Asus HDD failure and lacie bigger disc failure at the same time

[n210mp]

What a month of disasters.

Pneumonia then a trapped nerve in my back and then

My Asus G53S laptop i7 2.00 G hts with 10 G ram 500 GB hard drive refuses to find an OS

OK I take it to Tukcom and they replace the damaged HDD with two HDD giving me just a tad under 1 TB in the laptop.

I bring the laptop home happy because I have done a mirror image on my Lacies bigger disc.

When I try to do the restore the Asus sees the bigger disc in devices and printers and sometimes in Computers but will not enable me to browse the files on the Lacies and begin the restore.

I took the lacies to Tukcom and then could find no problem individually with the four HDDs that make up the 2 TB capacity but could not get their PCs to open the files that are on the Lacie bigger disc extreme

I would be eternally grateful if someone could answer My questions.

I know that there are backups for the laptop on the Lacie even though I now at this time cannot find them and that the drives are all individually functioning OK, the chap at Tucom said the four HDD may have files split between them and individually Lacie HDDs cannot be opened so would it be better to take the lacie to the specialist in Pantic Plaza to try to get my data off them ?

OR

Would I be better off taking the old damaged seagate Momentus from the laptop to the people in Pantip plaza to try to get the most recent mirror image off the damaged drive?

In the event that I cannot restore my laptop from the damaged drive and the Lacie cannot be repaired could I take the four 500 GB drives out of the Lacie and place them singly or together in a home built enclosure and then use them as a means of backup through ta USB to HDD connection?

Really appreciate any info because I have about 20 years of photos and documents that from a sentimental point of view do not want to lose

Many thanks

Edited August 20, 2014 by n210mp

[JSixpack]

Not sure what a Lacies except for women's lacies. Anyway, offhand, it sounds like could be a permissions problem. Google around for how to take control of files for which you don't have permission. I'm too lazy to go into it myself for you here. Another issue might be that you're attempting to read or restore the image w/ the wrong program. Finally, the image itself might be corrupted, though that's less likely, fortunately.

Edited August 20, 2014 by JSixpack

[KittenKong]

"I took the lacies to Tukcom and then could find no problem individually with the four HDDs that make up the 2 TB capacity but could not get their PCs to open the files that are on the Lacie bigger disc extreme"

It sounds like the LaCie has been configured as a RAID array. Some types of RAID allow for automatic backup within the array, but some types may lose the content of all the disks if just one fails. It sounds like yours may have been configured like that. There are other variations of RAID array that allow for partial data protection if one or more drives fail.

I have a two-disk 4TB RAID array that is configured to mirror, so if one drive fails all the data will be present on the other but of course the total space available is only 2TB. I also have another complete back-up of the RAID array done weekly on an entirely separate 2TB hard drive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

[DogNo1]

RAID has been problematic for me and I have never been able to recover from a RAID failure whether RAID 0 or RAID 1. I now use a series of USB disks and NAS disks. Seagate has a nice wireless one. I use Acronis True Image to backup to the disks and then copy one disk to another using Total Commander. You just select all of the folders on a drive and drag them into the window of the drive you want to copy to and when TC prompts you about what to do with existing files on the target disk, just select overwrite all older. Since I started this method, I've never lost a thing. I have so many redundant drives that when one goes down, I just throw it away and buy a new one, then copy everything from an existing drive to the new one. All of my stuff is only around 1 TB. I also use WHS 2011 in two ways. The server software backs up each of my computers automatically to drives 0-2 and then drives 3&4 serve as another NAS to which I occasionally copy the contents of my USB and NAS drives. WHS 2011 is reaching the end of its lifecycle so I'll have to figure out how to transition to Server 2012 Essentials. The WHS 2011 has its own backup disk to which it backs up automatically but I'll have to read up on how to transition the existing backups to Server 2012. Does anyone, by chance, know how to do that? What flavor of Server 2012 are TV members using?

[keeniau96]

I know several of the Tukcom gents and they are quite good but too much enthusiasm for elaborate solutions. Sure seems that you have a RAID installation although RAID in a laptop is not a common practice. You can get a single 1TB SSD for just about US$400 which will leave a RAID array in the dust and remain a simple, reliable rig in a laptop. Same goes for the LaCie external although RAID for such is fairly common but hard to do for reliable restore with only two HDDs. Good luck on the recovery.

[KittenKong]

I know several of the Tukcom gents and they are quite good but too much enthusiasm for elaborate solutions. Sure seems that you have a RAID installation although RAID in a laptop is not a common practice. You can get a single 1TB SSD for just about US$400 which will leave a RAID array in the dust and remain a simple, reliable rig in a laptop. Same goes for the LaCie external although RAID for such is fairly common but hard to do for reliable restore with only two HDDs. Good luck on the recovery.

The OP does not have RAID in his laptop: it's the external LaCie box (presumably some sort of NAS) which is apparently a 4-disk RAID array.

A 2-disk RAID 1 array like mine should be very reliable though a third separate copy should always be made. There are other RAID configurations suitable for various purposes, each offering different trade-offs between speed, capacity and reliability.

[howto]

This problem can also be caused by flakey ram.