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Quantum Fireball TM Data Recovery Details
Quantum drives fail and the Fireball TM is no exception to this.
   
A power failure two nights ago took it off line. I noticed the next morning as I scanned my Windows Explorer that it was not listed along with my other 2 disks. The blue light was flashing, which has happed in same circumstances before. Following the Lacie recommendations, I took it off line (turned the blue button off, unplugged the drive and removed the USB cord). I then reinstalled the drive power cord 1st followed by USB cord to Disk then to CPU. I did not plug the USB cord into the same port of the computer as it was prreviously plugged into. Since then the blue light is still flashing and I have no access to all my Photography including my main portfolio. Any help would be greatly be appreciated. It's a Quantum, p/n: Fireball TM.
..M Davies, Durham, UK
Quantum hard disks are well-known for their factory firmware problems. Factory Firmware is stored on the disk platters in the so-called System (Service) Area of the hard disk. If one of the disk modules becomes corrupted the whole hard disk micro-operating system can't boot up, the drive cannot initialise correctly and thus stops working. If you attempt to boot up from such a Quantum hard drive or read any data from it you would get "Disk boot failure. Insert system disk and press enter" or "Primary Master Hard Disk Fail" or "No operating system found" or "USB Device malfunctioned" error or "S.M.A.R.T. Capable But Command Failed" or some other BIOS error.
Currently there is no way to fix this type of firmware corruption at home. It is quite a complicated procedure and requires use of specialised expensive equipment and deep knowledge of hard drive design and data recovery technology.
This drive came out of a Lacie usb 2.0 enclosure. I bought the usb drive 3 weeks ago and after about 2 weeks, my computer would not recognise the drive when i plugged it in. I need all data recovered from the drive.
Quantum, p/n: Fireball TM.
..Paul Bright, York, UK
The No1 issue for Quantum hard drives (especially Quantum CX and Quantum LCT series) is damage to components on the PCB board. Quantum Hard Drives are vunerable to overheating and power surges which can lead to a burned out motor or blowing a controller chip on the logic board. If the chips on the PCB burn out you would smell smoke in the air. On next boot your Quantum hard disk will probably not even spin up.
The Quantum drive can spin up and the head starts clicking right from the beginning with a regular clicking sound
. More times than not this a sign of bad heads, if this is the case it is very important to perform accurate diagnostics and eliminate a chance of possible firmware corruption or PCB failure that sometimes could also cause clicking.
The last typical Quantum hard drive issue applies also to all other hard drive makes and models, the problem is called bad sectors. After some period of time the platters were the data is located starts to degrade and bad sectors appear.
Whenever the hard drive attempts to read bad sectors it could start freezing, scratching, ticking and sometimes loud clicking. This leads to further damage to the surface and causes more data loss. As soon as you start experiencing such symptoms while reading important files, stop the drive immediately and consider sending it to a data recovery company like ourselves for a free diagnostic. Any further attempts to read the Quantum drive would just add up to the problems and make more data unrecoverable. In our Data Recovery Lab we use expensive imaging tools that are capable of force reading bad sectors from Quantum Hard Disks. This is usually the only way to effectively retrieve data from these Drives. If you experience any of the symptoms described above with your Quantum Fireball TM please call us on 0207 112 1770. If you hear your Quantum Fireball TM hard drive making some other unusual noises please call us on 0207 112 1770.
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