I had a 2TB external drive

[sagah]

I was carrying it in a backpack. The backpack fell.

Out went all data in it.

How can I prevent this from happening again? Never carry it in backpack? Put sponge around it? Make a case out of sponges to put it in before putting it in the backpack?

 

[LeandrodaFL]

I believe you were using a WD My Passport drive. They are amazing drives, but are not imune to such physical impact.

If you want such proctection, some companies produce external drives that come "rugged" and will protect them from falling and even greater harzadous like fire and water.

WD does make some external drives meeting this criteria (they even do a bullet proof version). Another popular brand is LAcie. I believe Transcend also makes some drives with such specification, but Im not sure. I do have a regular Transcend drive, and I love it.

 

[macs4nw]

I had a 2TB external drive. I was carrying it in a backpack. The backpack fell. Out went all data in it. How can I prevent this from happening again? Never carry it in backpack? Put sponge around it? Make a case out of sponges to put it in before putting it in the backpack?

I hope you had redundant back up. If you're going to put it in your backpack, at a minimum I would suggest to have it somewhere in the middle, surrounded by soft stuff such as a coat or a sweater or towel or such, but that by itself is not necessarily guaranteed to save your data. You need a drive that's built from the ground up to take a little abuse.

The LaCie 5400rpm 2TB 'Rugged USB 3.0/ThunderBolt' drive is claimed to be able to shrug off drops of up to 1.2 mtrs, or 4 ft. That drive lists at a pricey $299.99 though. http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10599

However the equivalent 'Rugged Triple USB 3.0' version at a slightly more reasonably listed $249.99, can withstand drops of up to 2 mtrs, or roughly 6½ Feet. http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10553

And I'm sure there are other mobile drives with built-in shock protection.

 

[jger77]

Depending on exactly what is broken on the HD you may be able to recover your data.
Find a technician to help you out or

Try this:

1
find a usb-sata connector dock, they're around $20

2
Very Carefuly
Pry the case of your external HD open, look under any decals for screws, work the seam.

3
Unfasten any retaining clips inside the enclosure.

4
Disconect the HD from the drive interface.

5
Mount the HD in the new dock and pray.

 

[sagah]

what is "decals", "work the seam"

 

[LorenK]

Decals are sticky labels that companies place in various places on their devices, which they frequently use to hide screw insets and other places where connectors reside that hold the case together.

The "seam" may be a place where the two halves of the covering for the internals are joined together. Some device makers glue or snap their product together rather than screw it together. By using a butter knife or something else to work the seam, you may also be able to get the device open to remove the hard drive.

Just remember that the an external drive is more than just the drive itself, it needs a chipset to talk to your computer and those chipsets are more fragile than the drive itself. Good luck.

 

[blueroom]

Consider cloud storage or a NAS. I carry very little data around with me.

Your other option is a rugged 3.5" case or an SSD

 

[jger77]

Decals are sticky labels that companies place in various places on their devices, which they frequently use to hide screw insets and other places where connectors reside that hold the case together.

The "seam" may be a place where the two halves of the covering for the internals are joined together. Some device makers glue or snap their product together rather than screw it together. By using a butter knife or something else to work the seam, you may also be able to get the device open to remove the hard drive.

Just remember that the an external drive is more than just the drive itself, it needs a chipset to talk to your computer and those chipsets are more fragile than the drive itself. Good luck.

Typicaly something like this:
https://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=466386&stc=1&d=1395867823

Will have something like this inside

https://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=466387&stc=1&d=1395867823

Your goal should now be to get the interal part out of the case.


But, what you absolutely don't want to have happen, is for the internal part, the HD itself, or any of its connector pins to be damaged.

In otherwords: Do not smash the case with a hammer!
Instead pry the it open, working from its weak points.

 

[sagah]

Mine is this one: wdt-d3c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCS8ui-6WZY&hd=1

WHat kind of plastic should I use to pry it open?

----------

Is it recommended you only use Mac computers precisely because you can't share HDD without splitting it and limiting the storage capacities?

 

[sagah]

Depending on exactly what is broken on the HD you may be able to recover your data.
Find a technician to help you out or

Try this:

1
find a usb-sata connector dock, they're around $20

Is it this?

http://www.amazon.com/Anker®-Conver...41872&sr=8-2&keywords=usb-sata+connector+dock

Also with this how can you transfer the data into another external drive? Do you have to first transfer to the computer and then from there to the external drive?

 

[cruisin]

Any brand should work, this one is fine.

To get data off the drive, simply plug both into the same computer. You can do a simple copy and paste of everything from one to the other and then wait a few hours.

For future reference, anything useful needs to be kept in at least two spots. Anything important should be in three spots and hopefully some kind of cloud service in case of fire. Definitely look at rugged drives if you are traveling with them.

Is it recommended you only use Mac computers precisely because you can't share HDD without splitting it and limiting the storage capacities?

Use ExFAT for your drives. All computers will read that.

 

[poiihy]

Use ExFAT for your drives. All computers will read that.

No, actually you should not use ExFAT. It is an unreliable format and could get corrupted if unplugged without ejecting. I read this in another thread
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1832443/
You should store all important data in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (aka HFS+) and only use ExFAT for transferring data.

 

[cruisin]

No, actually you should not use ExFAT. It is an unreliable format and could get corrupted if unplugged without ejecting. I read this in another thread
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1832443/
You should store all important data in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (aka HFS+) and only use ExFAT for transferring data.

All drives will get corrupted eventually without ejecting. You are literally removing the drive before the computer is done with it. That is why they added the eject feature to prevent this.

For my personal use I use NTFS for all my external drives because I also use Windows and need files bigger than the 4 GB limit of FAT32. Paragon makes a driver for Mac and there is a fuse driver also.

 

[poiihy]

All drives will get corrupted eventually without ejecting. You are literally removing the drive before the computer is done with it. That is why they added the eject feature to prevent this.

For my personal use I use NTFS for all my external drives because I also use Windows and need files bigger than the 4 GB limit of FAT32. Paragon makes a driver for Mac and there is a fuse driver also.

Extended (Journaled) is more resilient of removing without ejecting. The Journaling helps to find what got corrupted and fixes it.

 

[sagah]

All drives will get corrupted eventually without ejecting. You are literally removing the drive before the computer is done with it. That is why they added the eject feature to prevent this.

For my personal use I use NTFS for all my external drives because I also use Windows and need files bigger than the 4 GB limit of FAT32. Paragon makes a driver for Mac and there is a fuse driver also.

So for NTFS you can only write to it from Windows and read it with Mac with a driver by Paragon?

 

[poiihy]

So for NTFS you can only write to it from Windows and read it with Mac with a driver by Paragon?

You can read it in Mac OS X, but to write in it you need a 3rd-party software.

 

[cruisin]

Mac reads NTFS by default, its the writing part that needs work. Windows has both read and write by default.

There is a free fuse driver that people got to work, but I got the Paragon driver because I didn't want any issues. Linux comes with NTFS read and write by default, so its annoying that Mac refuses to have full support.

 

[sagah]

Is there any reason you don't prefer the WD My Cloud? You don't have to deal with formatting for that because it's WiFi.

 

[sagah]

If you formatted your drive to a format that Mac can read and write, is there a software that makes it possible for Windows to Read/Write from that external that was formatted to Apple?

 

[sagah]

Depending on exactly what is broken on the HD you may be able to recover your data.
Find a technician to help you out or

Try this:

1
find a usb-sata connector dock, they're around $20

2
Very Carefuly
Pry the case of your external HD open, look under any decals for screws, work the seam.

3
Unfasten any retaining clips inside the enclosure.

4
Disconect the HD from the drive interface.

5
Mount the HD in the new dock and pray.

It was dropped from about 2 meters height. Is there still a chance that the data survived?

Also, it's been a while since it has happened. I think somewhere between 1 and half to 2 years. Is it harder to recover the data the longer it has been like that?

 

[UKgaryb]

Never mind, wrong drive it seems

 

[Apple fanboy]

It was dropped from about 2 meters height. Is there still a chance that the data survived?

Also, it's been a while since it has happened. I think somewhere between 1 and half to 2 years. Is it harder to recover the data the longer it has been like that?

The time should make no difference as long as it's been stored in a reasonable location. Why not just open the case and give it a go? What have you got to lose?

 

[gnasher729]

I was carrying it in a backpack. The backpack fell.

Out went all data in it.

How can I prevent this from happening again? Never carry it in backpack? Put sponge around it? Make a case out of sponges to put it in before putting it in the backpack?

You need a backup in a safe location. If your data is on the drive, and the drive is in the backpack, and the backpack is taken by a thief, your data is gone. Dropping is not the only risk.

 

[dacreativeguy]

You need a backup in a safe location. If your data is on the drive, and the drive is in the backpack, and the backpack is taken by a thief, your data is gone. Dropping is not the only risk.

+1, Storage is so cheap that there is no excuse for not having backups. They turn a potentially life changing event into a minor inconvenience.

 

[JesterJJZ]

Mine is this one: wdt-d3c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCS8ui-6WZY&hd=1

WHat kind of plastic should I use to pry it open?

----------

Is it recommended you only use Mac computers precisely because you can't share HDD without splitting it and limiting the storage capacities?

You had a 3.5" drive. They aren't meant to be portable and have no shock protection in the drive. You should really be using the smaller portable drives if you will be moving them around a bit.