WARNING: Pro Tools killed my external HD! AAAH!

[levelaudio]

The following is the story of how I destroyed my external drive using Pro Tools. I hope this helps others to avoid doing the same thing.

My WD MyBook 500 GB external HD was working totally fine and smoothly until the fateful day when I tried to import some audio files into a Pro Tools session from the workspace browser, then decided to delete them from the regions list (not remove from session, but delete from disk) before they had finished copying into the session's audio files folder. Pro Tools froze, Finder froze, and after waiting 5-10 minutes, I was still unable to quit or force quit anything and had to do a hard reboot. After that my ext HD wouldn't mount. After days of extensive testing and repair efforts, my ext HD turned out to have numerous damaged sectors, and any attempt to repair or erase and reformat it using disk utility fails with errors. So despite all my efforts, I can't fix the drive. It is now a $200 paperweight/doorstop.

Lesson learned: patience when importing audio into a Pro Tools session. Wait for the files to finish copying before trying to delete them!

Any comments or recommended course of action from DigiSupport is appreciated.

Thanks!

[myke2242]

Disk Utility is not always the best option for repair and sometimes multiable failed attempts to repair with DU can make things worse. Some other options you can look at are Disk Warrior, Data Rescue II (file recovery) and Drive Genius 2.

[DigiTechSupt]

It's extremely unlikely, nigh impossible, that Pro Tools caused this as importing to a Pro Tools session or moving things to the trash is handled by the OS.

It just sounds like the drive had bad sectors that weren't mapped out before being boxed, or developed bad sectors during normal usage, and they were trying to be used by the OS. When they were being read/written the OS locked up. Drives die - it's all a matter of when, not if. Granted you were doing something that's not recommended, per se, but the OS knows how to handle files that are moved to the trash while also being copied, which is why I think the drive had defects that happened to reveal themselves at that moment.

If you can mount the drive, you may be able to recover data off of it cheaply using Data Rescue II, otherwise if you really, really need the data a drive recovery service like Drive Savers would be the way to go, but be prepared for a hefty fee.

If the drive is less than 3 years old, you should be able to get a replacement from Western Digital.

As for what to do - well, probably not much.

[jmitchell1532]

I have this exact problem. I just purchased the firewirse My Book External 500 G, 7200rpm HD for my Windows XP sp2 machine. I installed everything, connected the drive, and in the "My Computer" section, it shows up as being present and formatted, which was strange because I hadn't formatted anything yet. When I attempted to open the drive, I get an error window saying the "drive is corrupt," or something to that matter. and then it disappears. I have no idea how to fix it.