Lacie external hard drive no longer readable by computer

I am using a lacie tb hard drive, and ran data rescue 3 recovery software on it. Now, when I plug it in, the hard drive is not readable by the computer at all.
Advice?
thanks

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8), Lap top

Posted on Feb 6, 2010 6:14 PM

Reply
9 replies

Feb 6, 2010 7:34 PM in response to traceyx

What does Disk Utility (or Drive Genius, if you bought that along with DataRescue 3) say about the drive, tracey?

What was the problem that necessitated you using DataRescue in the first place? If this was necessary because of pre-existing disk problems then you may well have to reformat the drive before it becomes useable again, anyway.

Cheers

Rod

Feb 7, 2010 8:44 AM in response to Rod Hagen

Should I run disk utility? Once I saw that the drive was no longer readable from the computer, I ejected it and disconnected it. I deleted files accidentally, and purchased data rescue three to recover them. From the get go, it was a very slow scan with bad blocks. The drive shut down several times. Before running DR3 I never had a problem with the drive or with running fcp. (It's all photos and quicktime files.)

Feb 7, 2010 1:36 PM in response to traceyx

Yes repair with disk utility. The volume info is damaged. The files are probably there but the boot sections are screwy. When you launch disk utility do you see the HW name of your disk but the volume is something like "Disk03" under it? You have to run it from the install disc or from an external volume though. If it will not fix the issue, try Diskwarrior. If that fails, run Data rescue to rescue all the files it can still see and reformat the drive. Put the files back on. I have yet to have anything go wrong while using data rescue, fyi. Granted I don't run it everyday.

Feb 7, 2010 2:03 PM in response to BoyHowdyDoo

Hi BoyHowdyDoo,

This is an external drive that traceyx is talking about, so no need to boot from the OS DVD to run DiskUtility.

I'm a bit suspicious that the drive is actually physically failing, I'm afraid in this case, given the mention of bad blocks etc.

Tracey, I'm not sure from your comments whether you have actually already managed to get the things you want from the drive off it or not?

Running DiskUtility over it shouldn't hurt the drive, and may repair it sufficiently to get it "seen" again. I very much doubt if Drive Rescue has really done any serious damage to the drive if it was healthy beforehand, but the mention you made of bad blocks being reported is a worry, and the WD external drives unfortunately don't have a very good reputation for reliability.

If you were trying to recover the deleted files to a disk that was itself already damaged then unpredictable consequences could have occurred.

In this situation myself, assuming this is a Mac HFS(+) formatted external drive, If Disk Utility didn't fix it I would probably use Alsoft's "DiskWarrior" to try to repair it. It is capable of dealing with problems that are beyond the ability of DiskUtility . If that failed I would use DataRescue to try to recover the contents to another external.

Rod

Feb 8, 2010 3:12 PM in response to BoyHowdyDoo

Thanks so much. This is what I will say. I deleted files accidentally on the 21st of January, but didn't have internet access until the 28th. I ran filesalvage, with no problem and recovered almost everything, except a couple of files I really wanted. I contacted them and they suggested that I run Data Rescue 3. I ran it, and it only completed 32% of the scan, I contacted them and they let me know sometimes it takes about 5 days. I tried running it again. Now the disc is unreadable. I contacted a data recovery service (base price about 500$) and they told me not to run disc utility and to bring it in. I just want to say that I ran filesalvage, and there was one bad block noted. I ran data rescue 3, and there was a whole bunch more until ultimately the disc was unreadable by my comp. Since I just purchased it like 2 days before, and now I have to bring it in, I asked them if they could refund my money, which of course they won't. Not a fan. But thanks for your response, hopefully I can recover everything at a different professional site.

Feb 8, 2010 7:53 PM in response to traceyx

How old is the drive itself, tracey? You should be able to get it replaced by LaCie if it is developing bad sectors.

My own (very limited) experience with drive recovery companies is that they basically just use Diskwarrior and DataRescue or the like themselves for any of the "cheaper" repairs, and that those who are capable of much more than this charge amounts so great when it comes to platter removal and scanning etc that even the most critical documents on the drive suddenly somehow seem far less important!

Rod

Apr 4, 2010 3:08 AM in response to Rod Hagen

i have just had a similar problem. ihave three lacie disks attached to my power mac G5 (snowleopard) one 250, one 300 and one 1TB (big disk extreme). my mac had a little panic suddenly and crashed (i was only using word), so i had to do a hard restart and now none of the disks respond to the mac.

What i mean is i rebooted the mac and it did not see any of the disks. i turned the disks off and on, and nothing. i unplugged them all and plugged back in one by one, and on separate cables, via fire 800 fire 400 and by USB (separately) and nothing. all the disks have their lights on and they are flashing but the mac does not see any of them. they do not appear in disk utility.

I then tried them on two different macs (macbook pro and air) all running leopard and they did not see the disks at all. what is going on?

any help muchly appreciated, they have important work on them which is due on tuesday. the work is one disk and one of the others is the backup! i thought that would be safe!!!

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Lacie external hard drive no longer readable by computer

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