Failed Drive

[taylor4814]

I have a failed/failing drive:

WDC WD3200AAKS-00VYA0 (320.1GB, SATA300, 3.5", 7200rpm, 16MB Cache)

...it will show only intermittently now in Windows Disk Management / My Computer upon reboot;

The most recent successful backup is mostly, but not fully up-to-date.

What is my best chance/best tool/method to fully retrieve all data on the drive?

Efforts with Acronis True Image 2015, Macrium Reflect (Free) and Clonezilla have not yet been successful...

[Darryl Ramm]

What is on this drive? Sessions? Samples? something else?

Your most recent backup is not fully up to date... but it may be all you have. Do not do anything that risks that backup if it’s a session drive. And stop doing anything unecessary with the failing drive.

If it’s only samples give up and reinstall everything.

You got a drive to recover to? If not get one asap. And maybe time to move to an SSD. Restore your backup to that drive, then Remove the backup drive and store somewhere safe. Then manually see if you can copy across the latest files not on the backup. If you do not have a spare drive and know what the latest sessions were that were likely not in the backup try copying them elsewhere for now, like your boot drive. But don’t futz around with your only? backup copy.

Cannot read those latest files then stop messing with that drive and remove it, you either need to give up and redo the work or need to find a disk recovery service and spend $$ and time in the hope they can recover those files. Likely the very worst thing you can do is repeatedly futz with a failing drive if you cannot just read stuff off it.

All this is happening as you should expect. The most likely time to discover a bad drive is while cloning/backing it up. You should have multiple backups. You should backup important session work nightly or better, to multiple places, including cloud storage. You may want spare disks to recover to etc.

[taylor4814]

Thanks for the advice. It had some personal sessions not yet backed up but not critical; I did get an SSD and will install and restore first...

[albee1952]

I feel your pain!!!!! I've gone thru a few drive issues over the years and lost a lot of work With sessions, data recovery software is not very good. While it may retrieve hundreds of audio files, it is likely to not bring them back with the correct file names or time stamp, making them useless. These days, if its something I don't want to lose, I copy to at least 2 external drives(I keep several USB drives and a 12TB NAS).

Since your issue is with a spinning drive, there is 1 trick that might be worth a try; put the drive in an anti-static bag, tape it closed and put it in the freezer for 3-4 hours(stop laughing). This method has worked for me twice(and failed twice), so its worth a try

Since you didn't mention WHICH SSD you got, I need to warn about Samsung 860 QVO drives. I have one that dropped data for no apparent reason(one day the files were there and the next day they were gone). I re-formatted it and copied a bunch of old sessions to it as a test. Sure enough, maybe 2 months later, it started losing files again. I sent it to Samsung and they did a firmware update. Its been back for a month now and has not lost anything yet(but I won't trust it for anything important). My EVO and PRO Samsungs have been great FWIW.

[Top Jimmy]

I have found that an issue like this isn’t always a failing drive. What I would do first is exercise all data connections to all your drives. That is, pull the power and then unplug and replug all cables at both the drive end and then at the motherboard end. Then boot up the computer with only the boot drive attached. Last, shutdown and reattach all the rest of the drives. This seems to cause the bios to reshuffle the drive connections on the next boot, solidly reconnecting to a missing or intermittent drive.

[taylor4814]

Thanks one and all, and thanks for heads up on the Samsung 860 QVO;

I got the WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB - WDS100T2B0A

...and will try all the suggestions above.

[Southsidemusic]

You bought a ”Blue” or ”GREEN” drive even though the DUC is full of warnings about those? Well ...

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

You bought a ”Blue” or ”GREEN” drive even though the DUC is full of warnings about those? Well ...

I'm not sure how the blue SSD relates to the blue spinners....but I did want to add a bit of advice regarding Windows shuffling drives(which is still a good idea). Before you do it, take note of all the drive letters that are in place. The reason for this is because if Windows changes drive letters(and it often will), it might be important to change them back afterwards. I have had sessions refuse to run or relink audio files due to drive letter changes(I rotate thru 4 system drives here and sometimes just swapping the C: drive will alter letters on other drives). I just wrote the drive letters on a Post-it and stuck it on the side of my desk for future reference

For those that are afraid of this stuff, don't be. Right-click on Start and select Disk Management. In the next window, all your drives will be listed with their names and drive letters. Letters A and B are only for floppy drives, so you won't be using those. Any drive(except C:) can be changed to another letter by right-clicking the drive on the list. If any drive is using the letter you want for a different drive, just assign any available letter to free up the letter in use(so you can shuffle letters around until you get all back to the desired drives. Also remember that Pro Tools can't write to DYNAMIC drives, so always format to NTFS and BASIC

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

You bought a ”Blue” or ”GREEN” drive even though the DUC is full of warnings about those? Well ...

That’s not a specific concern here, that concern is entity HDD. These WD aka Sandisk SSDs are OK, I would normally go for the latest Samsung equivalents... you get a bit more performance and Samsung’s integration/quality benefits.... although they screw up at times as well.

[Southsidemusic]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

That’s not a specific concern here, that concern is entity HDD. These WD aka Sandisk SSDs are OK, I would normally go for the latest Samsung equivalents... you get a bit more performance and Samsung’s integration/quality benefits.... although they screw up at times as well.

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