External HD Problem..Anyone?

[cgscott]

Yep its still under manufacture warranty.
Its a western digital drive.
Downloading recovery program from the site now.
Hopefully all is not lost.

[Stuart 0366]

You say drive is clicking. That sounds like the platters are hitting off something within the drive itself and being damaged in turn by this. You will be lucky if all of the data on the drive is still fine, you may find some has gone by the wayside.

Someone I know had this self same problem not long ago and the advice all came up with was to try and get the platters out and into another HDD casing. This is a fairly delicate job and if you are not confident in something like that then it will have to be a professional that is gonna cost the earth.

Sorry to be the bearer of more bad news

[cgscott]

I phoned the company and they are going to replace the drive.

Before i send it on i will have a few attempts at recover.
I did think this was an internal problem.

Must say the techi support for Western Digital is the best i've come accross in a long time and its a freephone number.

Anyway thanks for the help peeps.

[ruudvandan]

western digital drives are generally very good, so it does surprise me that yours has gone wrong. hope everything works out 4 u m8, but whatever you do, don't get a Hitachi! Then you'll know what a bad hard drive is.

[Meat-Head]

as you are getting a new drive as long as same board, swap the boards over.

i've had knackered drives before, but bios says hello.

nothing to loose except 320gb of data and a new circuit board!

[cgscott]

Not sure what you mean by that. Im getting a replacement drive.

What you mean new board?

I have tried on several systems now tryin to get bios to pick the drive up.

[chroma]

You say drive is clicking. That sounds like the platters are hitting off something within the drive itself and being damaged in turn by this. You will be lucky if all of the data on the drive is still fine, you may find some has gone by the wayside.

Someone I know had this self same problem not long ago and the advice all came up with was to try and get the platters out and into another HDD casing. This is a fairly delicate job and if you are not confident in something like that then it will have to be a professional that is gonna cost the earth.

Sorry to be the bearer of more bad news

Ive tried this a couple of times with limited success, the ratio of fail is high.

Its as close as i can imagine being to bomb disposal, where one single stupid insignificantly small error causes the whole thing to go down the pan.

Even a few microns of dust on the platter during the swap over can send it into a wobbler

Its good fun though, like playing "operation" whilst being drunk i guess.