stuartnz
Beta member
- Messages
- 5
- Location
- Te Ika a Maui, Aotearoa
Is my external HDD functionally dead?
Over the last few days, I've been trying out different Linux distros, to see if I could find one that would play nice with my hardware. I was installing to my USB HDD (Western Digital Elements 1TB Model WDBAAU0010HBK).
This afternoon, I tried a fresh install of the current daily Sabayon, since it's Live DVD seemed to be OK with my hardware, esp my Radeon 6800 HD graphics card. I chose 'replace existing Linux installation' because I wanted it to overwrite the previous installation. All seemed to be going well until an unexpected error popped up and it said that the entire drive had to be reinitialised - this despite the fact that the Linux install was only in 350MB of the drive. I accepted the option to abort, as it said that reinitialising would wipe all the data, but then found that something had gone seriously wrong. First, my PC wouldn't boot with the USB drive installed. Then, after shutting the PC down and booting into Windows 7 64 Pro without the USB drive installed, I found that the drive was not recognised by Windows when I plugged it in. It first said "attempting to install the driver software failed" then the next time, listed it as unrecognised device (a 6 port USB Hub which sounded odd, although there were a total of 6 partitions on it), then subsequently, nothing at all. Now, the drive light is constantly flickering on it, but Windows 7 (and Vista on my laptop) just act like nothing's happened if I connect it.
I know that PEBKAC is the normal cause of issues like this, but I had done 4 or 5 troublefree installs of 3 different distros since Friday, and none had even threatened such a problem, nor did I deviate from what was by now a very familiar installation setup procedure.
I'm not terribly worried about the data, as everything on it, bar a half dozen jpegs, is also on my main HD, but is there any way to get my drive back - in any operating system?
---------------------------------------
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional , Service Pack 1, 64 bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz, Intel64 Family 6 Model 42
RAM: 4072 Mb
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series, 1024 Mb
Hard Drives: C: Total - 204799 MB, Free - 131951 MB; D: Total - 748966 MB, Free - 327223 MB;
Motherboard: ASUSTeK Computer INC., P8P67, Rev 1.xx, MT7013K32404829
Over the last few days, I've been trying out different Linux distros, to see if I could find one that would play nice with my hardware. I was installing to my USB HDD (Western Digital Elements 1TB Model WDBAAU0010HBK).
This afternoon, I tried a fresh install of the current daily Sabayon, since it's Live DVD seemed to be OK with my hardware, esp my Radeon 6800 HD graphics card. I chose 'replace existing Linux installation' because I wanted it to overwrite the previous installation. All seemed to be going well until an unexpected error popped up and it said that the entire drive had to be reinitialised - this despite the fact that the Linux install was only in 350MB of the drive. I accepted the option to abort, as it said that reinitialising would wipe all the data, but then found that something had gone seriously wrong. First, my PC wouldn't boot with the USB drive installed. Then, after shutting the PC down and booting into Windows 7 64 Pro without the USB drive installed, I found that the drive was not recognised by Windows when I plugged it in. It first said "attempting to install the driver software failed" then the next time, listed it as unrecognised device (a 6 port USB Hub which sounded odd, although there were a total of 6 partitions on it), then subsequently, nothing at all. Now, the drive light is constantly flickering on it, but Windows 7 (and Vista on my laptop) just act like nothing's happened if I connect it.
I know that PEBKAC is the normal cause of issues like this, but I had done 4 or 5 troublefree installs of 3 different distros since Friday, and none had even threatened such a problem, nor did I deviate from what was by now a very familiar installation setup procedure.
I'm not terribly worried about the data, as everything on it, bar a half dozen jpegs, is also on my main HD, but is there any way to get my drive back - in any operating system?
---------------------------------------
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional , Service Pack 1, 64 bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz, Intel64 Family 6 Model 42
RAM: 4072 Mb
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series, 1024 Mb
Hard Drives: C: Total - 204799 MB, Free - 131951 MB; D: Total - 748966 MB, Free - 327223 MB;
Motherboard: ASUSTeK Computer INC., P8P67, Rev 1.xx, MT7013K32404829
