[-Hox-]

Hey all,

My 500gb external decided to give up after I bumbed it against a wall while moving my PC. I can't believe how frail these things are, how annoying.

I've stripped the drive from the external case and powered it up, but it doesn't spin. It tries, but after a few attempts, it stops. I've think it might be sticktion or whatever it's called. It's crap anyway.

So... I've basically lost (potentially) all of my music, movies, blah blah... but, worst of all, my digital photo archive - every photo I've got (or had)! I really want this stuff back, but can't really afford the £££ that most data recovery places want to charge.

Does anyone know what I can do to save some pounds and recover my data?

Cheers!

[tb888]

It might be the control circuit for caddy that is damaged (good chance, seen it happen alot). You could remove it from the caddy (it will be a standard hard disk inside) then just hook it up to your motherboard like any other internal hard disk, see what happens. What make is it btw? Just out of interest.

[-Hox-]

Cheers for the reply. I've already stripped it down to the bare drive and powered it up, but it won't spin... that's why I'm thinking along the sticktion lines - following the bump, I thought maybe the head has stuck to a platter or something.

It's a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500gb from a Freeagent Pro.

Has anyone repaired their own HD before? I understand you need a VERY clean work environment?!

[smokey_jnr]

2 things you need to do..

first, connect this directly to mainboard as mentioned above, then you need ERD Commander 2002/03 on there is a magic recovery tool which you can use to recover your data....

[Street Hawk]

Hi,
There are only a couple of options i can give you to & some advice...
the best thing to do is try a couple of things.. if you have the reasources.

1. if you can find another hard drive made by the same company it is possible (if you know how) to change the circuit board underneath the hard drive its self & see if you can access the drive setup as a slave drive on your machine.

2. unfortunatley as in the 1st option there is a high risk factor that it maynot work although it has been known before in the past to work. you could if you knew what you were doing open the drive and check the platters & the heads of the drive but you will need to be in a Dust free enviroment & i cannot stress that enough.

3. The best option would be to take it to a data recovery company who will be able to rescue your data as it sounds like a mechanical fault and the more you turn it on and try to access it, or even just powering it on. will reduce your chance of getting your data back....

**The Down side.... you will need to spend some £££ but if the data is worth it you will consider spending the £££ to get the data back**
** The Good Side.. is that i know of a data recovery company that are great, they have a "No fix No Fee" policy and have recovered all data i have sent to them in the past. 100% success rate.. although you might know want to take my word for it as we dont know each other... so why not give them a try and see for yourself? you simpley send them your failed drive, they will do what they do best & once they have completed their work they will send you a screen shot of your data from your hard drive, of what they can recovery if not all the drive.. and the best part about it hasnt cost you a penny so far! ... now once your happy thats the data you require they will give you a price of recovering your data which in my experience has been no more than £520 max.. and now you have a choice...
you can either proceed with the recovery of your data..
or decide not to bother if you feel the data aint worth the recovery cost?

that decision is entirley yours alone, but i deff recommend these guys for data recovery. i work for a global company that cannot afford to loose data from our servers when the drives go wrong.. so.. we need use these guys to guarantee our data gets back to us.
if you want the link for the data recovery company then feel free to PM me and ill sent you the link. i would post it here but am not sure i would be allowed to just incase it upsets anyone if i did.
Good Luck what ever you decide to do.
Regards

Street.

[dctyper]

once stripped down can the drive be put in the pc? if so, do a disk check(new version of scan disc) has worked for me before.

note: on the side of the drive it should say how many g's force it can take. this will give you an idea of wether the disc is broken or not

[-Hox-]

Originally Posted by dctyper once stripped down can the drive be put in the pc? if so, do a disk check(new version of scan disc) has worked for me before. note: on the side of the drive it should say how many g's force it can take. this will give you an idea of wether the disc is broken or not

I can't run anything on the HD as it won't even spin up. It's got a mechanical fault, pretty sure the head's bound to a platter. The HD says it can take 350 G's... which means absolutly nothing to me!