Help... I think I may have lost 3TB of my JAV collection

[tortex]

I'll apologize in advance if this isn't the right place for this thread. Mod please feel free to move it.

I a 3TB collection of JAV on a Seagate GoFlex Desk external drive. I used it maybe a week ago without issue. I wanted to access it today to move some JAV that I had downloaded to a local drive when I noticed it wasn't coming online. In some cases I could feel vibration from the drive but the power light wasn't on. In some cases the power light would be on, drive vibrating (for lack of a better term) but wouldn't show up as a drive on my computer.

Trying to eliminate a cable issue or the snap on component on the bottom that has the power and USB I took the drive out and put it in a removable drive tray and tried to access the disk that way. Windows saw the drive but it was telling me I need to format it!

Have I just lost 3TB of JAV?!?

Does anybody have any suggestions on how I might be able to salvage whats on the disk? Are their utilities I can download and/or purchase that can read the sectors on the disk directly so I can recover the contents of the drive?

Thanks in advance for your help

 

[blueberryjudy]

Boot into Ubuntu linux USB and try and mount via ntfs there. Usually linux tools are more forgiving.

 

[tortex]

You cannot remove the internal drive from Seagate's external case and expect it to be readable when connected without it since Seagate's USB chip makes the OS think the drive uses 4096B sectors, when connected to SATA it expects the 512B sectors of a normal hard drive. Assuming the drive works, it will only be readable from the USB drive.

You could however connect the drive via SATA and do a diagnostic scan on it to see if any errors are detected, that will not require formatting the drive since the tool should just do a surface scan of your drive.

Thanks. I was thinking last night that maybe I could contact Seagate and get a replacement part. The part that has the power, usb connection just snaps off. Maybe that burnt out? If I could get a replacement that might work for me I am thinking.

 

[Casshern2]

You cannot remove the internal drive from Seagate's external case and expect it to be readable when connected without it since Seagate's USB chip makes the OS think the drive uses 4096B sectors, when connected to SATA it expects the 512B sectors of a normal hard drive. Assuming the drive works, it will only be readable from the USB drive.

You could however connect the drive via SATA and do a diagnostic scan on it to see if any errors are detected, that will not require formatting the drive since the tool should just do a surface scan of your drive.

Is that a Seagate thing? I had a similar issue with a Western Digital My Book external. I ended up prying the thing open and removing the HDD from within. I used a hard drive caddy and was able to get to everything I needed. But from what you say that isn't possible with a Seagate? Yikes. Good thing I only have one of those. Thanks for the heads up!

@tortex, good luck, my friend! Hope you can recover all your stuff!

 

[tortex]

Is that a Seagate thing? I had a similar issue with a Western Digital My Book external. I ended up prying the thing open and removing the HDD from within. I used a hard drive caddy and was able to get to everything I needed. But from what you say that isn't possible with a Seagate? Yikes. Good thing I only have one of those. Thanks for the heads up!

@tortex, good luck, my friend! Hope you can recover all your stuff!

I have another hard drive caddy... a USB based one. I was going to try using that but I also found on Amazon a replacement unit for the USB/Power section. Smart design in that is modular and I should be able to get another one and attach it to the drive and then see if that work. It should. Or I am hoping. I figure the drive is good it was just that usb/power module base that got messed up somehow.

I'd hate to lose the stuff I have. I think I have virtually everything Yuna Mizumoto did. Same with Sora Aoi. Similar with Sarasa Hara. I'd hate to have to track all that down again. Plus there was some other things it took for forever to track down.

I appreciate people's suggestions on this thread.

Thanks everyone. I'll let you all know what happens when I get the base unit.

 

[lullaby4love]

just go to a computer service specialist and get a tell the service staff there to recover your hard-disk data
It will took a while but can save all the data except the bad sector ones.
Already happened to me in my external sea-gate 1 TB and I could save all the data.
I lost only 3 of 300++ JAV movie

 

[kremasian]

already happened to me..
jav etc 2tb lost, 1tb softcore movies lost, ....500gb lost....

 

[CodeGeek]

I almost lost my whole data, too. Took 1 whole month to copy the files. Luckily I lost only a very few unimportant files. Since then I do a backup more or less regularly on some USB HDDs. Never want to face that again.

 

[lullaby4love]

there's an old saying, don't put all eggs in one basket.
in JAV collection the saying has been translated to be : "always have a mirror, it really worth it..."

 

[kremasian]

there's an old saying, don't put all eggs in one basket.
in JAV collection the saying has been translated to be : "always have a mirror, it really worth it..."

i know "mirror" is usefull
but sometimes we need more money to buy hardive for backup

 

[lullaby4love]

i know "mirror" is usefull
but sometimes we need more money to buy hardive for backup

As I say above, I have already experience what happened to you right now, my 1 TB HDD out of nowhere cannot be read by all computers.
expert diagnose that there's a bad sector in the HDD. FYI, my HDD never been hit, fall, or some other impact done. I put it in a box inside a wardrobe and treat it really carefully, but still Sh*t happens.

I tried all software to read and save data that not happen with bad sector. However I failed.
At last after information gathering, data can be save by HDD recovery (I don't know the details how, but they open my HDD and take the disc inside and put it in dummy hardware and then it can take the unbroken data but the HDD is still broken).

My JAV collection is saved but I must pay for the service about 180 USD and I still lose the HDD.
1 TB HDD is about 70 USD in my country.

So my point is making a mirror is always worth every dollar u spent if u really care about the data...

 

[tortex]

This story has a happy ending. I got the replacement base / power supply and was able to connect the drive and the drive showed up with all 3TB intact! So the drive is good the power supply was just bad. Now I have to figure out a backup solution. Actually I need more capacity plus a backup solution.

 

[Casshern2]

This story has a happy ending. I got the replace base / power supply and was able to connect the drive and the drive showed up with all 3TB intact! So the drive is good the power supply was just bad. Now I have to figure out a backup solution. Actually I need more capacity plus a backup solution.

OUTSTANDING! Thanks for the awesome update.

 

[CodeGeek]

You don't know how much luck you have / had, tortex. That's called a shot across the bows, isn't it? Was the same for me back then.

 

[tortex]

You don't know how much luck you have / had, tortex. That's called a shot across the bows, isn't it? Was the same for me back then.

I definitely dodged a bullet. I need to find something more than 4 TB because I have thing that are not on the 3TB drive that are spread out among two other drives so I think if I move to a 4TB solution with a 4TB backup I would quickly exhaust that space. I am thinking I need 8TB and 8TB for backup.

Does anybody have any recommendations for an 8TB solution that has a reputation for reliability?

 

[MXS-]

I would look into getting a drobo or raid5 NAS array. There are quite a few variations now that wil protect your data and span it across multiple drives. Drobo is the best imho but quite expensive.

 

[CodeGeek]

I also have DropBox, but I'm not a friend of it as I don't like the cloud.

And a RAID 5 or 6 increases the availability, but is not a substitution for a backup. I had to learn that on the hard tour 2 years ago.
But if you can afford it you should use a RAID 5 or 6 (or 50 or 60... ). Even if one HDD get corrupt it is a lot easier to exchange it than - if you e.g. have a JBOD or RAID 0 - to replace the HDD and copy all the data back manually.