Hard Drives! Power! Fail! Resuscitation! Phew!
I have about 1.5TB of photo files on several FireWire HDDs. A couple of weeks ago, 2 of them (very un-cheap LaCie drives, too) suffered failure of their power supplies.

FuckFuckFuckFuc thinks I. 5 years of work down the shitter.

After I stopped panicking, I pulled the drives apart. Internal IDE. No sweat. Although SATA would have been easier.

I have a very old FW400 HDD enclosure. So I swap one of the newer drives into the enclosure. The drive mounts up, all good so far. So I go to copy files across to a spare internal HDD. Gets to about 50MB, then a disk error.

FuckFuckFuckFuckFucketyFuckFuckFuckFuck

So, after my sphincter stops puckering, and I start thinking of panicked plan Bs, I start to reason: Well, the old enclosure is very old. It only had an 80GB drive in there before. Maybe the firmware in that enclosure doesn't recognise drives much larger (the ones I was trying to transfer are 250GB and 320GB).

So in the end, I had a flash of divine inspiration: The power supply is the only thing totally fucked in the new enclosures. So I reconnected the drives to their original drive enclosure data ribbons, and the power supply from the old HDD enclosure.

Hey, Presto! It worked, and I was able to copy all my files across.

If someone replies and tells me how to post pics, I'll post a pic of the ugly frankendrive I created.

And yes, I understand I'm a numpty for not having some form of backup plan in case of this very sort of thing.
(David CopAFeel Used to be The_Elcat - Spouting crap since 1970., Sat 12 Mar 2011, 11:29, 5 replies)

I believe its the rule of 3?
But im not sure, as i dont back anything up properly either.
(Frample Tromwibbler climbs an obstacle like old people fuck, Sat 12 Mar 2011, 13:05, closed)

PSU went on my LaCie too
Only I bought a modern enclosure cheap off eBay and ten minutes after the postie arrived with the package - away I went.
Jobs a good 'un.
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Sat 12 Mar 2011, 15:24, closed)

1.5TB of "photo files"
That's right.
(ChaRleyTroniC is invincible with his chips and cheese, Sat 12 Mar 2011, 23:35, closed)

Why not?
High res pictures of donkey felching can take a lot of disk space (I've heard).
( SteamedCleaner, Sun 13 Mar 2011, 5:01, closed)

Imitation! Is! The Sincerest Form! Of Flattery!
Seriously, be original instead of trying to grab readers by tricking them into thinking it's one of my posts...

(takes tongue out of cheek)
( disasterprone "Pyjamas caused the Holocaust", Tue 15 Mar 2011, 15:10, closed)