OH NO - My external hard drive has failed !!!!!

Japseye

Hi Guys ,

I have a maxtor 160gb one touch external usb2 drive thats died , well clicking noises etc coming from the drive . Took it outta the drive bay and put in into another drive bay and also as a slave in my pc but still the same .

In desperation I tried the freezer trick, putting it in a seal tight bag and kept it there for 2 hours . Took it out and the disk spun up again for about 1 minute but the pc didnt recognise it . Back to the old clicking/beeping noises .

so I guess the question has anyone ever sent their hard disk off to get their info retrieved ? I found this site, they're in Belfast http://www.easyrecovery.co.uk/Maxtorexternal_Recovery.html , has anyone used them , alot of work data on this drive .

Cheers

Shad0w

Hi Japseye,


It doesn't sound too good for your drive if you're hearing clicking noises coming from it. I have never had to send a drive off to be repaired ( Thankfully ) so I can't comment on that but you could try using a repair utility from available for Maxtor drives....

You can download it from here.


http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

From what I remember it takes quite a while to run but if it works it'll be worth it....

Japseye

Thanks Shad0w,

I've already tried the Seatools software that the seagate web site provided , they bought out Maxtor apparently some time ago . anyway when i try to run diags on the maxtor disk it crashes the software, i'm rightly goosed at this stage.

got a quote of between €500 to €800 for retrieval ????

Anyone else out there ever have send send off your disk to retrieve data ?

Cheers

V1llianous

In work we have used a crowd in Blanchardstown called Critical Data Recovery it might be worthwhile getting a quote off them. When we used them for drives and tape they did it on a no recovery no fee basis.

biologikal

I recovered data from a clicking hard drive using a USB->IDE/SATA cable, an external power supply, and File Scavenger. Computer techs at work said the disk was toast, but I don't think they tried very hard. Data wasn't mission critical, but still a bummer to loose, so I asked for the disk for experimentation.

I had tried numerous peices of software (including Knoppix), and the bag-in-a-freezer trick, but nothing else worked. Funny thing is that it was clicking when connected up though the PC normally, but when I used the power supply that came with the USB->IDE/SATA cable, it sounded like it was spinning normally, though a bit on the noisy side.

I think the key though is to try the best afordable solution at your disposal early, as it's probable that the amount of times you're going to be able to get it spinning are severely limited. After I recovered the data, I tried rebooting it, but it wouldn't. I guess it was it's last gasp of life.

Creamy Goodness

V1llianous wrote: »

In work we have used a crowd in Blanchardstown called Critical Data Recovery it might be worthwhile getting a quote off them. When we used them for drives and tape they did it on a no recovery no fee basis.

they cost upwards of 800euros for data recovery. had to use them before for my brother, no i get him to back up everything he does to a NAS which i turn i clone on to my pc. price being cast away, they were excellent really friendly helpful guys who even gave me a roll of white tape with "FRAGILE" written in red on the tape for free .

my brother learned the hard way of pc file storage and ain't going to make the same mistake again as it cost him dear.

Japseye

Thanks for all your suggestions guys, I've ended sending it off to a crowd in Belfast , quoted me between €500 - €800 , I'll keep ye posted on how well it goes .... hopefully better than my attempts