External Hard Drive CRASHED -- No Utilities Work

[wad11656]

I have tried:

Disk Utility
Disk Warrior
Drive Genius 2
TechTool Pro 5

When I tried to rebuild the hard drive on each one, they all gave me the result, "failed," basically, except TechTool Pro 5, which said it completed it with no problems, but obviously it had no idea what it was speaking of because the external hard drive still did not mount on the desktop. I chose basically every thing that each program offered me that might help the disk, but I think it's finally dead. I've had to rebuild it about 3 or 4 times now and it's only been a year or so...?

I'm assuming there's no hope left and my 1 TB external hard drive is done for, but I would like to see what the generous and intelligent people here had to say about my situation.

Thank you for your consideration and help!

--wad11656

EDIT: In Drive Genius 2, it also says that "S.M.A.R.T. not supported" for the external hard drive. Does this indicate anything? Thanks!

 

[BlueRevolution]

I'm assuming there's no hope left and my 1 TB external hard drive is done for, but I would like to see what the generous and intelligent people here had to say about my situation.

You assume correctly. Is there any important data you're trying to recover?

EDIT: In Drive Genius 2, it also says that "S.M.A.R.T. not supported" for the external hard drive. Does this indicate anything? Thanks!

That's normal for an external hard drive.

 

[wad11656]

You assume correctly. Is there any important data you're trying to recover?



That's normal for an external hard drive.

Well, there's just all our videos from our digital camera we stored on there, but luckily we forgot to delete them from the camera [or didn't know how to do a mass erase of the data on the camera's hard drive at the time]. So basically, I suppose not.

No hope, then? Sigh...Well, we'll look at the warranty to see if it's expired, but I'd also like to ask...

Is there any way we can do something to make sure this doesn't happen again? Like once/if we get a replacement, should I use the aforementioned utilities to do regular check-ups and repairs? If yes, which kinds? I really don't want to deal anymore with external hard drives messing up, which in my case, is supposed to be used to be a reliable source to RECOVER data. Ha ha

Thank you!

--wad11656

 

[J the Ninja]

Well, there's just all our videos from our digital camera we stored on there, but luckily we forgot to delete them from the camera [or didn't know how to do a mass erase of the data on the camera's hard drive at the time]. So basically, I suppose not.

No hope, then? Sigh...Well, we'll look at the warranty to see if it's expired, but I'd also like to ask...

Is there any way we can do something to make sure this doesn't happen again? Like once/if we get a replacement, should I use the aforementioned utilities to do regular check-ups and repairs? If yes, which kinds? I really don't want to deal anymore with external hard drives messing up, which in my case, is supposed to be used to be a reliable source to RECOVER data. Ha ha

Thank you!

--wad11656

Back up your ALL your drives, unless you can easily replace the data and don't mind doing so (software that is a free download, music you have on CD, etc). This will happen to all hard drives eventually, and that means odds are the sort of thing will happen to you again. Hard drives fail. Expect each and every one of yours to not work next time you try to use them. And RAID is not a backup solution, just to head that one off.