Davej said:
Davej said:
Had an old WD sata drive go bad some time ago, but I figured the slave
drive was probably OK. Nope. Finally tried checking it out and it is
dead also. What could a user do to kill both drives? Would ejecting
them from the bays with the power on cause certain death?
Drives have a clamping device across +5V and +12V, to
protect against sudden power loss. [...]
The SATA connector has advanced ground contacts (the
contacts are different lengths), [...]
Modern drives have respectable shock ratings. [...]
Paul
Thanks Paul. So it is a mystery. Now maybe you can tell me what a
smart person would use for backup these days. I am sure I have lost
some photos and stuff that was on that 640GB slave drive.
I haven't done a lot of fancy backup setups.
On the Windows 7 laptop, I use the System Image feature,
and transfer the results to an external USB drive.
For some of my other disks, like on this box, I image
over to some 500GB drives I keep in the other room.
I just dangle a SATA cable out of the computer,
and connect up the 500GB and copy the drive over.
There's no name-brand software involved there.
People on the groups here, use various versions of
Acronis. The later versions of Acronis products
are pretty bloated (just like Nero went the same way).
So the recommendations there, could well depend on
what vintage of software people are using.
I guess I'm the wrong person to ask, because I don't
typically do file-by-file backups, differential backup,
that sort of thing. When I backup, I generally back up
everything, and you don't need fancy software to do
that.
On an older OS, you have things like NTBackup. I've
managed to add an NTBackup plugin to a BartPE CD,
such that if I had to, I could do a restore from
an NTBackup, to a new disk. But if recommending such
to another person, don't waste your time and just
get a copy of Acronis.
A free version of Acronis, is available as Seagate
DiskWizard. The software Seagate offers for cloning
disks, is licensed to work if a Seagate drive is
present. The software even comes with a separate
download manual. So if you have a Seagate or WD
hard drive, you can check their sites, for
software that was actually written by Acronis.
This is the user manual, for that (limited) software product.
http://www.seagate.com/support/discwizard/dw_ug.en.pdf
"3.2 Full backup
Seagate DiscWizard can create full backups.
A full backup contains all data at the moment of
backup creation. It forms a base for further incremental
backup or is used as a standalone archive (incremental
backups are not available in the current version of
the product).
A standalone full backup might be an optimal solution
if you often roll back the system to its initial
state or if you do not like to manage multiple files."
So that's not a "real" backup tool, as it only does full
backups to a .tib file. Other paid versions of Acronis
do incrementals.
Another tool you can use for backups, is Macrium Reflect Free.
But since I'm an "imaging" type guy, and not a
"file-by-file" guy, this is more a product I would
like. I've set up Macrium Reflect Free here, it's running
on the machine, but currently no images from it have
been stored on my drive pool. Just my home-made-experimenter
type backups are on there
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
But by using Macrium or Windows 7 System Image, they're
relatively easy to use, and at the very least you can
say to yourself "I have two copies of that file now".
It's better than nothing.
I don't really want to dwell on my "home-made-experimenter"
methods, because they're not fit for human consumption
Use something more pleasant. In the case of Macrium, just
use the boot CD image included in the product, to make
a recovery CD. Don't bother with the huge download that
goes with Microsoft WAIK plus WinPE as a recovery CD. The
boot CD built-in, works fine. In the picture here, are
the screens when the Reflect built-in boot CD are used.
You use this CD, to restore an OS to a brand new disk.
http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/1456/macriumlinuxboot.gif
*******
A disk is only really dead, if it won't show up in the BIOS
screen. If your two SATA, won't show up in the BIOS,
and you're using Southbridge SATA ports, then it's probably
dead. If the Southbridge is made by VIA, make sure your
drives are jumpered with the Force150 SATA I jumper, rather
than running at SATA II rates. Since it could just be a
blown SATA ports, you can also move the cable to a
different motherboard port. If a SATA cable is "pinched"
or "kinked", replace it. SATA cables can be damaged
mechanically, if jammed in the computer side panel.
Hard drives are designed (rightly or wrongly), to not
respond to the outside world, if they're not able to read
the config data off the platter. A disk boots internally
in two steps. Minimal firmware allows the drive to spin up.
It then reads "track -1" to get the rest of the firmware
and data structures. If that portion does not complete,
the disk will not identify itself in the BIOS, and will
just ignore you. They should never have done the design
this way - the damn disk could have been designed to
*always* respond to the user, answer diagnostic queries
and the like. But... they didn't do it that way.
Some drives fail, because of firmware issues that cause
the data structures to get corrupted. For a couple
disk drive models, you can connect a three pin serial cable
and issue cryptic commands to recover the disk. *Always*
Google the drive model number, to see if your drive is
prone to firmware-related failures, and see if a hacker
method is available for recovery. Due to the amount of
firmware related issues, I thoroughly review hard drive
model numbers before buying them! One of the reasons
my last purchase was a 500GB, was because the 1TB and 2TB
models were bugged. And I learned about it, by reviewing
the models in advance.
Paul
