Failed FW drive - need to recover data

[promoose]

I have a LaCie Big Disc Extreme that has failed. The drive indicator flashes continuously, and the disk utility can not see it. I have tried FW800 and USB to no avail. Here's the problem: it is a 500 GB drive, but when I opened it, I found that it is actually 2 250 GB drives with an ATA interface. Is anyone familiar enough with these drives to know how they are formatted, and how to recover the data? I am running an early 2009 Mac Pro 8x2.26GHz.

Thanks in advance.

 

[UltraNEO*]

I have a LaCie Big Disc Extreme that has failed. The drive indicator flashes continuously, and the disk utility can not see it. I have tried FW800 and USB to no avail. Here's the problem: it is a 500 GB drive, but when I opened it, I found that it is actually 2 250 GB drives with an ATA interface. Is anyone familiar enough with these drives to know how they are formatted, and how to recover the data? I am running an early 2009 Mac Pro 8x2.26GHz.

Thanks in advance.

This would be a little tricky... You have two option and only one if it's a failure due to the hard drives themselves.

Option 1 (failure due to Lacie's hardware) - find another Big Disc Extreme user who'd be willing to open their unit, allowing you to temporary install your drives, allowing you to recover data (assuming the mechanism are fine). Failing that, there's only Option 2...

Option 2 (failure due to HD mechanism) - find a data recovery company who'd be happy to recover your data. This could be expensive.. so it does depend on the value of the data.

good luck

 

[promoose]

Thanks!

I guess I'll try to find a place that can take a look at it. And make sure never to buy a drive with more that one mechanism in it.

 

[cells]

The LaCie power supply tends to go bad sometimes. It's happened to two of mine, causing similar symptoms. If you have a multimeter, you can check to see if the right voltages are going out on each pin of the connector.