Can you remove the HDD from a Lacie Disk to recover data

[bpbruning]

I have a 2TB Lacie BigDisk. It has a host of problems. I want to remove each of the SATA HDD drives, connect them to a HDD Dock, and copy the data files to a new external hard drive. I would be using a Mac (OS X) to access the drives. Is this possible?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

You can remove it and connect via some other means yes, it's often been done with other brands of external HDD. You can even put it inside a different enclosure which are available in PC stores & online.

The problem often encountered though is the HDD interface being a proprietary one, not SATA or IDE as we know it. That's certainly the case with newer external HDDs. You won't know until you get the drive out of it's Lacie enclosure.

 

[bpbruning]

Thank you. I will give it a try.

 

[fzabkar]

If the two drives are 1TB models, then you will have a RAID 0 (striped). In this case you will need to reassemble the RAID as a software RAID (eg with Linux mdadm), and then clone the RAID volume to your 2TB drive.

 

[bpbruning]

If the two drives are 1TB models, then you will have a RAID 0 (striped). In this case you will need to reassemble the RAID as a software RAID (eg with Linux mdadm), and then clone the RAID volume to your 2TB drive.

Thank you for your input. What I would like to do is use a HDD docking station to connect the two Lacie HDD's to my laptop via USB connection. If I take these two drives, use the docking unit, can I locate the files, such as music and picture files, and copy/paste them to another external drive?

 

[fzabkar]

If each of the drives is a 2TB model, then you will have a RAID 1. That's a mirror, in which case you will be able to do as you intend.

If OTOH the drives are 1TB models, then the data will be "striped" between both drives, in which case your proposed approach will not work. Instead you would need to reassemble the RAID.

You could possibly clone each of your drives externally, and then reinstall them inside the Lacie enclosure. To this end I would use a tool such as ddrescue.