It could be a faulty power supply. Replace it and see if that helps.

It could be an issue with the USB interface. Pull the drive out of the case and plug it into a computer, using a spare SATA adaptor. Beyond this it all depends on how much the data is worth to you. The data is probably recoverable. It could be something like the data being there but the system to get at the data is corrupted. There are utilities out there to access data in a state like this.

If the drive is clicking then its dead, again data is probably recoverable but it will cost you. Its difficult to say.

It's not much for the cat after the fact, but a take on it I like to live by: Data you don't have at least two copies of is data you're prepared to lose.

Knock on wood, I haven't got two copies of absolutely everything myself right now, I think it's time for a new backup drive...

A colleague was telling me a story just last week of a friend of his who only had one copy of their PhD thesis. After the best part of a year working on it the file was lost and they had to rewrite it all from scratch. Imagine that!

GreenPat said..
A colleague was telling me a story just last week of a friend of his who only had one copy of their PhD thesis. After the best part of a year working on it the file was lost and they had to rewrite it all from scratch. Imagine that!

Jeepers! I just did a Diploma over the last 10 months and I had that thing stored in 4 locations - 2 of them USB thumb drives that got backed up every edit - the others just when every major section was done. I know how much work I put into a Diploma, so a PhD would be x10... that's madness not to have a back-up and probably a hard lesson to learn.

Smart people are not always that smart...

GreenPat said..

It's not much for the cat after the fact, but a take on it I like to live by: Data you don't have at least two copies of is data you're prepared to lose.

Knock on wood, I haven't got two copies of absolutely everything myself right now, I think it's time for a new backup drive...

A colleague was telling me a story just last week of a friend of his who only had one copy of their PhD thesis. After the best part of a year working on it the file was lost and they had to rewrite it all from scratch. Imagine that!

geez you would think somewhere along the education jorney they would have learned something! probably an architect or arts student.

Get yourself a NAS that backs up everything for you.... Will set you back about $500ish with 2GBs and another 150 for 4GB and you will be laughing. And the best thing is you can then access everything you want online from anywhere in the globe. Heaven. Pretty simple to use interface and takes a novice about 30 mins to set it up. Lots of good YouTube help out there.

This is what I have. Love it and have never slept better since I installed it. I used to have 6 externals around the home...and every time one stopped I would freak out. Now I never worry......make sure you get at least at 2 bay and if you have loads of important stuff then go for a 4 bay. I went for a 2 bay as they we're still pretty expensive when I got mine and figured in a few yes time when I need more storage the units would be significantly cheaper.

www.expertreviews.co.uk/synology/52780/synology-diskstation-ds213j-review

GreenPat said..

It's not much for the cat after the fact, but a take on it I like to live by: Data you don't have at least two copies of is data you're prepared to lose.

Knock on wood, I haven't got two copies of absolutely everything myself right now, I think it's time for a new backup drive...

A colleague was telling me a story just last week of a friend of his who only had one copy of their PhD thesis. After the best part of a year working on it the file was lost and they had to rewrite it all from scratch. Imagine that!

In the day and age of DropBox, Google Drive, iCloud and SkyDrive. Seriously? Doing a PhD you'd expect some basic knowledge of what year it is.
The biggest problem I have is picking which one to use.

At least email yourself a copy once-in-a-while.

As for big data you just can't lose, like all your photographs and home movies, one backup drive and another off-site you back up once or twice a year or something.

And upload the best photos to Flickr or similar where you can't lose them (do you really need 10,000 photos anyway?).

www.dropbox.com/?landing=dbv2
www.Flickr.com
support.apple.com/kb/ht1427

Thank you guys, I will try the different techniques, I am not too worry about the data, mainly french movies (no, not porn ) and music.

i've busted open some recent 3.5 and 5 1/4 externals in an attempt to plug them into sata cables for recovery, only to find that the usb interface was built into the drives themselves and no sata/ide port on the actual drive