External hard drive messed up

[eric2006]

Earlier today, I was working on backing up some old VHS tapes. I was burning (rendering at the time) one into a DVD, opened up iMovie to import another, and saw that the iMac (G5, 2 GHz, pre-iSight) did not see the movie camera (which was connected). I should mention that I was backing these up to an external FW drive before burning. Anyways, the firewire drive dismounted about the same time I opened up iMovie, destroying 3 hours of rendering. I got the drive to re-connect, but now it is severely messed up. First of all, it appears as a little white box, and not the orange firewire thing. The major problem, however, is the size of it. It's supposed to be 250 GB, but it shows up as everything but that. It shows the drive as a partition (see screenshots), and at every re-mount, the size changes. The main thing (called "DMI"?) varies in size from 6.5 GB to 1.2 TB (sweet!). I have tried rebooting, shutting down, disk utility on all volumes, new ports, different computers.. Disk utility quits from repairing with an error.. even when run from startup disk.
Oh, and sometimes it won't mount. I switch the drive on and off, then it mounts.

Obviously, I should reformat it, but it's going to take a while to get everything off (which I can still do for some odd reason..)

Suggestions, comments, and free money appreciated.

 

[eric2006]

Ok, I tried re-formating, no dice. It showed up as 1.2 TB, so I tried formating at 200 GB, well under the max of 250. I/O error. Next mount, it showed up as 6.5 GB, which I could format, but it's only 6.5 GB..

EDIT:
It is now behaving steadily, but it thinks it is a 6.5 GB drive (ouch).

ACOM Data has been contacted.

EDIT 2:
It decided to show up as 1.4 TB, so I formated it as that, and it worked. It was acting surprisingly slow, so I could not test it.

A windows machine says it's 1.7 TB..

Disk utility insists that the drive is healthy.

EDIT 3:
Attempting fix with good old norton disk utiliy (on windows), and good, new disk warror if that does not work.

 

[dq101]

If you have warranty get it fixed or replaced. Who did you buy it from like make and model? I had a problem and the chip was bad so they are sending me a new one.

 

[eric2006]

It's a "Hard Drive-E5-250GB (HD250FE5-72)" by ACOM specs. It should be under warranty, but they don't make it easy to get it replaced..

 

[Qion]

Well, you did say that you could still get info off of the drive. Just create a folder on another disk, and drag all your stuff to it from the external drive. Format the external drive.

(Oh, and I would send you some free money, but it just seems I don't have any that was "free" )

 

[eric2006]

Well, I can format it. But it randomly decides what size it is. 6.5 GB at the least, and 1.7 TB at the most. I could make a 250 GB partition, but I wouldn't feel safe putting data on a hard drive acting like that.

(in fact, I tried this, and the next time it mounted, we were back to 6.5 GB. Go figure. )

Getting it replaced is probably the way to go..

Of course, ACOM has this e-mail support thing, and I won't get a reply in a while..

 

[eric2006]

On 8/1/06, Tim Soto <tsoto@acomdata.com> wrote:
Hello Eric,

Unfortunately, when a drive does what yours has been doing, it means it's a defective drive. Under warranty we can gladly replace the unit for you with a new one (as long as you have a copy of the sales receipt), but we'll be unable to save any data that you want or need from the drive.

If you're ok with getting a brand new replacement drive, please let me know so I can get the whole process started. Thanks a lot and sorry about your drive Eric.

----

Hey Eric,

I went ahead and issued you that RMA number, it should come in a separate email (you should be receiving it very soon if not already) and it'll give you all the instructions on sending your drive in to us under warranty.

You'll want to write the RMA # on the box (you can use a marker) so we'll know which drive is yours once it comes into our facility.

Please include inside the box: A receipt copy, the hard drive itself and the power adapter (if included with your drive)

You're more than welcome to get in touch with me anytime if you have any further questions or concerns. Thanks a lot!