Image Backup Problems

[David Milne]

I purchased an IOMEGA SILVER SERIES 500 GB hard drive. I have turned it on 8 times. It won't turn on. So Iomega sends me a new power cord. No luck. So they send me to Iomega Data Recovery in Ontario. Their response is they want $ 700 to recover my files. I asked if it could be the switch. Reply was possible but it will cost $ 700 to fix. I called a friend who told me the data for the hard drive for Iomega and Seagate (same Company) is called PRML which means Partial Response Maximum Likelihood. Very Scary! This means these hard drives are meant to fail. Iomega told me they all fail. Really! Isn't that comforting to know that our hard work is backed up on a product that they know will fail. There are other data recovery companies who are out there but its going to cost. Iomega doesn't care. They know that they will get the $ 700 minimum from a significant number of people who own their products.
What I would like to do is warn everyone about this. The total lack of Iomega/Seagate to help even when it is 3 weeks old. They will do absolutely nothing for us. If you have important files back them up to a CD or DVD.

[SmartWombat]

>> If you have important files back them up to a CD or DVD.
Yes, Always back up !
I have a RAID 5 NAS from Infrant/Netgear.
Two terabytes of data.
I have a second one as a backup.
They are now 80% full, so I need more network storage for this year's photos ...

Even though my RAID boxes have 4 drives, and they can survive with one of the 4 drives removed or broken, the advice in the manual is still to have a means of backup.
Sound advice.


>> Partial Response Maximum Likelihood. Very Scary!
Storage of large amounts of data (500GB to 1TB) on a 3.5" disk is pushing physics to the limit, and lots of mathematics is required to get the data written and read.
PRML is just advanced maths to get your data off the disk.

>> This means these hard drives are meant to fail.
They're meant to work, near the limit of what is physically possible.
The data is written with error-correcting codes, and so even a read error is not fatal.
The processor in the drive can handle ECC errors off the disk and correct them without you noticing. Not only that, but a modern drive also scans the disk while you're not using it and will fix bad sectors itself.

>> So Iomega sends me a new power cord.
I would not suspect the power cord, more likely the power supply itself, the "brick" in the lead. Though if they still use the 5-pin cassette recorder style power connectors, there is a slim possibility of getting it in the wrong way round and causing damage.

I much prefer the simpler power connectors, just 12V on a coaxial plug like used on the Seagate external drives I have on the desk.


>> will cost $ 700 to fix
$700 to fix what's probably a $250 drive seems expensive.

If what you got from Iomega was a new power supply, then I'd test the original power supply output with a meter. See if it has the right voltage on the right pins.
If it has, then the problem is inside the unit, not a power problem.

If it wasn't under warranty, I'd open up the box and check the switch with a meter, make sure it was working. Also look for a fuse inside, in case that's blown and protected the insides.
But since it's still under warranty, that's not practical.

I bought a test unit for drives a while ago, it plus into a USB port and will connect to IDE notebook, ATA, or SATA drives and will allow the disk to spin up, and appear on the PC as an external drive.
It allowed me to diagnose two drives as faulty (probably from overheating) during a hot summer and replace them.
Again if your box wasn't under warranty I'd pull the hard drive and put it on a USB test interface to see if the drive itself was OK.