Tuesday
Jul292014

"Stay away from Buffalo Hard Drives"

That's what they told me at The Oliver Group, a local data recovery company where I took my Buffalo DriveStation Axis Velocity external 3TB hard drive. "They have their own software that sits on a controller board between the drive and the OS. We've seen it cook the hard drives to the point of physical damage."

I tested the theory by taking the Seagate 3TB drive out of the enclosure and connecting it to my PC with a USB3 dock I use for many other drives. Turns out Windows sees it as an uninitialized drive, and only in Drive Manager. Pop it back in the Buffalo enclosure and everything is there.

It all started when I was recording a .NET Rocks! show with Ted Pattison. The recording stopped abruptly and I was unable to access the files I was just recording to. Other files started giving me trouble as well. I could read the directory data just fine. There was no typical skipping noise or churning noise coming from the drive indicating bad sectors. There was only a problem when I went to copy or otherwise access the files. The OS hung like it no idea how to deal with the issue. That's becuase it didn't. 

The Oliver Group was able to restore all the data onto a new hard drive except for about 50MB worth of files, some of which hadn't been touched in over a year. $500 later, as the technician was handing me my drives he said, "a word of warning. Stay away from these Buffalo external drives."

And so I shall.

PrintView Printer Friendly Version

EmailEmail Article to Friend

References (254)

References allow you to track sources for this article, as well as articles that were written in response to this article.

Reader Comments (36)

Happy Diwali 2015, Happy Diwali 2015 sms, Happy Diwali 2015 images, Happy Diwali 2015 messages, Happy Diwali 2015 quick tips, Happy Diwali, Diwali 2015

December 27, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterHappy Diwali 2015

India Vs Pakistan Live Streaming ICC Cricket World Cup 2015, Watch Ind Vs Pak Live Streaming Online, India Vs Pakistan Live Score, Ind Vs Pak Live Score, Match Results, Highlights
ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 Live Streaming


ICC World Cup 2015 Opening Ceremony

Cricket World Cup 2015 Opening Ceremony

Cricket Opening Ceremony 2015 ICC World Cup

January 4, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterAmit Kumar

thanks for sharing with us

February 16, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterIPL 8 Live Score

Thanks For This Great Post.... www.TechyGent.Com

February 27, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterTechy

indian premier league
ipl 8 schedule
ipl 8 auction
ipl 8

March 24, 2015 | Unregistered Commenteripl 8 2015

indian premier league
ipl 8 schedule
ipl 8 auction
ipl 8

March 24, 2015 | Unregistered Commenteripl 8 2015

Love this post. Thanks for sharing it with us.

April 28, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterBus rental in Dubai

It is so simple to understand! You have definitely created a unique set of informative post for sharing. Many thanks

see this here

It is so simple to understand! You have definitely created a unique set of informative post for sharing. Many thanks.

good info thanks
Download FCI Admit card

June 1, 2015 | Unregistered Commenterresults

Great. I like this post. Watch live perform in Tour de France 2015. Do not miss it. Tour de france live 2015

June 22, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterDhaval

This is a very good article.

July 4, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterSourabh

I will keep this in my mind.
IBPS RRB Admit Card 2015

July 16, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterAnil Dhiman

Thanks for sharing it with us.Gujarat Rojgar

August 15, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterRajesh Patil
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.
« MacBook Pro + Parallels + Windows 8.1 + Visual Studio + Xamarin = awesome | Main | Prepare your Mac for use with Xamarin iOS. »