I think you're better off starting from scratch-- but keep the old drive around. Worst case, if you do need some data off the drive you can go back and try to do the recovery when you actually need it, rather than put future backups at risk by starting off with a sketchy incremental backup.

[quote|Kyle Wiens]I think you're better off starting from scratch-- but keep the old drive around. Worst case, if you do need some data off the drive you can go back and try to do the recovery when you actually need it, rather than put future backups at risk by starting off with a sketchy incremental backup.[/quote]

just a thought...

I've seen a couple external hard drives "die" i.e. fail to mount, but in fact it turned out that the hard drive mechanism itself was fine and instead the firewire interface board in the external drive had failed.

I have one of those USB 2.0 -> universal hard drive adapters, it lets you connect any bare drive via USB (e.g. Newertech) - I disassembled the external drive case and connected the bare drive mechanism to my Mac using the USB drive adapter. the drive itself was fine. So I bought a new external drive enclosure to put the bare drive in.

even if this works, if your drive was showing signs of dying before it failed completely (e.g. strange noises), you might not want to bother putting it into a new enclosure. however with this universal drive adapter you might at least be able to salvage your data and transfer it to a new drive.

an alternative - if you don't have one of these adapters but have a spare external drive lying around, you could try swapping the internal drive mechanisms to see if your "dead" drive works in another enclosure

good luck

[quote|bac]just a thought... I've seen a couple external hard drives "die" i.e. fail to mount, but in fact it turned out that the hard drive mechanism itself was fine and instead the firewire interface board in the external drive had failed. I have one of those USB 2.0 -> universal hard drive adapters, it lets you connect any bare drive via USB (e.g. Newertech) - I disassembled the external drive case and connected the bare drive mechanism to my Mac using the USB drive adapter. the drive itself was fine. So I bought a new external drive enclosure to put the bare drive in. even if this works, if your drive was showing signs of dying before it failed completely (e.g. strange noises), you might not want to bother putting it into a new enclosure. however with this universal drive adapter you might at least be able to salvage your data and transfer it to a new drive. an alternative - if you don't have one of these adapters but have a spare external drive lying around, you could try swapping the internal drive mechanisms to see if your "dead" drive works in another enclosure good luck[/quote]