External HD problem **Help**

s8n

Folks,

I really hope someone can help me. I have an Iomega branded (actually a Seagate 7200 Barracuda) 500GB external usb drive. The drive is full (was bringing it home for Xmas and it dropped to the ground.

It now powers up and beeps every 15 seconds or so.

Also, the laptop cannot see the drive. It's a Sata drive and I have no way of mounting ot in another pc (only have a lapper at present).

Can anyone offer some words of advise here, or does anyone feel they could salvage the contents after xmas (for a fee of course).

Please, any advise and help greatly appreciated.

Biggins

So the internal (discs) spindles turns can you tell within it for definate?
Does the power light stay constantly on?
Does the beeping come direct from the external drive of the laptop speakers? (Just confirming this for my own satisfaction)

s8n

Appreciate the quick reply, I have taken the drive out of it's casing and from examination there seems to be no physical damage to the drive. The external plastic casing was fine also, it did.n't fall too far (bed to the floor) but the shock has caused the damae

I power it up, power stays on, the drive hums into live (normal sound, so I would imagine that the spindles are ok), then after about 10 - 15 seconds lets out a diagnostic type beep (from the drive). It then continues this cycle.

Windows explorer (via USB connection) never sees the device, so I cant run any diagnostics etc....

Also, I only have a laptop, so no option of remounting into a different PC.

BUSHtheBOLLOX

same thing happened to me.worst hdd i have ever come across.mine toppled over and the exact same bleeping noise came from it.i also opened mine up everything seemed in place.ended up in the wheelie bin:mad::mad:

Biggins

I'll be honest, it sounds like the reading pins on the arms that stretch across the inner discs, have at least become misaligned.

If its this, it is not something that you or most would be able to fix. It's a case of bringing it to a specialist.

I hope there was nothing really important. I know myself what it's like to lose an external.

ttm

You say you opened it up; did you also try mouting the HDD directly in a PC?

I have had a couple of dropped drives work if plugged into a PC after the USB HDD unit was dropped. Just a matter of (bad) luck what gets damaged, normally its the physical part of the drive inside the HDD itself and that means its a bin job, but just occasionally its the little bit of electronics that connect the HDD to the USB cable that are damaged so the drive itself might be useable - but don't hold out too much hope, try it all the same.

Edit> Sorry missed the fact that you only had a laptop.

s8n

thanks for the replies so far folks, apart from mounting it in a pc, any other tips or hints, I'm desparate

s8n

anything ?

Esel

Can you visually inspect all the connections inside the case? Might be an issue with the USB-out, or even the connection to the drive itself. Try reseating anything you can.

stylie

Can u stick it into another casing ? perhaps borrow a friends one..at least it will eliminate one of the possible problems..but it does sound like the heads in the disk are out of alignment meaning you could be out of luck.

tricky D

Biggins wrote: »

I'll be honest, it sounds like the reading pins on the arms that stretch across the inner discs, have at least become misaligned.

If its this, it is not something that you or most would be able to fix. It's a case of bringing it to a specialist.

Unfortunately, this sounds quite likely. However if you want to take a gamble that it not an internal fault within the actual hard drive such as Biggins has described, you could spend 20 euro on one of these:

SATA & IDE to USB 2.0 adapter
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=350325

If that doesn't work, you'll have to go to the data recovery people.

Esel

It could be a fault on the HDD motherboard. You could try swapping in the motherboard from another drive of the same model.