IBM 512MB microdrive failure

[allnighter]

I used the 512MB Microdrive with my fuji camera successfully for the last few years no probs.
Today I put the microdrive into my pc card reader to download a couple of pics, then as I looked at one pic which was a bit out of focus , I pulled the microdrive out of the pc in order to insert it into the camera to retake the pic.The microdrive refused to intialise in the camera , so I put it back into the pc and it makes a spinning noise but nothing, I can't read it , and I can't format it or anything.
Any ideas?
Could pulling the microdrive out of the pc whilst viewing a pic,have permanently damaged the unit?
I have zillions of pics in the damn thing.HELP!

[joust]

www.datarescue.com/photorescue/

J

[allnighter]

Thank you Joust,
The problem I face is the micro drive is not recognized as a media anymore,and does not initialise let alone trying to rescue any pics out of it.
Very strange.
All I did is pull it out of the Pc card reader...Very reliable up to now.
Edited to add , even the fuji camera does not recognize the microdrive anymore! Why?

>> Edited by allnighter on Wednesday 8th March 00:13

[Parrot of Doom]

Its broken. Take it to a data recovery specialist, and prepare to buy a new one.

[speedychrissie]

removing an external hard drive while it is being used can indeed cause problems. often it is fine, but sometimes (as in this case) it just freezes and doesnt recognise any external influence.

i agree that your best bet is to get a professional to look at it.

[happy snapper]

They can be a little fragile, I didnt manage to brake any but I know people who did! If you cannot access it I doubt you will be able to recover it without much expence and pain..

>> Edited by happy snapper on Wednesday 8th March 11:53

[simpo two]

Parrot of Doom said:

Its broken. Take it to a data recovery specialist, and prepare to buy a new one.

Its broken. Take it to a data recovery specialist, and prepare to buy a CF card instead.

[joust]

Try DR - I gave up on quite a few cards and it's managed to recover almost everything. DR doesn't give a dam if the "FAT table" is readable, it just goes through the whole card. As the freebie download will tell you what you can recover, nothing lost nothing gained....

J

[allnighter]

thank you guys for your replies, it looks like a write off to me.I can't believe that a simple thing like removing it from the pc can damage it so easily.
any ideas who might be able to fix it? I bought it from Pc World.
are compact flash much more reliable than microdrives?They don't have the capacity of microdrives.
Cheers.

[ledaig]

Compact flash are more reliable than micro-drive because they are solid state instead of an actual spinning drive.
This also means that a micro-drive takes more power from your battery in use, can't take shocks well (as in dropped) and can get quite warm during use as well.

As for capacity - you can now get up to 8Gb although these are expensive, a 512mb CF as a direct replacement would be fairly cheap at around £17, alternatively you could get a bigger card say 1Gb for about £40 or a 2Gb for les than £80 - and these can be nice fast cards as well (e.g. Sandisk Extreme 3).


>> Edited by ledaig on Thursday 9th March 16:01

[fergusd]

allnighter said:

thank you guys for your replies, it looks like a write off to me.I can't believe that a simple thing like removing it from the pc can damage it so easily. any ideas who might be able to fix it? I bought it from Pc World. are compact flash much more reliable than microdrives?They don't have the capacity of microdrives. Cheers.

You MUST assume that any device like this is unreliable - because ultimately they all storage media are - eg. CF cards do not last forever, this is the nature of flash EEprom technology, it has a defined life. However, microdrives are mechanical things - and as such are probably even more likely to fail because moving parts wear out.

If you have no backup of the data on the drive then you'll need to investigate a specialist to recover the data for you - this will be expensive - whether it's worth it only you know.

To take something from this experience -

1. make sure you have MORE THAN ONE backup of important data (that is a minimum of TWO seperate backups in different physical locations).
2. never, ever, trust devices like this, ever.

The reason it's 'OK' for these things to fail is that, ultimately, you're not paying anthing like enough for extreme reliability. If you think 50 quid for a gig is expensive . . . would you be prepared to pay 500 quid for a gig if it was twice as reliable ? . . . unlikely . . . unfortunately that's how things work . . . non linear cost increase for a linear increase in reliability . . .

Fd