Plug-in drives · read under load · ADR-2025-2887
Steady Until You Asked It for Something.
She said that it just quit one day and that it did so in such a manner as makes people purchase another cable. The 1TB Toshiba still appears on desktop
: there it sits, mounted, and seemingly in good order, but she says she cannot open any folders or copy them because it ejects itself
. Each time she attempts to do so, it ends the same way. The photos on it were taken of her deceased son and she does not have another copy of these images.
Same story on yours? Tell us what it does — the look is free.
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What failed, and why.
Mounting resolves a whole set of questions at once. The lead provides signal, the socket engages with the connector, the enclosure comes online, and the disk is able to report itself to the operating system long enough for a volume name to be assigned to it and displayed on the desktop. At this point none of those issues are where the problems exist, and that is why changing the lead does not resolve the issue and why changing ports does not resolve the issue either. What has not been tested at this point is reading, and reading is the only operation that costs a disk anything. When you ask it for a folder, the draw goes up, the disk begins to read data and the heads move, and now a fault that was undetectable at rest becomes apparent. The disconnect you observe is the result of your Mac being polite about a device that stopped answering partway through; the warning message displays on-screen at precisely the instant when you need to leave the disk alone. There is no method available to coax a drive out of this state via repeated attempts; and every subsequent repeat is another read request directed at a disk that has already failed at least one previous read. One such drive on its own carries a published price of £300 + VAT.
What the bench did with it.
The order of the job →| Equipment used | Its work on this job | The reason for it |
|---|---|---|
| ACE Lab PC-3000 Express | Profiled for health during read load as opposed to idling. | This allows access to the manufacturer's service area (where normal ATA commands cannot go) |
| PC-3000 Data Extractor | Copied with retries capped, thus loss of connection is measured in seconds | Instead of working around the drive's firmware and controller, it works with the two natively |
| UFS Explorer Professional Recovery | Mac volume read from the copy, and photographs viewed individually. | When other applications will not open it, this application will open APFS, ReFS, XFS, ZFS and Btrfs. |
What the bench did with it.
Watch it while it is working
While stationary, it appeared to be a healthy disk: identified itself correctly; provided correct size; and contained a defect list that would not cause concern. As opposed to being stationary, when asked to perform a sustained read operation, the rate at which data could be retrieved decreased; the disk ceased responding; and the interface reset, which is precisely what she had observed occur on her Mac desktop numerous times a day over a period of two weeks.
Out of the case first
In order to rule out the enclosure as the cause of problems with the disk, we had to remove the disk from the enclosure. Either a bridge board that browns out when it is subjected to an electric current, or a socket that no longer sits properly, would produce the exact same symptoms. These can be much less expensive issues than those of the disk. Therefore, we placed the disk on controlled power using its original connector; and the behaviour exhibited by the disk was exactly the same. This gave us a clear indication that the problem lay within the disk itself and therefore made planning the remainder of our work relatively simple.
Cap the retries and keep moving
One of the primary reasons for creating an image of a disk such as this one is so that it will only ever need to be asked once. Because of this, we limited retries to a low number, we avoided difficult regions until they could be addressed during a subsequent pass, and we allowed the image to keep moving instead of arguing with any one sector. In addition, we read the areas holding the photographs prior to reading anything else on the volume.
What went home.
Once the photographs came back, we opened them and examined their contents as opposed to simply counting how many photographs existed, which is the only way anybody knows. Once we completed this task, we transferred all of the photographs to new media and sent them home along with a duplicate copy. We did this because a single drive containing the only version of information is essentially why we exist. As well, the Toshiba has been retired. Based upon our published figure for single drives, we provided a quote to her in writing of £300 + VAT prior to commencing work.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Further portable-drive jobs, written up.
Yours doing something similar? Power it down first.
Published prices are fixed. Memory cards and USB sticks are £250 + VAT. Any stand-alone drive is £300 + VAT. Drive configurations containing multiple disks (RAID, NAS or server) start at £500 + VAT. First assessments are always complimentary. Thereafter, data recovery charges are also fixed in advance and in writing, so you'll always know how much you owe before paying any money. Shut it down, get a quote first (by phone or with the form), then send it in or drop it off at our Guildford intake laboratory, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed). On most jobs you only pay if we recover your data.