I have just started working with a new client that has a DX-80 phone system with a 7270 VM. The voice mail has stopped working do to the hard drive not working.

I have read through some of the other posts stating it is possible to gost the hard drive onto another HD, the problem I am having is the HD is not able to read, it just clicks.

I have only worked with the 7271c CF VM's in the past. I would assume copying a CF card would not work on a hard drive version.

Is there any way of getting a gost copy of a 7270 VM hard drive so I can get this on up and running.

I do know I can send it in for repair, but I am trying to keep the cost down.

Thanks for any help.

I've been through this in the past and always ended up starting from scratch with a new flash based 7271C. Time is money.
Welcome to the board.

Yup, what Mark said. If your hard drive just clicks, you certainly can't attach it to a PC and expect to Ghost it. I have used the hard drive versions of the vmail when a customer is going to do a lot of call recording, but other than that I go with the flash version. Make sure the system is connected to a GOOD quality U.P.S.! Flash memory doesn't like flaky power when reading or writing!

I do agree with you about Time is money. sometimes I try a little to hard to save money when it would makes more sense to just start out with new. I have been very happy with the flash version that I have installed and have not had any problems with them at all for the past couple of years.

I can send this unit in to get fixed for less then it would cost for a new flash drive card. Would you get the current one fixed or suggest the client upgrade to the new flash version? Your thoughts would be apprecieated.

I have the 7270 files zipped up. I make the drives all the time but unless you're pretty handy with DOS I would replace it with the new flash version. Also you don't have to deal with the midnight notification problem with the new units.

Repair the old unit and keep it as a service spare for your next 7270 customer.

My O2.

--Bill.

I would agree with Delron, but for me, I keep a couple of spare flash drive units and have a HD unit with a bad drive that I've decided not to invest in repairing. Your call if it's worth the money to fix it.

Do you know what version the VM is? On the edge opposite the ribbon cable does it say "DX-80 VM" or does it say "DX-80 VM II"?
The hard drive models can last a long time if they get a brand new HD. I see a lot more of the flash card models come back than the HD models. There's also repair places that you can send it to that will warranty it for a full year, if that helps.

Looking at the VM board, I am not able find it were it says "DX-80 VM" or "DX-80 VM II". I do a sticker with a 9-1-01 for a build date. With that said I would suspect it is a "DX-80 VM".

Again, all of your input is helpful and I appreciate it.

Hi TechGuy:

I don't have experience with the 7270, but I do have experience resurrecting bad hard drives. I don't know what type of drive is in the 7270, but I'm assuming an IDE or SCSI? You can tell by the type of cables.

In any case, maybe this will help:

Hard drives generally go bad for one of five reasons 1) System info (boot track, MBR, directory, FAT) is bad 2) System info is unreadable 3) Drive has mechanical problems (actuator, heads, motor, bearings) 4) Drive has electronic problems 5) Data is unreadable

Problems 1 and 2 can often be "cured" by installing the bad drive into a computer, as a slave drive. The computer would, of course, have to have a compatible drive controller, cables, and OS.

You then boot the computer and, using various recovery tools, access the bad drive to copy off the data. If the MBR is bad, you can just re-write it, and the drive will be OK. Though you still ought to replace the drive at that point, because it won't stay well forever!

Sometimes problems 3 and 5 can be "cured" by cooling or heating the drive. The problem can be that the drive is worn, or the data's magnetic field is weak. With a worn drive, the heads or platters are out of tolerance, and the cooling or heating of the drive offsets this wear, and enables you to copy off (ghost) the drive. With weak data field, the heating or cooling will sometimes help.

Sometimes "cooling" means just removing the drive from the device long enough for it to come to room temp, though I've had to resort to refrigerating and even freezing a drive to get it to work. Sometimes heating the drive works, though I usually try cooling first.

Older drives (such as the Seagate 20MB drives) often had motors that would not spin up. The problem was actually that the heads would "stick" to the platter when the drive was off, and the motor did not have sufficient torque to overcome the parked heads. The "cure" was to box up the drive in its original shipping container, and drop it onto the floor from a height of about 3 feet! Today, though, I don't recommend this sort of "shock treatment!"

Problem 4 might be curable if you had an identical drive, and swapped the electronics board onto the bad drive, at least in theory. I've never been successful doing this, though I've tried.

There are companies that will recover the data from your drive, repair or replace the drive, and write the data onto the repaired or new drive. Those services aren't cheap, but they're usually cheaper than losing all of your data!

Time is money, but if the client is paying, and the client needs the data that's on the drive, then it may be worth trying to recover it. Only you and the client can ultimately decide, I suppose.

Hope this helps...

Good information for the computer world, but not necessarily so for the telephone world. Some company's drives can't be ghosted or copied from the original drive, they use a proprietary formating. A good geek could probably break it but at a time consuming cost. ESI comes to mind first, not sure about Comdial. I'm far from an expert in hard drives or computers, but using the manufacturer's replacement parts has been quick and efficient from a business standpoint.
A person can waste a lot of time trying to save a few bucks. It's like triping over a dollar to pick up a dime.

Hi Mark K:

Good point. Some phone companies do use proprietary formatting, making it difficult to use traditional tools on them.

It's true that some of these drives can't just be dropped into a computer and have them work.

However, it's not accurate to say they can't be
"ghosted", even with a proprietary format.

Bits are bits, and there are tools to copy one drive to another, regardless of the format.

That said, your point is right on. It's usually better to just go ahead and replace the parts to get the customer going quickly.

But there are rare occasions when the customer might be better served by recovering their data. My yardstick, and the question I always ask the customer, is: Will it take you more money and time to manually recover your info (or, as in this case, more money if the voicemails are lost) than it will to recover the data?

I've had cases where critical data was lost, and it was a better business decision to recover it than to let it go. In one situation, the "data" was a series of voicemails that were critical to a court case, and needed to be recovered.

The cost of that recovery was far less than the loss of the lawsuit would have been.

But, I do agree with you that time is money. The cost/benefit analysis should be a consideration too.

Well said Techie, there are probably a lot of circumstances that fit your senario. I know less then nothing about ghosting except that I've tried it once with no luck. Keep us posted, I hope you have a successful report for us in the end.
Mark

One of my laptops started having problems when it was 90º outside, I brought it inside and dropped the temp down to 65º and got it running long enough to back up everything I needed. The drive finally died the next day.

Customer called me Friday, Windows couldn't find the OS on his leptop. It had been sitting in his truck all day and was quite hot. Told him to cool it down, save what he needs and take it back under warranty (3 years from Best Buy).

I had an IBM clone about fifteen years ago. The 10 Meg drive did not like warm weather running sideways up, cooling fan next to it kept it running. Finally got to the point I had to lift the whole case up a quarter inch and drop it on the table to start it up.

Strange as it may sound, putting a dead or dying hard drive in the freezer really may revive it for long enough to get your data off of it. I put the bad drive in an external USB case inside two freezer bags for 24 to 72 hours. Then I connect a very long USB cable to it and shut the freezer door again. I connect this to my laptop on the kitchen counter. Then you can use a disk imaging software like Acronis to make an image of the bad hard drive.

Whether this makes economic sense or not is another question. It probably doesn't if you have other paid work to do.
If there is any data that is really important to you, don't try this but get professional help.

Some companies have had the drive manufacturers burn custom BIOS in the drive electronics precluding this.