Dodgy external drive, fixable ?

ikillbears · 13 Mar 2009 at 12:31

I have a buffalo 1TB external drive which so far has been great and i have been using it for everything. The other day my mate accidently tugged it off the table and it was fine. Today how ever it has started making terrible clicking noises

OSX popped up to tell me that it was damaged and that it couldn't fix it and that i must recover my data and format my drive as soon as possible. Its still with in its warranty so i can just send it back to them but i was wandering if there's anything i could do to it to try and rescue what's on there 450+ gigs of vid and work

The reading / writing light only seems to flash every 5 or so seconds and trying to navigate the drive it is INCREDIBLY slow. So i was wandering whats going on and if i can do something to fix it,

Thanks

rpstewart · 13 Mar 2009 at 15:22

If the drive is ticking then it's on the way out. If it's still accessible then get the contents off it onto something else quickly because it's only going to get worse.

ikillbears · 13 Mar 2009 at 17:45

bummer

A mate of mine suggested putting in the freezer for 10 mins or so to shrink the heads or something. I some how feel this is a bit of a daft idea

Defenestration · 13 Mar 2009 at 18:58

Don't put it in the freezer!

Get the data off of it ASAP. If you don't have the space immediately, don't switch it on or use it until you are ready to copy the data off it.

After copying all the data off of it, wipe it (ie. overwrite with zero's) with something like DBAN (ie. so any confidential info will not be visible when you RMA it)

RMA it, if it's within warranty.