Broken External Hard drive

Catty212

Can anyone give me any suggestions about what to do with a Toshiba 500GB 2.5" v63700-A external hard drive.

It has a clicking noise and the computer doesnt pick it up when it's plugged in.

Is there anyway we can get the data from it?

closed

clicking is usually a sign of disk failure, if so, data recovery is very expensive.

The only diy possibility is removing the disk internally and trying in a different caddy or wiring internally in a pc, but from the symptoms described that's unlikely to work.

bluesnake

youtube has quite a fair bit on drive recovery and building clean boxes, including finding spare PCBs on ebay, and drive mechanics parts replacement. It is a bit of work and no guarantee, plus these days much of the faulty sector mapping is stored on the PCB.

Catty212

Thanks for the replies folks.
I havent a clue where to start looking for a recovery company. Any idea of prices?
There are some photos that I'd really prefer not too loose ....

closed

have the photo's ever been on another machine, data card, that you still own?

£100's

andy2004

recovery companies are expensive.

1. find out how to disasmble the enclosure, usually there a rubber feet which can be removed which have screws underneath. Youtube is a great source of instructions type in toshiba 500gb.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BluMCbYKK_g heres a idea.

2 connect the internal drive to your sata internal or buy a cheap enclosure from either ebay / novatech, and see if you can get the data or it that way.
prices around £3-5

when it shows copy the data over.
if it doesnt show its most probably the hdd dead.
Then you can think of spending hundreds to get your pictures off.
Believe most companies charge per gb.

macman

Do you not have a current back-up of your data then?
Try the caddy route first; for a tenner or so it's worth a try.
If no joy, then forensic recovery starts at about £350, though there's no guarantee of success, in which case a nominal inspection charge will be made.

Ainsley1

Hate to say but backup, BACKUP folks. Maybe too late for you but please learn everyone.

On a more positive note it might just be worth downloading the free Seagate tools for disk drives. It does sound as if the HD might be 'dead' but it's worth running the tools, it bypasses windows booting from it's own operating system, and if it can it will give you more info about the problem.

JohnG

My son dropped and broke his seperate hard drive a couple of years ago so took it to a local PC trouble shooting business and they were able to get the data off and put on to another HDD I took in and was charged about £30 for their trouble. I gave them bit extra as we were so relieved to be able to get the data without costing us £100s. :j