Buffalo External Hard Drive Turning On, Not Showing Up

[dylan.thompson]

Hello,

My Buffalo DriveStation Axis Velocity (3 TB) external hard drive is turning on, but is not showing up on my Mac. This started happening after the hard drive took a minor fall, and now has a slight ticking sound which I haven't heard before. The drive itself is just over three years old.

Obviously there are a ton of important pictures on here (wedding included), so I am hoping that you guys can help me out. Any information is greatly appreciated! Hoping to find an alternative to paying for professional recovery.

Thank you!
Dylan

 

[DSzymborski]

Ticking sound is very bad, suggesting that there's physical damage. You can try taking it out of the enclosure and hooking it up directly to see if you're lucky. But if you can't get it to read in any way, your next step is determining if the cost of professional recovery or the loss of your data would be worse for you.

Unfortunately, the only dependable time to protect your important files is *before* something bad happens. The 3-2-1 backup rule is a fairly standard rule-of-thumb for any data you care about, meaning that you have at least three copies, on at least two difference devices, with at least one copy off-site. Data that only exists in one place is, for all intents and purposes, terminally ill data.

Hopefully your lesson is an inexpensive one and you're able to recover your pictures easily, but either way, I hope you protect your data in the future. When a hard drives goes to heaven, you ought to not be out for any more than the cost of replacing the hard drive itself.