Computer & Laptop Add-ons

[#1]

I will disconnect the drives from the controller and see if I can isolate which drive is ticking, I doubt both would have given up the ghost at the same time... As for the data, I am not overly worried, it was TV shows I had recorded with media Center, and my VISTA system backups.

[#2]

was anyone successful in pairing up the two 500gb hard drives in another enclosure to get the data?  my drives when connected in the enclosure do the "tick tick tick" and seem to die.. separately they will spin up fine with another power supply.  I'm guessing either (competitor) in my case is bad. or the PCB's are toast.  if anyone has pin'd out the electrics, could you let me know.

thanx

[#3]

I got the individual drives to work in a separate SATA enclosure (1 at a time, as separate 500GB drives), but I shelved the original Comstar enclosure.  Too lazy to throw it out.

[#4]

Eskimo277, thanks a lot for that update!!! 

[#5]

Got the same problem with the ticking click click sound. Lost a lot of time trying to configure them as raid on software controller because they are not RAID. The controller just act as a JBOD (ie: 500 first mb of data on a driver and the 500 last on the other). I used R-Studio and created a volume set to recover my data. Lost a lot of time figuring that it WASNT configured in RAID (wrong info on this forum).

Was able to recover all data, it seems that these HD are good quality but the controller is cheap.

Good luck

[#6]

xanadu, thanks for this information.  And you're definitely correct - the hard drives in the Comstar units are good, but the controller and the USB connector aren't.  It's unfortunate as many users are getting stuck with dead drives.  I'm glad you were able to get yours up and running and get your data back.

[#7]

Great info xanadu!, i opened my comstar and got the 2x 500gb westerndigital drives to show in my bios.

I will try to disable the onboard raid and use r-studio to recover, will keep you posted. 

btw the guys at samtack.com said they were out of the 1tb enclosure but would call me back in 2 weeks if they get more.

Message Edited by Julez on 07-07-2009 02:56 PM

[#8]

I had a problem with my Comstar enclosure, too.  I picked up an nGEAR JBOD enclosure and it works like a charm!!! 

I dodged a big bullet there.  I am backing up all my data now, and will stick to individual disc enclosures from now on.