[DM-MUG] Q ref accessing harddrive

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 8:55 AM, Victoria L. Herring <
Victoria at journeyzing.com> wrote:

> I have a 2T Western Digital Caviar Green drive with lots of photos on
> it = it's virtually new - I put it in my Wiebetech 4 bay external
> tower and it showed up fine at first but after ejecting it [properly]
> now it goes in the tower but I get the dreaded 'can't read, want to
> initialize it?'  Of course I don't.
>
> I'm in contact with Wiebetech because last time this happened, I jsut
> needed a new driver.  But the Q is if I get a different/new enclosure
> would that work?
>

There are a couple reasons this can happen. One is because the hardware
isn't being detected properly, in which case a setting or driver change can
help and a diff enclosure may be OK.

Another problem could be that there is some filesystem corruption. That
means the formatting of the drive has gotten damaged, maybe slightly or
maybe severely. This will require something more elaborate, maybe a disk
check or maybe using a recovery tool. This used to be a very common problem
with flash cards for cameras and there are numerous tools out there, free or
low cost, for doing this.

Hopefully it's something Wiebetech can help you with.

My personal opinion of removable drive storage systems is going down. I seem
to remember a nice lady from around here who was using one a couple years
ago and popped one of the connectors right off the drive and had to have the
drive repaired. ;-) I don't think I'd use one in an environment where the
drives need to be changed frequently (more than a few times per year) unless
they have a chassis that shields and protects the drive's circuitry from
both physical damage and elctro-static damage.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and twitter

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -Benjamin Franklin
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