RED Hard Drive not mounting on Mac or Camera dead / broken?

[AlanJ]

We have a RED Hard drive that seems to have stopped working.

When connected to a MAC you can hear it whir and then there is a slowly repeating beep (are there a set of beep codes for the hard drive to signify its failure mode?)

The disk doesn't make the sounds that hard disks make when disk heads have issues.

The drive appears to have power and one can feel it humming and there is a beep every two seconds if you put your ear to it.

Any ideas?

 

[Max Fischer]

You have a new sexy doorstop!

 

[AlanJ]

There I was hoping that in this modern age the data might be salvageable even if on a one time basis

I don't know the make up of the drives but red describe them as RAID is that simply two mirrored drives or is it something else and if so can one use standard data recovery tools (ie open drive and get the data off) to recover the data on the drive?

Any ideas?

 

[ericyoung]

The Red Drive is RAID 0, not mirrored, but almost certainly has a custom hardware controller and firmware, so standard data recovery tools probably won't work.

First thing: Have you tried via the USB2 connector?
Second thing: Try mounting on a PC via Firewire and USB2

Your next best bet is to contact Red support and see if they can help.

If that fails, and the drive is out of warranty, then it'll be worth opening it up (observing anti-static precautions) and checking all connectors are fully seated. If they are, then you can try reseating them all in case it's dirty contacts.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I don't believe the RED Drive makes any error beeps or has beep codes. Those "beeps" you are hearing are most likely a head rubbing the spinning platter or an issue with the motor or bearings. In other words, that drive is toast. if that is indeed what the noise is, especially if one or more heads are rubbing, the odds of recovering data are pretty low, even for professional data recovery services.

As ericyoung stated, the RED RAID is a RAID-0 stripe. Internally there is a custom RAID controller. Typical data recovery software isn't going to work in this situation and if the drive heads are indeed rubbing the platter or other such horrible things are happening, you are only doing further damage to the unit by supplying power.

Contact RED support, see if they can help. Perhaps the drive can be repaired, if they still have the parts for these discontinued drives. As for the data, who knows, it may or may not be salvageable. All depends on the amount of damage that has been done to the failed drive.

 

[AlanJ]

Thanks for the feedback and comments RED say the drives are dead

From what you are suggesting it sounds like problem for any data recovery team is the potential that the RAID 0 controller (ie the striping algorithm is non standard - though from the days when I built and maintained servers running RAID 10 the stripping paramaters were not that variable and had to be optimised for the data file size - with video files being so large does anyone have any idea what stripe size RED use?).

We will still give forensic data recovery a go no cost if they don't succeed.

 

[Eyimofe Prest]

Hello,
(Calm and Collected) was collecting data from drive. connected through firewire to my mac. When it suddenly went dead. Mounted it throuh disk utility, and it came back alive.
Then connected it to my camera and i am getting alot of errors. first it can not write onto the disk, but i am able to collect the drive portfolio from other drive ,copy and paste it unto the drive, and it says its mounted but when i reformat it. its drops dead. Hope this makes sence. cause i don't know whats wrong.
drive is working on mac but not on camera. help please.

 

[ericyoung]

If you can write files and read those files back successfully on a Mac, then that would indicate your Red Drive is not dead at least.

Next step is to format as FAT32 on the Mac using Disk Utility. Then see if it then mounts on the camera. If it does, format the drive again on the camera and then do several test recordings and playbacks on camera. Then see if you can offload those file back onto the Mac.

If it does not mount on the camera after a Mac format, change to a different drive cable and try again.

If that still doesn't work, it'll probably have to go back to a Red facility for further diagnosis/repair.

 

[Eyimofe Prest]

thanks a alot, seems it was the cable.
Since i bought it a day ago sent it back to red europe for a replacement.