My WD External hard drive has crashed

rose28454

I bought a WD External hard drive from Amazon a couple of months ago as I was having computer problems and wanted to preserve some data. I went to access something this morning and it wont come on. I have a little computer man nearby who always is very helpful. I thought it was the power supply but I have just come back from his workshop and he says it is not the power supply. He thinks it could be the circuit board. I am desperate to preserve the data and it seems the only option is to open it and he will extract the data and put it on a new drive for me.
Question is I really could do with my money back from Amazon but will they give it back if I have fiddled with it? Also cheapest place to buy a replacement? It was a 1tb one I bought from Amazon.

Chimpofdoom

The problem with most external hard drives are.. is that if they fail your up the creak without a paddle.
If someone has popped it open the warranty will probably be voided.
As for replacements you can buy them from Amazon, ebuyer, scan.co.uk, Tesco, Asda, PC world. It all comes down to what your looking for.

As for more secure solutions to protect that valuable data, you need to be looking at RAID solutions. However the problem here is they are very expensive!

I'm currently looking at buying a DROBO FS, but they do have a normal DROBO which retails about £300 without hard drives. Basically you load it with normal hard drives (say 2 just now), it configures it, you place your data onto it. Couple of months down the line, say one of those drives fails, you eject it, pop in a new one and your data is copied onto it! Costs more money, but worth the peace of mind I think.

tweeter

I don't know if this has got any legs on it but...

http://www.datarecoverypros.com/hard-drive-recovery-freeze.html


HTH

googler

rose28454 wrote: »

He thinks it could be the circuit board. I am desperate to preserve the data and it seems the only option is to open it and he will extract the data and put it on a new drive for me.

You could do this yourself. Open the enclosure, remove the hard drive within, and install this as a secondary drive in (I assume) your desktop PC.

This won't help you if it is actually the HDD itself that has failed.

It will void the warranty, but the warrantly will probably only give you a replacement drive and won't cover the data on it anyway, so to my mind if your data is the important thing, the warranty is worthless.

rose28454

My techie guy has taken it apart and said it was the circuit board. He is now waiting for me to get a new hd. He says the files may all now be un named and I would have to re-name them. I am away working for 2 weeks so wont have time to get one yet. Also my techie guy is moving his shop so he is busy too.
So now suggestions for a good hard drive. I want one between 500
GB and 1TB as I want to copy some series across as my son has loads on his hard drive.

closed

What circuit board is he talking about, the enclosure or the controller board. Have you got the hard disk back? If the disk is working, just put it into a new enclosure or attach internally to a pc, your filenames will still be there. If he's taken it out to test, he should know the data is still there, so the files need renaming statement is questionable.

Mista_C

If it's the circuit board of the external interface that's faulty then the hard drive and contents should be intact. This would mean a simple case of purchasing a new caddy to put the old drive into.

You shouldn't need to buy a new drive unless it's the actual drive that's at fault. The files being "un-named" and needing renaming makes little sense. If the file system were corrupt or the physical disc platters in the drive were damaged then file recovery would be needed but for a circuit board the explanation you have been given sounds like techno-babble for squeezing cash out of you.

Maybe ask him to write down his diagnosis and give you an estimate of the cost and parts so you can shop around, see what he has to say to that?

rose28454

Mista_C wrote: »

If it's the circuit board of the external interface that's faulty then the hard drive and contents should be intact. This would mean a simple case of purchasing a new caddy to put the old drive into.

You shouldn't need to buy a new drive unless it's the actual drive that's at fault. The files being "un-named" and needing renaming makes little sense. If the file system were corrupt or the physical disc platters in the drive were damaged then file recovery would be needed but for a circuit board the explanation you have been given sounds like techno-babble for squeezing cash out of you.

Maybe ask him to write down his diagnosis and give you an estimate of the cost and parts so you can shop around, see what he has to say to that?

Sorry for the delay in replying. He only charges a jar of coffee and a packet of biscuits. He has not let me down with any of my other computer problems so I trust him. He has a small shop and only charges a nominal amount ( coffee and biscuits honestly).Will report back soon

buglawton

I have had these drives apparently pack up on me (were not in any way recognizable by Windows) and managed to recover the drive if not the data, by reformatting and/or using a downloadable utility from WD's website to repair the low level format. It is a much deeper utility than Windows offers.

Some examples of the software - will depend on your model number though:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=111&level1=1&modelno=&lang=en

Pikeyp

WD guarantee thier hard drives for 3 years , so if your friend can get your files back you can send it back for a direct replacement!

amcluesent

IFAIK the "circuit board" contains EEPROM memory chips which contain all the configuration data from factory testing of the drive, inc. info such as the bad-sector map. Chances are if you swap the board from another drive, you'll get nothing off the disk. If the data really is that valuable, it's a data recovery firm and a bill of £500+.