I imagine althrough I don't know by who or at what level without a hands on. I'd certainly try plugging it into another machine using fresh cables as you've nothing to lose. Past that you might need to get a specialist autherized by the drive manufacture to look at it and see if anything can be repaired or salvaged.

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Is this a Seagate SATA drive by any chance? I recently had the same issue with a drive I was about to backup. I had to buy an RS232 to TTL converter and follow online instructions here http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html

It was a bit of a stressful time but the drive is working again and I have upgraded the firmware to stop it from happening again.

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That's a new one on me. I've not had chance to do any more than skim yet, but will do later.

I will say that his big red warning about the logic board swap not working is wrong, as I've done it half a dozen times myself. It does have to be the same model and batch but it's not impossible to do... just unlikely unless you have everything to hand.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Swapping logic boards didn't sound so bad to me either but getting an RS232 TTL adapter like ebay item 290776456573 was only £4 compared to £25+ for a logic board which may or may not have worked. I've since been able to use the TTL board again to try to reawaken a wharfedale PVR - albeit I couldn't ;-)

If you find that your drive is a Seagate SATA 7200.11 you may be the victim of this firmware bug and the RS232 method is worth a go.

Gave that a whirl, but no joy, so it's been packed off to a data recovery firm - will let you know results.

Quote Pete Kaine:

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I will say that his big red warning about the logic board swap not working is wrong, as I've done it half a dozen times myself. It does have to be the same model and batch but it's not impossible to do... just unlikely unless you have everything to hand.

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I once bought an IBM "Deathstar" from a local supplier which failed just as I completed a day's work setting up a system on it. Luckily the fault was in the logic board, and he had another one in stock. Swapped boards, got a full image off it onto a better drive, took both the Deathstars back.

sent off for recovery, apparantly it is mechanical even though there are no clicks. £299 for data recovery, £100 parts, £70 for a drive to put it on all plus VAT. Only after commiting will I get a list of files which can be recovered so it's a tough one, as everything except the SAGe folder (and a few bits I've done since august) are worth anything as rest is backed up - so could end up commiting to pay £500+ and they are corrupted and wont get them back anyway.

I'll no doubt be debating whther or not it's worth it over the next day or so

Reccomend that everyone sets up a RAID1 mirror drive for anything precious.

LESSON LEARNT

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Reccomend that everyone sets up a RAID1 mirror drive for anything precious.

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Still leaves you open to controller faults and other related fails. Your not so much fixing the problem as moving the point of failure somewhere else... and if your using none enterprise class drives you open yourself up to a few other problems that people don't consider until something goes tits up.

I'd strongly advise skipping the raid 1 option and setting up an automated back up routine to a NAS box or even another local drive if that isn't an option if you really want some security for your data.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Quote ossuss:

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Reccomend that everyone sets up a RAID1 mirror drive for anything precious.

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You need to do better than that, I think. A backup in the same box is no backup.

ah ok perhapd a bit hasty; just thought as the raid keeps a mirror, the data (even in event of controller faliure) would be protected - unless a virus or software takes them out, or the unlikely 2 mechanical faliures at the same time.

I've just had a quick google of NAS box; can't work out but is this constantly backing up similar to raid? I can't work out the difference between this and an external drive?

I had a RAID 5 array, and amazingly, two of the drives in my 4 drive array failed simultaneously. Even the data recovery place said they'd never seen that before. And they were Western Digital's "RAID edition" drives.

So, my lesson learned was backup on separate media as well as RAID 1... and as far as the RAID 1 array goes, use different makes/model numbers to save you from problem with a particular lot of hard discs. A couple of years ago Seagate had a firmware problem that bricked hard drives for no good reason. They fixed it with a firmware update, and provided a replacement drive, but they didn't do anything about recovering your data.

When your computer is struck by lightning or the power supply blows up, ALL the drives die. Or it could be stolen.

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I've just had a quick google of NAS box; can't work out but is this constantly backing up similar to raid? I can't work out the difference between this and an external drive?

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External and NAS is pretty much the same thing with one being attached to the system and the other one being attached to the network... I just used NAS as it was the first example that came to mind. The benefits of the NAS solution however is that you can use a central file server somewhere safe (hidden in the attic for example) to back up all the PC's in the building if the is more than one it can be more cost and time effective.

Automatic backup is possible but you need to set up a software client on your PC to do it rather than on the NAS box, although this applies to a regular external drive as well. You can set up a back up client (Free = Paragon / Pay = Acronis) to do a daily incremental backup every day via Windows scheduler and you can force a backup at any time meaning you shouldn't lose too much in the event of something going horribly wrong.

The safest all round solution would be a Raid 1 with NAS backup with a third backup off site held in a cloud storage location if you really wanted to do it properly

Acturly to that end you can sync your project folder with your dropbox/livedrive/gobbler to ensure your latest projects are always being held with a secure off site backup.

RAID of whatever variant, is an AVAILABILITY tool, it is NOT A BACKUP, raid does not for example help with a corrupt file system or with accidentally fat fingering a delete command, backup does.

What RAID buys you is the ability to keep working when a drive fails, but it is not a substitute for backup in any way, it just saves you the few hours for the restore from backup.

Backups should be redundant, kept in physically separate locations, and periodically tested to make sure that they can be restored from.

Regards, Dan.

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Audiophiles use phono leads because they are unbalanced people!