External HD (MyBook 500gb) failed - also time machine drive!

[bpm2000]

So I was an idiot and for some reason I made my Time Machine drive the same as the one I have all my music on.

In retrospect, of course the one I have music on is going to be spinning and reading/writing all the time - why did I put it as the Time Machine drive!??!

Anyways, I was wondering what kind of recovery options I might have? The drive makes these annoying clicking noises when I turn it on. The drive doesn't mount, but shows up under disk utilty as an external drive of some sort. It is definitely messed up though because its a 500gb drive and the disk utility thinks its 2TB. Googling shows that clicking = head failure? Verify and recover/repair are not highlighted options for this drive...

How does Time Machine back up files? Is it consolidated into one file, that I might be able to recover, and put on another drive or do I need to worry about recovering all my files instead of just the Time Machine portion?

Any help would be much appreciated.

thx!

 

[Eraserhead]

I think your music is probably a lost cause, unless you spend $$$ on data recovery, but it probably won't work to well with Music.

 

[Macmaniac]

If its clicking your in trouble, I have seen data get off these drives but rarely by a consumer. Try Data Rescue II, our shop uses it for drives that we cant get back with the standard Apple Utilites: http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

If that does not work you can contact DriveSavers if your really desperate to get the music back, they cost a lot though, but they are really good. http://www.drivesavers.com/

 

[bpm2000]

afraid to ask, but how much is "a lot"?

thx for the suggestions

 

[Macmaniac]

afraid to ask, but how much is "a lot"?

thx for the suggestions

Varies by drive size and the damage, it can be anywhere from $500 to $2000, your best bet is to find a dealer who deals with them(They will have pamphlets with a store number and referral code), cause often they offer a discount, and will often not charge an "attempt" fee, which means u wont get charged as much if nothing can be taken off the drive.