My Session Drive Died

[VanDerGraf]

Yep. My SATA II WD 750 GB that I bought about 8 months ago died. I had a 6 hour session with a friend yesterday, and was having weird issues trying to bounce, among many other things.

Got up today to mix and found that my 'D' drive was suddenly re-labeled "Local D" instead of "record" drive and when I tried to acccess it, it said the drive needed to be formatted. So I lost yesterday's session, which can be replaced . I sure wish I had done the back up right after the session like I normally do.

I am wonderig if the platters are frozen and if there is any chance of getting data off without spending a ton.

I also wanted to ask other users about the best (cheapest?) imaging software to use. Are any of the free ones any good?

Thanks for any advice PT people.

[JMS40]

Van,
I've had a good deal of luck with retrieving data with the freezer method.
Put the drive into the freezer in a ziplok for an hour or two, plug it back in, reboot, and gather what you can until it locks again.
Back into the freezer, etc..

I know this sounds barbaric, but if the drive is physically failing, (and most do ) it's usually friction. Chilling down the drive gives you periods of normal operation.
Often enough to recoup everything.

Good luck

[Shan]

Originally Posted by VanDerGraf

Yep. My SATA II WD 750 GB that I bought about 8 months ago died. I had a 6 hour session with a friend yesterday, and was having weird issues trying to bounce, among many other things.

Got up today to mix and found that my 'D' drive was suddenly re-labeled "Local D" instead of "record" drive and when I tried to acccess it, it said the drive needed to be formatted. So I lost yesterday's session, which can be replaced . I sure wish I had done the back up right after the session like I normally do.

I am wonderig if the platters are frozen and if there is any chance of getting data off without spending a ton.

I also wanted to ask other users about the best (cheapest?) imaging software to use. Are any of the free ones any good?

Thanks for any advice PT people.

Grab Spinrite for the data recovery. Acronis True Image is affordable disk imaging software.

Shane

[TOM@METRO]

I was able recover a drive that went south with a PSU failure. I used “Get data back for NTFS”.
HERE

[VanDerGraf]

Thanks. I had heard of this method. I will give it a try.

Van

[VanDerGraf]

Thanks JMS40! and to all who responded in my time of need.
I ended up sticking the HD in the freezer, and it actually worked!
Amazing! I was able to recover 99% of my work. Got all of my Monday sessions back, which was the main thing. That was a Seagate HD, BTW. Not that it really matters since I had Western Digital HDs fail as well.

Anyway, thanks again. I will be looking at the imaging software next.

Van

[JMS40]

Good to hear Van!
I've saved at least 10 drives that way through the years.
Always good to share happy endings.

Now, get yourself a copy of True Image...

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by VanDerGraf

Thanks JMS40! and to all who responded in my time of need.
I ended up sticking the HD in the freezer, and it actually worked!
Amazing! I was able to recover 99% of my work. Got all of my Monday sessions back, which was the main thing. That was a Seagate HD, BTW. Not that it really matters since I had Western Digital HDs fail as well.

Anyway, thanks again. I will be looking at the imaging software next.

Van

That very Good News. +1 on the Acronis.

I'm still a fan of single platter drives (<320GB) since I still think multi platter = more to go wrong.

I am also of the opinion that with SSD's about to move into the mainstream in the next year or so that the only thing that mechanical HDD's are going to have to offer at this point is lots of storage at bargain basement prices. 3.5 HDD are currently commodity priced and as the big three (Seagate, WD, and Hitachi/Samsung) compete for a swindling market share based on price you can expect to see a rapid decline in quality as costs are cut to save shrinking margins.

Nice to hear somebody got their data back for a change.

[VanDerGraf]

Originally Posted by sunburst79

Nice to hear somebody got their data back for a change.

LOL. Yeah, I was ready to weep.

[msg6794]

Originally Posted by TOM@METRO

I was able recover a drive that went south with a PSU failure. I used “Get data back for NTFS”.
HERE

dude, you saved my life! or at least the last month of my life. thank you! i was in a bad place here - getdataback for ntfs totally restored my files from my corrupted data drive.