HELP! Just had a Prestige 320G HD crash!

[ThomasVideoStudio]

My Seagate 320 gig hard drive for my Prestige will not boot-up. I'm using a VGA and TV monitor set up. The white Prestige logo stays on the TV monitor permanently without any boot-up. (VGA monitor remains blank). I can hear the HD trying to read to access it's self, but nothing changes. This HD is 2 years old and was just freshly re-loaded with the new SE 8.1 OS and Arabesk 4.1e just days ago. I did have previous trouble with this HD prior to re-installing the new software, when scenes became corrupt; not able to play scenes from the storyboard or clip bin, frozen playback of scenes, green screen while trying to play scenes, and scenes being scrambled/mixed with scenes from other projects!

I was sure the HD was problematic or dying at that time, but when the SW reload process went successfully, and then allowed me to spend days loading camera footage of several hours successfully - only to suddenly not boot-up this morning - I knew I was in trouble.

I have been told a few of the known tricks to try to get the HD to boot up such as using a OS Smart card to try to reboot from. But I only have a SE 7.0 card and the current OS on this drive is SE 8.1, so the message says it can not load without dumping everything.

I have been told about putting the HD in the freezer for a day, and then putting it back in the Prestige, but a year ago when this happened to me with another HD, it never worked so I just threw it out and wrote it off as lost time.

I'm positive my Segate 320G HD is toast, even though it is only two years old, but I'm just checking with all of you one last time in case some miracle fix came out that I am not aware of. I no longer bother to spend the time trying to deal with Seagate's warranty process.
The HD prices are cheap enough today where it is cheaper to repurchase a new one rather than spend my time on their website and the shipping process - only to get a factory rebuilt one from Mexico in exchange. Any help you Cassie folks can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Tom Koziol - Thomas VIdeo Studio, Eau Claire, WI

[CasablancaExpert]

Hello Tom,

I have an article on my website in the Public section that may provide you some assistance -- hope this helps!

http://www.casablancaexpert.com/articles/20091111

Regards,
Chet

[ThomasVideoStudio]

Chet:
Thank you for your timely response. I read that post and feel that my Seagate hard drive is probably not worth the time to try that particular solution, (plus I do not have much PC knowledge sad to say), this is why I use MS NLEs! This hard drive had failed before with SE 7.0 installed and now failed permanently with SE 8.1 installed. I'm afraid that even with a successful reboot (in some miraculous way), the hours of video clips on my storyboard most likely would not make it out to DV tape anyway.
In the past, video freezes and / or corrupt clips were the rule, when trying to salvage footage from a dying hard drive.

I'm finding that my daily use of my 14+ hard drives in my video business causes them to last only about two years before they die. So far, it has been a fairly consistent experience for me. However, the smaller the HD, the longer they last? I still have my original 80G HDs that came with our new Prestiges back in 2004, but I am ever more leary about using them for critical projects at this point. I can not say that I have noticed any differences between using Seagate, Samsung or Western Digital HDs from a performance or reliability standpoint - except to say that the original Samsung 80G HDs that came with the Prestiges, are still going fine.

Thanks again Chet. I was just hoping that there would have been some sort of in-unit miracle or trick to force a boot-up.

Tom K