I am not sure of the general term for the gadget, but for $20-30 you can buy a simple drive adapter like this: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/U3NVSPATA/ You could then take out your HD, connect it, wipe it, then send it for repair (if the extraction hasn't voided the warranty.) Or verify that the drive is fine and that it is worth buying an enclosure for.
Longer term, this gadget lets you minimize the number of enclosures you need as you can archive your off-site backup archives as bare drives and re-use the enclosure with a newer higher capacity drive. stan On Nov 10, 2011, at 10:06 PM, Mark C wrote: > I recently commented that one of my 3TB external drives went bad - apparently > it is the housing only, since the drive will run fine for about 10 minutes > and the just disappear from the computer. After it is unplugged and off for a > while, it works fine again (for another 10 minutes or so.) I have two backups > of the drive - one is a few months old and is offsite, the other is a local > copy. WHen I realized the my other 3TB drive had the *only* copy of several > hundred images I got worried and bought another drive. It took almost 2 days > via USB 2 but I now have two local copies again.... > > OK - the paranoia part: Turns out that the drive that has crapped out is > under warranty still. Yea! So I have to send it into Western Digital. I can't > wipe the drive (it would take a lot longer than 10 minutes to wipe a 3TB > drive) and I am hesitating about sending off a functional drive (albeit in a > bad enclosure) with virtually every photo I have taken in the last 10 years > on it (all 122,000 of them). We have everyting from 35mm film scans, MF > scans, and every image form a digital camera since my first 3.3mp Coolpix. > All my snowflakes, all the stuff that is in my book, full layouts of all the > cards I used to make for art fairs (front and back), all sorts of stuff. > There is nothing embarrassing or compromising on the drive - aside from the > fact that 90+% of the photos absolutely suck - but I balk at just blithely > sending off all these images to who knows where... Am I being unduly > paranoid? (As opposed to duly paranoid...) > > Maybe I should just shell out a few bucks for a new enclosure or see if I can > salvage the drive and put in my PC.... > > Any thoughts? > > Mark > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
