ArRGHHH!! Harddrive crash and Maxtor Onetouch can't restore

[seemunkee]

I've been bumped to level 3 support but have to wait for a call back. The restore CD is supposed to load Linux w/KDE but it keeps crashing on Kwin.

I thought I was going to be OK when I ran out last night and picked up an external drive and did a backup. Was able to get a HD for her machine on the way home today but it doesn't do any good if you can't restore the damn image. Glad I exported the links for my wife's research to our other computer. She has a paper due tomorrow plus all the links for her thesis were on the laptop.

[CatholicEdHead]

1. Have you tried Spinrite?

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

[Kutjara]

2. All that X-Windows stuff is still a bit of a black art on Linux.

Whenever my Linux boxes go screwy, it's usually because something has fecked around with the xorg.config files or because X-server suddenly develops amnesia and forgets how to run the screen it was happily running five seconds ago. It could even get sniffy about the mouse you're using and punish you by refusing to load a GUI at all.

If you were trying to use Linux to recover a Windows partition, try the excellent Trinity Rescue Kit at

http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12

It's a Linux distro loaded with nothing but Windows rescue tools and it's resolutely command-line only. None of that newfangled graphics malarky. There's plenty of documentation on the Trinity site about how to use it, so you'll be able to figure it out pretty quickly.

Hope it helps.

On edit: One trick I've found with Linux distros that freeze on startup is to hit the power button. For some reason, this sometimes unsticks them and allows them to proceed. Something about power management incompatibilities that's too boring to go into here.

[GCP]

3. Maxtor?? Total POS

We learned that 3yrs ago, went to Western Digital or Seagate and never had another problem. Ask DS1.

[seemunkee]

4. I ran out to Staples and grabbed something before it crashed for good

Maxtor external drive with backup software.
The replacement HD is Western Digital

Doesn't Seagate own Maxtor now?

[Kutjara]

5. Seagate can be pretty crappy too.

I recently got a FreeAgent eSATA external drive that just doesn't work. The USB and Firewire interfaces are ok, but eSATA is DOA. It also takes weeks (I mean that literally) to do a full NTFS format. When I took the damned thing back, the customer service rep said, "we get a lot of these returned."

[Babel_17]

6. eSATA might need special BIOS settings/a reinstall

I went through hell because of this with my Dell (which I love).

Go to Dell's forums and search up eSATA and XPS 420 for a solution that may work for you.

It involves installing the OS (Vista in this case) with RAID enabled in the BIOS and having the drivers ready for the chipset.

If you have a separate eSATA expansion card then it wouldn't be an issue.

I too thought the Seagate FreeAgent drive was at fault and at Dell's suggestion exchanged it for a WD. Both I and Dell support learned that the drive wasn't the issue. Should you get another eSATA drive and still can't get it to work then check to see if this issue affects you too.

[Kutjara]

7. Thanks Babel. I'll keep that in mind.

I spent a lot of time of time on various forums, reading posts by a lot of other people who had similar problems. I did most of the recommended things and could occasionally get the drive to work for minutes at a time. Then it would inevitably flake out. I haven't explored setting RAID up in BIOS, though, so I'll look into that. I'm using an ExpressCard34 eSATA card, so I might not be having the same problem you experienced.

The same thing happened on my Mac and my Vista PC. Both are running 64 bit OSes (Leopard and Vista 64), so I strongly suspect at least some of the problem lies there (even though the eSATA card claims to be 64 bit compatible).

[Babel_17]

8. Yes, yours sounds like a different issue

With we XPS 420 users the problem is that eSATA will not work unless Vista is installed with RAID set to enabled.

It wasn't an issue of eSATA working poorly. If you change your settings to RAID on it's likely your computer won't boot.

[Kutjara]

9. I'm frankly amazed at how poorly made...

...many of the eSATA products are. I know it's fairly new technology in the consumer space, but the sheer number of complaints I've read about ports not working, cables not fitting and connectors breaking leads me to believe much of this stuff was rushed to market. The first eSATA cable I bought had to be forceably held in place by hand or it would drop the connection, and the port on the FreeAgent drive wobbled around so much I thought I was going to end up shoving it into the case.

I think the drivers are a bit rubbish too. Even when I could get the setup working (in between system freezes) it was much slower than USB. I did a complete system backup of my Vista PC in ten minutes by USB, whereas the eSATA crapped out after 45 minutes of glacial progress. Hardly the "300MB/s" throughput promised on the label. More like 300B/s.

I think I'm going to stick with USB and Firewire until the bugs are worked out of eSATA. The potential is great, but the reality is a little short of spectacular at the moment.