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slazareth

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 5, 2006
124
1
I have an external harddrive that may or may not be dead. I tried using Disk Warrior but it says that the disk has a hardware failure. So then I tried Data Recovery and it was able to pull all of my files off of the hard drive. This gives me hope that I can somehow recover the drive and use it again as I think a computer with bad ram messed up the drive while trying to copy files. Any recommendations on apps that can recover this drive? I don't need the data, just need to get it mounting again so I can reformat it or whatever. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!
 
If Disk warrior can't fix it then it may have a dire hardware problem. Time to get a newer external.

IMHO you should look at externals that you have to add a drive to it. This way if in the future if that drive fails you can replace that internal drive easily.
 
To the OP:

You have copied all the data that you want to save, from the "bad" drive to another drive, is that correct?

If that's the case, why don't you just re-initialize the "bad" drive using Disk Utility?

What happens then?

Does it re-initialize ok?
Or -- does something else happen?

IF you get a good re-initialization, I suggest you run Disk Utility's "repair disk" function on the drive. What does it indicate?

If DU gives you a good report (no problems found), I suggest you REPEAT the repair disk function at least five times in succession.

IF you get a good report each and every time, I would consider the drive "re-usable", at least for non-critical storage, or for things that are also backed up somewhere else.
 
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