Hard drive failure

leetaylor.1138

I have had a Seagate Barracuda external hard drive fail and I have been told it is totaly screwed by a friend who does PC repairs. Is it possible for the actual disk to be taken out and put into another drive so I can retrieve my info?

poppellerant

You might be able to put the harddisk into another machine, but I would very strongly advise against booting up the current Windows installation - just in case the drive is working, and Windows could well crash because of different hardware.

You say you have a SeaTools harddrive, so you'll need to download SeaTools:- http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/

What you'll need to do, is connect your harddrive up in the new machine. If it's SATA, the job is fairly simple - connect the harddrive, ensure drive is detected in BIOS then run SeaTools to test the harddrive.

If it's IDE, it would be ideal if there are 2 IDE ports, and connect the harddrive to one which is either not in use, or in use by just a CD/DVD drive. Again, ensure drive is detected, and run SeaTools.

It would help us if we knew what make and model machines we are dealing with. If you don't have these but have access to the machines, use something like SIW - but it'll be hard on the currently broken machine.

prowla

Is it the enclosure that has failed or the hard drive within it?

If it is the enclosure then yes you can swap the hard drive within it to another.

If it is the hard drive itself then to may be stuffed.
You should not open the drive itself (to reveal a brown rust coloured disk), because that will totally trash it.
There are companies that specialize in data retrieval, but I don't think they are cheap.

prowla

poppellerant wrote: »

You might be able to put the harddisk into another machine, but I would very strongly advise against booting up the current Windows installation - just in case the drive is working, and Windows could well crash because of different hardware.

You say you have a SeaTools harddrive, so you'll need to download SeaTools:- http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/

What you'll need to do, is connect your harddrive up in the new machine. If it's SATA, the job is fairly simple - connect the harddrive, ensure drive is detected in BIOS then run SeaTools to test the harddrive.

If it's IDE, it would be ideal if there are 2 IDE ports, and connect the harddrive to one which is either not in use, or in use by just a CD/DVD drive. Again, ensure drive is detected, and run SeaTools.

It would help us if we knew what make and model machines we are dealing with. If you don't have these but have access to the machines, use something like SIW - but it'll be hard on the currently broken machine.

It's an external hard drive, the OP said.

poppellerant

prowla wrote: »

It's an external hard drive, the OP said.

So it is...oops.

robmar0se

prowla wrote: »

Is it the enclosure that has failed or the hard drive within it?

If it is the enclosure then yes you can swap the hard drive within it to another.

If it is the hard drive itself then to may be stuffed.
You should not open the drive itself (to reveal a brown rust coloured disk), because that will totally trash it.
There are companies that specialize in data retrieval, but I don't think they are cheap.

Agree!

Have had a couiple of WD My Book externals that have failed, where it was the enclosure circuit board that failed not the disk. So carefully remove the hdd and either put into another enclosure, or attach it internally and run chkdsk n: /r - where "n" is the drive letter.

tombruton87

if the enclosure has failed do as above.

if the disk has failed is it making a clicking noise? somtimes a temporary fix is sticking it in the freezer for half an hour then seeing if it will work. this is a tempory fix and wont last long. you could get adventerous and get a dust cubard and rebuild the drive, however probly not worth it, unless u really need the data back. any hard drive can be recovered in theory at a price even hdd that have been though a shredder, electromagneticly wiped drives are harder but still possible

googler

robmar0se wrote: »

So carefully remove the hdd and either put into another enclosure, or attach it internally ....

Of course, when 'attaching it internally' you install it as a secondary drive, and leave the primary drive in place......