My external enclosure killed my hard drive?

[sxjxcx]

I have been using an external 3.5" HDD USB enclosure for a few weeks and just returned it today for a USB/Firewire one by Welland (http://www.welland.com.tw/html/enclosure/x40.html). After using it for an hour (playing mp3s from itunes) it stopped working (as in all the files were missing). I rebooted the computer and they were all still missing (about 100 GB worth). Tried it on another computer and finally installed it directly in the computer, still gone. After running Chkdsk, it recovered a ton of File0000.chk files. I am currently trying to get my data back... but what happened?

Was it my enclosure?
Is it possible that Windows or iTunes did this?

As a note, I'm using a 160 GB Samsung drive thats about a year old. I was using the firewire port of the enclosure at the time, and plugged in my ipod via the USB port shortly before this happened.

Please help!

Thanks

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Virus possibly? do you "myspace" i heard of a nasty worm going around on it... then there is the thermal issue of the drive being enlcosed. real bright idea huh, In your/our pc's we have fans cooling off our drives but lets sell the consumer an "E x t e r n a l d r i v e t h a t i s e n c l o s e d" no fans to cool it? there only good for about 10-15 min at a time on because any further than that imo, squares the thermal ratings beyond the normal operating temp...

am i wrong?

 

[sxjxcx]

I don't myspace and I virus check and update my definitions all the time. It had no effect on my internal drives. Also, the drive wasn't even plugged in long enough to get warm to the touch

 

[foodfightr]

Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
Virus possibly? do you "myspace" i heard of a nasty worm going around on it... then there is the thermal issue of the drive being enlcosed. real bright idea huh, In your/our pc's we have fans cooling off our drives but lets sell the consumer an "E x t e r n a l d r i v e t h a t i s e n c l o s e d" no fans to cool it? there only good for about 10-15 min at a time on because any further than that imo, squares the thermal ratings beyond the normal operating temp...

am i wrong?

Do you myspace........ That made me laugh. I doubt it is a virus unless it is affecting ALL of your hard drives, it wouldn't target just one. Also- seeing as you're using a new enclosure I'm guessing it is a problem with that or the drive.

I'd STRONGLY reccomend a program called "GetDataBack for NTFS" I've tried most of them and this is the best IMO.

If it is an old hard drive and you think it is dieing you can always use the freezer trick!

 

[thegorx]

was it formated NTFS ?
I'm not sure if a 160GB drive could be formated fat32 but if it was that could have a part in this, I've seen large drives formated fat32 have real problems with scandisk and chkdsk.

anyway getdataback might not work
you might have to rename those File0000.chk files
not fun

but if they were mostly MP3 files then you can use a rename program that reads the file tags which can make batch renaming easier.

or hopefully getdataback will work
but I think it would of had a better chance before you ran chkdsk and the files were renamed File0000.chk

 

[corkyg]

Another possibility exists for an external drive. Unless you have write caching disabled, there is a possibility that a Delayed write Error caused the data corruption.

I have presently three external drives, and all have been optimized for Quick Removal and not Performance in their Properties/Policies. This is how Write Caching is turned off.

Agree that this is not a virus or worm. It is a data flow malfunction.

 

[sxjxcx]

I had Optimize for Quick Removal on

 

[sxjxcx]

Originally posted by: thegorx
was it formated NTFS ?
I'm not sure if a 160GB drive could be formated fat32 but if it was that could have a part in this, I've seen large drives formated fat32 have real problems with scandisk and chkdsk.

anyway getdataback might not work
you might have to rename those File0000.chk files
not fun

but if they were mostly MP3 files then you can use a rename program that reads the file tags which can make batch renaming easier.

or hopefully getdataback will work
but I think it would of had a better chance before you ran chkdsk and the files were renamed File0000.chk

It was formatted with Fat32 so that I could also use it on my PowerBook.

I batch renamed all the files from .chk to .mp3 and used iTunes Library Updater to import them all back in. It's a huge hassle, and I'm getting several copies of a few things, and random parts of some songs. but it looks like "most" of my files are showing up. Thankfully iTunes has an option to organize the music so now its all in folders for me (although not the folder structure I prefer, but it was worth it to sell my soul to iTunes in this siutation). I've lost all my non-mp3 data (because i dont want to go through 25,000 files one by one).

 

[thegorx]

well you might want to at least partition the drive in two if your going to format fat32

also if you haven't yet tried get getdataback fat32 edition and see if you can recover anything more, it's worth a shot since it doesn't cost to check just to recover.