Loss of firewire drive & need to reformat

  • Thread starter Thread starter MB
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M

MB

Something totally strange happened with my WD 160G drive that I have in
a firewire enclosure, and I can't explain it exactly.

I've been using this case and drive for the last 6-months with no
problems. Yesterday I plugged the drive into my parents PC and started
using it to transfer files and work with.

This morning, when I got back to the computer -- the firewire drive
wasn't registering. It didn't have a drive letter and required re-formating.

I unplugged the drive, re-booted the computer -- same thing. It was like
it was a brand new drive, needing a total new reformat. All my work was
lost and the only thing I could do to get the drive back, was to
reformat it and lose all data on it.

Does anyone have an explanation for this? The work wasn't critical but
it's scarey to think that a drive could go and lose all it's data like
that. I'm just trying to figure out what could of caused it.

The only things I did prior to the drive going would have been using
Ashampoo WinOptimizer for some disk cleanup and maintenance (but the
firewire drive wasn't turned on at that point) and running Windows
scandisk. Can't see why these would have caused a problem.

Any help appreciated, don't want this to happen again!!



Marco

*** I'm on Windows XP SP2
 
MB said:
Something totally strange happened with my WD 160G drive that I have in
a firewire enclosure, and I can't explain it exactly.

I've been using this case and drive for the last 6-months with no
problems. Yesterday I plugged the drive into my parents PC and started
using it to transfer files and work with.

Does anyone have an explanation for this? The work wasn't critical but
it's scarey to think that a drive could go and lose all it's data like
that. I'm just trying to figure out what could of caused it.
Click to expand...

Are you certain that your enclosure chipset supports drives larger than
127GB? Some don't, and may produce unpredictable results when the end
of the drive is accessed. For example, writing past the supported end
of the drive may 'wrap around' and start writing at the beginning of
the drive - overwriting the MBR and FAT.
 
Are you certain that your enclosure chipset supports drives larger than
127GB? Some don't, and may produce unpredictable results when the end
of the drive is accessed. For example, writing past the supported end
of the drive may 'wrap around' and start writing at the beginning of
the drive - overwriting the MBR and FAT.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure, however, I've been using this drive/enclosure combo for
awhile now and this situation is a first! In fact, it's the very first
time I've ever seen anything like this and I've been on Windows since
Win98. Basically, the drive was full of data, then suddenly it lost it's
drive letter and XP needed to reformat it to bring it back up.

The firewire case is fairly new, it's an NSPIRE NSP-511EU, you can see
it here: http://www.asisupport.com/alert_nspire_enclosure511U.htm

It uses an Oxford chipset. If the chipset has a problem with large
drives, would partitioning the drive into two smaller partitions help any?

Anyhow, this is really bothering me. Wondering if the WD drive is going
on me (it's only 9-months old).




Marco
 
MB said:
The firewire case is fairly new, it's an NSPIRE NSP-511EU, you can see
it here: http://www.asisupport.com/alert_nspire_enclosure511U.htm

It uses an Oxford chipset. If the chipset has a problem with large
drives, would partitioning the drive into two smaller partitions help any?

Anyhow, this is really bothering me. Wondering if the WD drive is going
on me (it's only 9-months old).
Click to expand...

OK, I found the spec sheet for that enclosure here:
http://www.nspirepc.com/external_enclosures.htm and it claims to
support large drives, so that's not the problem.

Have you tried the drive/enclosure on any other PCs? Maybe it is just
your parent's PC that is having problems.

I guess it's possible that the drive may be going out, but I would have
expected you to have problems accessing the drive (clicks, slow access,
errors) rather than the drive becoming blank. Have you tried removing
the drive from the enclosure and temporarily installing it in a PC?
Maybe the enclosure is having problems and the drive is fine.
 
MB said:
I'm not sure, however, I've been using this drive/enclosure combo for
awhile now and this situation is a first! In fact, it's the very first
time I've ever seen anything like this and I've been on Windows since
Win98. Basically, the drive was full of data, then suddenly it lost
it's drive letter and XP needed to reformat it to bring it back up.

The firewire case is fairly new, it's an NSPIRE NSP-511EU, you can see
it here: http://www.asisupport.com/alert_nspire_enclosure511U.htm
Click to expand...
It uses an Oxford chipset.
Click to expand...

That's fine.
If the chipset has a problem with large drives, would partitioning the drive
into two smaller partitions help any?
Nope.

Anyhow, this is really bothering me. Wondering if the WD drive is going on me
(it's only 9-months old).
Click to expand...

It's quite possible, WD drives are going thru a bad patch reliability wise
currently.
 
I've been swapping the drive back and forth between home and my parents
place for months so I can work from either location (edit video). I've
had no problems like this before with this enclosure or this drive.

I don't have the time to install it on one of my PC's, but I really get
the feeling the drive is okay and so is the firewire enclosure. Now, I
did do maintenance on XP before this happened and I did reformat the
drive yesterday to a single partition using a quick reformat. So, today
I've reformatted the drive with standard format and as a precaution,
used GHOST to restore my XP partition from 2-3 days ago (just in case I
did something with Ashampoo that caused XP to go wonky).

Guess, I'll keep my eyes on it, it's just so bizarre! It's insane to
think an entire drive can lose data like that. No corruption, no
clicking or drive access problems, no warning -- just suddenly I click
"My Computer" and can't see the drive, just shows a blank, unformatted
drive with no assigned letter where before, there was a perfectly good
drive full of data and a perfectly working/assigned drive letter.

I mentioned this on another post, but if you do a lot of video editing
and start using a lot of firewire/USB external drives, you really get
frustrated with issues that have been cropping up since Windows 2000.
The "delay write error" is still a serious problem and external drives
crash much more often then they should, in particular when one writes
directly to them. So in the past year, I don't work directly on them
anymore, I just use them to transfer data or for backup.

I've taken video editing courses on Macs where you get your own firewire
drive for exercises and I don't see these issues on Macs. Maybe they've
had longer and more experience with OHCI and firewire. I really hope
Microsoft sorts this out with Windows Vista, or Apple will keep gaining
ground when it comes to multimedia and broadcast video applications.

Anyhow, thanks for all the help.


Marco
 
MB said:
I've been swapping the drive back and forth between home and my parents
place for months so I can work from either location (edit video). I've
had no problems like this before with this enclosure or this drive.

I don't have the time to install it on one of my PC's, but I really get
the feeling the drive is okay and so is the firewire enclosure. Now, I
did do maintenance on XP before this happened and I did reformat the
drive yesterday to a single partition using a quick reformat. So, today
I've reformatted the drive with standard format and as a precaution,
used GHOST to restore my XP partition from 2-3 days ago (just in
case I did something with Ashampoo that caused XP to go wonky).

Guess, I'll keep my eyes on it, it's just so bizarre!
Click to expand...
It's insane to think an entire drive can lose data like that.
Click to expand...

Yes indeed it is insane to think that an entire drive can lose data like that.
No corruption,
Click to expand...

Loosing the MBR or partition bootsector sure is a form of corruption.
no clicking or drive access problems, no warning -- just suddenly I click
"My Computer" and can't see the drive, just shows a blank, unformatted
drive with no assigned letter where before, there was a perfectly good
drive full of data and a perfectly working/assigned drive letter.
Click to expand...

That is now without the correct data in the MBR or partition boot sector.
 
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