Computer & Laptop Accessories

[Eskimo277]

   I bought this drive Oct 13/07, and now, Dec 13/08, shortlty after the end of the warranty, it started acting funny.  It was doing the windows bing-bong sound of a device being disconnected, then connected again, and now, when I turn it on and listen closely, I heat a tick-tick-tick-tick sound coming from it and it is no longer recognised at all byt the system, or another one.  Tried with a different USB cable, still no dice. 

   I have an extended warranty because I bought it with my VISA odissey card, but I am having trouble locating the original paperwork. 

- Can someone confirm it came with a 1-year warranty originally?

- I read about people taking it apart and using the internal drives separately.  Are they SATA, EIDE, SCSI or something else?

FYI, I had it connected to a VISTA machine and it's been running for a year almost, on all the time, storing recorded TV shows, some static files and the PC's normal auto daily backup.  Guess you get what you pay for. ($342 at the time).  Can someone suggest a decent replacement?

[Saudor]

Argh not again. Comstar drives fail all the time. So you're left with two choices. Save your data or your money. As for the drive itself, I believe they are SATA. The drive itself isnt too bad... just the case is terrible.

As for replacements, I recommend Seagate - I believe they are the only ones that comes with a whopping 5 year warranty. I also have a Seagate FreeAgent drive and it's very quiet and absolutely no problems at all.

If you want to go for something else, try HP's pocket media drives, or western digital passport drives. Both are very good and reliable. Of course, you might want to backup your more important data onto DVD-R or RW discs as no hard drive is 100% reliable.

[Krypto]

Western Digital's higher end drives also come with a 5 year warranty.  My "My Passport Studio" has a five year warranty and I know the My Passport Elites also come with a 5 year warranty.  In the larger drives, WD also has several of it's MyBooks with a 5 year warranty.

Seagate and Western Digital are probably the best, LaCie is supposedly pretty good too.  And I haven't heard of any problems with the HP Pocket Drives either, so, realistically, any of them will do, so long as it's not ComStar or it's sister ZData (sold at Future Shop's sister company).

[Eskimo277]

I typed a 5-paragraph reply to the above post thanking you and the previous poster among other things, and I think it got lost because my finger might have grazed the touchpad below my keyboard and caused a click to happen in the wrong place!  I should know better, I usually Copy long texts to the keyboard often to keep from losing exactly like this!  Blame the lack of coffee (havent had the 2nd yet)  The heart of my previous lost post (if it was indeed lost) is whether you think it is possible to retrieve data from the drive such as I described it.

[Saudor]

Yes it is possible to retrieve the data. You would have to break open the case (which voids any warranty you have on it), and then open up your computer and connect the HDD directly to the SATA cable.

The other option is to buy a new case (which will cost around $50 bucks or so, but still cheaper than a data recovery service) and connect it via USB connection

[Eskimo277]

So opening the box and connecting directly to the MB is not an option if theyr are configured to look like a 1TB drive by the hw controller in the box.... Or am I missing something?

[Credible_Chris]

Another CONstar bites the dust.  Thankfully the only saving grace is that you can retrieve the data off the SATA hardrive (usually) and put it on a better hardrive, like HP's pocket media drives, or other good hardrives.

[Tanarus]

If the hard drive itself is what's tick-tick-ticking, then data retrieval might be a little trickier. If the enclosure is what's failing, then, yeah, pop the drive into another SATA interface and you're good to go. If the hard drive itself is what's failing, however, you might be looking at taking it to a specialized data recovery center -- and those aren't very cheap. =/

[Krypto]

Unfortunately, I'm in agreement with Tanarus.  If the drive is making weird sounds and its not just a case of the computer not recognizing it, the hard drive itself might be toast (or if it's a dual drive unit, perhaps just one of the drives is effected).  Lets hope not, but...  Or maybe it's on its way out but if you don't wait too long, it might still work long enough to pull off the data.  If there are two drives, you should simply be able to use an external enclosure to pull the data off one drive and then swap the drive with the other to take care of the other drive.  As soon as that's done, I'd probably recycle the faulty drive(s) if your province has facilities for that as there will be no use in holding on to them (especially if they're on their way to failing).

[Eskimo277]

Guess I may as well open it to find out...