How about a Fractal Design Define XL review with lots and lots of hdds (6+) to test its build and noise qualities?

I think it's important to think about why we work. We sell our time and attention for money. Not easy to escape from that since most of us need money, at least some. At some point it makes sense to find other means to get what we need, than to rely entirely on the pay check. Are there other means f...

I wouldn't choose a WD Green...it's just (bad) luck I guess, but 3 out of 4 have failed on me...I would go for the newer Seagate low rpm 2TB drive (I own one and I am perfectly happy with it so far).

Very good news...I mean those mentioned in the 22nd June update

Congratulations and thanks for letting us know that File Scavenger is a competent utility. This might be useful to some of us at some point. You were lucky the drive didn't simply die, leaving you with nothing. So really, do some backups now! It's more convenient to backup to other drives of the sa...

If that didn't work, you can try running chkdisk manually with the appropriate options. You can try consulting Microsoft's documentation or asking Windows/NTFS gurus. You can try fixing the file-system with non-Microsoft tools such as the testdisk you mentionned or the ones which probably come with...

Thanks for the support HFat I can't seem to get ddrescue to create an image file in my other hdd...is there something wrong with this command? ddrescue -n /dev/sda /dev/sdb5/backup/backup.img /media/sdc1/rescue.log I get the following error: -" Can't open output file: Not a directory " even if I thr...

Thank you for your swift answer, patience and for sticking with me on this...and I know I haven't been helpful or quick picking it up... I'm somewhere between trying to get some work done, doing bothersome errands for the family and protesting the new fiscal austerity measures/memorandum in the stre...

You shouldn't interrupt it to change the number of retries. Unless the feature has been added recently, it doesn't handle that gracefully. I did not stop the program by force, e.g. shutting down...it displays "Press Control-C to interrupt" at the beginning of each running test. My first thought was...

The second test for the trouble areas is now officially running for as much time as it took to rescue the 2TBs of data.....this even if, after running the test for 3-4 hours with 6 retries, I interrupted the test to change the parameter to 3 retries... ...while I had that parameter set to 6 retries,...

The ddrescue manual's first example outputs an image file (hdimage). That is not the same as restoring files. It simply means copying the drive's data to a very large file which can then be manipulated (compressed to save space, fingerprinted and so on) by any program. The manual also explains a tr...

Not wrong: it's maybe not ideal. It depends on what you want to do with the image. But there are many things you can do with just the partition. I've never done what you've done with an extended partition and you didn't give any details on your drives and procedures but you might want to make sure ...

What ddrescue does is to image the drive. It can be really slow if the drive has issues because it does not fail when it encounters a problem, it retries trouble spots and so on. As far as simple, free tools go, this is the one who'll give you the best image so far as I know. In some cases, you'll ...

This is so sad. It is good that the site will continue to run - it's been so valuable to me, I've found information nowhere else available, and it has formed my perception of computer usage and aesthetics quite a bit - but a site's power lies in its community and its members and this community will ...

The aesthetic is a bit wrong, I'll agree - the same people that make the butyl matting stuff that I've already used make a similar product which is the matting with 3mm of black acoustic foam on top, which is what I'm intending on using as the last layer on top of what I've already put on. Another ...

The best mass loading acoustic stuff available locally appears to be a butyl-based stuff that's branded as Response. I got one pack to test and applied it on mostly any panel that vibrated: Material: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3398/5754446880_1433bcb4f6_z.jpg Several layers beneath the lower HD...

Alternatively you could do your backups with a program that automatically generates hashes such as duplicity. If you're not doing backups, you have bigger worries than hash management! If I'm not doing backups, maybe hash checking-management maybe my only consolation though... Still a lot to learn ...

Yes, and not knowing what's wrong with the drive, the reallocation is precisely what I'd be concerned about. Reallocation can occur even without the use of particular program which may initiate it in case of very slow reads, but I think leaving the data on weak/unstable sectors is more dangerous in...

Look, I'm no expert. But I don't like the idea of writing to a failing drive. Once you have a decent image, sure: why not try it? But it doesn't sound safe. Well, you are right in one respect in this, but it's not exactly like a failing - unstable CPU likely to produce errors in every operation...i...

Would it be better if I ran a Hdd regeneration on the damaged drive before attempting to recover data? I don't know exactly what you mean but it sounds like it could make things worse. Once you've got the best image you can get out of the drive, you don't need the drive anymore so you can try whate...

Perre -- Too bad about your nasty experiences with WD Greens.... but in reality you will find horror stories for every drive maker out there. Bad batches seem unavoidable... and user-specific conditions that accelerate HDD wear is also not unheard of. My WD20EARS were produced in Thailand, the firs...

I am about to buy a 2TB drive after the third consecutive failure of WD's 2TB drives (first WD20EARDS 3platter drive came up with bad sectors within a day, the second -also 3plattered- lasted for 2-3 months and now is full of weak-bad sectors, can't even load the OS with it attached, and the WD20EAD...

Yes I meant the door covering the fan compartment rather than the main door. I did some monitoring and at idle the second row of drives in the lower compartment was hitting 40-45C. The others were fine (30C). The drives are a mix of samsung 1.5TB drives, F2 and F3s I noticed that the new F3s appear...

Regarding soundproofing, if you're in the market for a ready-made solution, my favorite one is Cooltec (395) Universal Kit (link with babelfish translation from German)... For a thinner solution, I would go with Acoustipack 7mm OEM material , if I wanted to keep the inside of the case - where there ...

Looking very neat...I had the Define R2 but with my non-modular Corsair TX750 PSU it looked like a spaghetti dish in there...this is much easier to work with... Seasonics are generally great for silence...I regret giving mine away (an older 600W model), but I needed the high single rail for the 12v ...

For Pierre: Temps are fine in the lower chamber with six HDDs powered on! My HDD temps as shown by Munin over a couple of days are averaging between 32 and 36 degrees Celsius with one slow 140mm fan and some foam directing the air over the center of the HDDs and less around the edges. Temps-wise it...

Following on from the above HDD enclosure that's been installed... with the standard Noctua fan in front the hard drives are running way too cold. At 19 degrees ambient the HDs were being kept in the low 20s which imho is way too cold for a drive. So I put on both the LNA and ULNA that came with on...

The hard drive plates seem all but identical to the Antec ones that we replaced - airflow didn't really seem to be that much of an issue there, guess we'll see here... This hypothesis, that the mounting plate has a slight negative effect on hdd cooling stems from my experience with my Chieftec full...

You are making a mountain out of a molehill. I see no reason to believe this case will have difficulties cooling modern HDDs. I am registering doubts, potentialities or "suspicions" based on design, and I designate them as such, with far less conviction than that with which you dismiss them... - Th...

And I am attempting to make the point that the cooling capacity of this case must be exceedingly dire to be unable to cope with cooling HDDs sufficiently in normal operating conditions. So long as there are no major leaks of air along the way, even at 600RPM, I cannot see a 120x120x25mm fan being u...