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Simple data recovery question

2K views 3 replies 3 participants last post by  Emtucifor 
#1 ·
I have an iomega 31677000 1TB USB external hard drive, which is just an enclosure for 2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3500830AS SATA drives.

More than a year ago, the drive started connecting and disconnecting rapidly (I would hear the "new USB device found" then "USB device disconnected" sounds alternating). I turned off the drive on the theory that whatever was wrong, if I wanted the best chance to get my data off I needed to limit the time that it was running.

I now finally have some new drive space that is ready to transfer the files, but today when I powered on and connected the drive it did not show up in Windows Explorer, and Disk Manager did not show the drive, either. When the drive stopped working I was using Windows XP, and have since changed to Windows 7, but that shouldn't cause any problems.

I could either buy a new enclosure and swap out the internal drives, or connect them directly to the computer. However, my computer is a bit old, and the most recent drive technology it can support is Ultra ATA. It shows up as an 82801EB Ultra ATA storage controller (24D1 and 24DB). I can't tell yet if that's only 33 or something higher. I suspect it is only 33.

What do you recommend as the best option for trying to copy the data off these drives? All I need is a couple hours of connection time, then I'm good with USB. I thought about finding a PC repair place, but that could be pricey. If I could find someone with a working similar iomega enclosure willing to could swap my drives in long enough to copy the files that would work. Or I could get a new drive controller that can plug into an expansion slot in my computer.

Another worrisome thought that occurs to me is that maybe the internal drives' filesystems won't be accessible independently. It could be that the enclosure did something unusual (such as the directory structure being only on drive 1), and the only way they will work again is to get another enclosure that can read them exactly the same way.

Any ideas are welcome.
 
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#2 ·
One problem I think you have is the fact you state the drives are 500GB drives but that you have a 1TB ext drive which tells me the iomega is setup as a RAID0 Array which is 500+500 = 1TB just need to confirm this is the case as recovery will be more difficult as you can't remove each drive and connect to your PC or any PC and get any files off as each file is spread half on one drive and half on another. Your problem is bigger than you realize so be careful with which drive is in which slot don't power it up with one drive removed or anything like that.
 
#4 ·
You're right, I completely neglected to mention that the internal drives are 500GB, so there is no mirroring going on. Whether or not it splits each file in half I don't know, but you have a good point there about being cautious with it. It sounds like I need to replace the enclosure with an identical one, or get iomega to repair it (not happy about the likely price).

I will try some USB driver updates--maybe that will help. But I kind of doubt it.

Thanks for the help so far!
 
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