Help External HDD Issues

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Ok,

So heres My problem. I have many external Hdd's (I'm a professional Photographer) And I've always stuck with Western Digital because everyone has said they are great. One of my older Hard Drives (about 3-4 years) wont mount any more. I am always super careful with my drives, My big ones I dont transport they stay on my desk, so they dont get bounced around or risk data loss. I always un mount or turn off my computer before I unplug any hard drive and now my western digital "my book" wont mount. All the lights turn on, you can hear it spinning, seems in perfect working health but it wont mount. I go to disk utility and I can see it, But the partition is greyed out so I click on verify, it says disk needs to be repaired click repaired. Then I do and it says disk cant be repaired, back up what files you can the re format and restore your files. I have no idea to back up any files when I cant access the hard drive, and this is the one external I dont have a copy of (its the less important stuff, But still too important to completely lose) so losing everything isn't an option. Can anybody help me. Thanks in advance.

-Josh Humber
 
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Hi. That's painful, and very often there isn't much you can do here sadly. Once the drive has gone, like this, it's very difficult to recover anything.
Now, there is software out there that can do this, but I have no idea how successful it is, and it is also not cheap ($100+).
One thing I did when I had a similar issue, wwith a WD drive as it goes< was to download a trial version of the recovery software, which lets you see what can be recovered before you have to buy.
I didn't buy it, but for some reason the drive worked for enough time afterwards for me to recover my music. Maybe you will have similar luck?
Here's a link to the software I tried.

Data Rescue 3.0.1 software download - Mac OS X - VersionTracker
 
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J
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Thanks, I'll give that a try and we will see. If I can back up enough data, its well worth the $100 to me. Will let you know how it goes.

- Josh Humber
 
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Yeah, I downloaded the trial and it couldn't scan the HDD, it is internal problems with the drive. I wish I could have caught it on the way out but it just stopped all together. I have called some data recovery prices to get some quotes and they are absolutely ridiculous. the typical quote seems to be from $1200 to $1800, kinda makes that $100 software look pretty appealing right now. Anyways I am now looking for a good backup system that I can have 2 drives one that I will be using as an external, and one will be a clone backup incase this happens, Any suggestions?
 

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