External hard drive failed

Strider590

I take it that it's a 3.5" drive with an external power supply?

In the first instance my money would be on power supply failure (or the connector) OR in the case of a 2.5", insufficient power from USB port, try a rear port or use a Y cable.

DCFC79

Strider590 wrote: »

I take it that it's a 3.5" drive with an external power supply?

In the first instance my money would be on power supply failure (or the connector) OR in the case of a 2.5", insufficient power from USB port, try a rear port or use a Y cable.

Yes a big 3.5" drive, it keeps on aksing to format it when I plug it in in another enclosure.

enfield_freddy wrote: »

if the drive is an IDE , it is quite a few yrs old

an old trick , not used for years , "if the drive spins" , place in a freezer bag and freeze (not solid) , try again

Not heard of that so Ill give it a try.

Thanks for your help, ill try the freezing option and see what happens.

bsod

Freezing is the worst thing you can do if you really want the data back, it's bad advice.

enfield_freddy

bsod wrote: »

Freezing is the worst thing you can do if you really want the data back, it's bad advice.

yup bad advice as given by many companies (inc this one) http://www.datarecoverygroup.com/articles/freezing-your-hard-drive-bad-idea that will happily charge you £500 for recovery


however a simple search on google for "freezing bad hard drive" shows that quite a few people have successfully retrieved data from a corrupt drive


so it seems that after the OP has tried the suggested methods we are left with


1: send drive off for recovery , inc a cheque for £500


2: try the feezing method ,


3: try suggestion two , if he has failure and the items are worth £500 revert to one

bsod

How do you think adding a layer of water droplets between the head and the platter and adding water to electronics is going to improve the situation.

Perhaps the people who do data recovery professionally know a little more about how a hard disk works and fails than Joe Bloggs.

Best course of action other than pay for recovery, is find a machine with a motherboard ide adapter and try recovery software.

The fact windows is attempting and failing to mount the filesystem, so is suggesting a format, suggests a logical corruption, freezing it could turn that into a physical problem.

See if the drive shows up in disk management. (diskmgmt.msc) - if it does, the data is probably recoverable with software. The disk manufacturer may have a free tool available to aid diagnosis too.

enfield_freddy

, "if the drive spins" , place in a freezer bag and freeze (not solid) , try again


I seem to recall that the head and discs are actually sealed from the fresh air


so as not to let the ingress of damp/dust/ baby elephants etc


OP , forget reading all the Poz comments on google , do not watch any YouTube videos , because BSOD says it won't work

bsod

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/clouds/what-are-clouds

almillar

a layer of water droplets between the head and the platter

As enfield freddy says, that's a vacuum inside, so not gonna happen.
Anyway, FIRST step is to try another power source, be that another enclosure, or inside your computer with a SATA adaptor as above.
'asking to format' would indicate that the drive itself physically is OK, and that Windows doesn't like something with the MBR or something at the very start of it. Stay away from the freezer unless you're hearing bad noises.

[Deleted User]

almillar wrote: »

'asking to format' would indicate that the drive itself physically is OK, and that Windows doesn't like something with the MBR or something at the very start of it.

Could try rebuilding the MBR.

ETA: OP, have you tried viewing the drive in Command Prompt?

bsod

almillar wrote: »

As enfield freddy says, that's a vacuum inside, so not gonna happen.
.

more misinformation.

Freezer bags aren't vacuum devices either. Things coming out of a domestic freezer are wet, bagged or not.