Broken External Hard Drive. HELP!!!!!

$tormer

I bought a Western Digital 500GB external hard drive over a year ago. I let it drop from a height of only 1 or 2 feet and its broke The WD website says my warranty has run out!

THE PROBLEM: I have around 350GB of movies and music etc on it and I hope I can recover it!
The drive boots up but there is a clicking noise and it doesnt sound good. The noise just repeats over and over. It wont show up on windows either. Someone told me I probably broke the needle inside it.

Can somebody please help? I'll pay whatever the costs are.....

Kevster

I had a similar problem (heard that 'clicking' noise too). Sometimes, my computer could read the disk and it was then that I copied everything I could off it to my main hard disk. I then simply went out and bought a new external disk.

Look, the data is still on your disk, but you may need to get professional service to get it off.

NullZer0

Hold on... how are you connecting to this drive?

If its still in the case can you remove it and install it as a second drive in a desktop?
I can have a crack at this if you are interested?

There are a few steps you can try first though

CHW

I recovered data from a clicking hard drive a few months ago using File Scavenger and a USB>IDE/SATA cable. As an experiment, I managed to recover the data 3 times (IIRC) before the drive was completely knackered, so evaluate your options wisely, and treat every time you connect it up to power as possibly being the last time it's going to spin up.

And having freaked you out saying that, it might be worth opening the enclosure, and making sure the hard drive is connected properly (disconnect and reconnect it up), and as iRock says, try connecting directly to the IDE or SATA bus and see how you get on from there.

EDIT: Whoever told you about a broken needle in there was winding you up! Hard drives will always click starting up, it's just that when the clicking is constant, either the electronics are shot, or some physical damage to the motor that drives the head across the platters (from what I've gathered from research).

gamer

get usb to hd,sata ,or usb to ide unit from mapins 40euro 5,open case is drive sata,or ide, sata connector is much smaller than ide size,read the manual first ,plug in the cabes ,turn on unit power ,then plug usb cable into the pc.be really careful,copy files to a pc folder.it may take pc 4 mins to recognise the drive,click my computer ,it should show up as drive d,e,or f.DO NOT TURN ON EXTERNAL USB unit or turn off while usb cable is inside your pc,turn off pc FIRST.

$tormer

iRock wrote: »

Hold on... how are you connecting to this drive?

If its still in the case can you remove it and install it as a second drive in a desktop?
I can have a crack at this if you are interested?

There are a few steps you can try first though

Thanks for the tips iRock. I already took out the Hard drive from the enclosure and its a Serial ATA drive. I put another one in and it worked fine so its definitely the hard drive thats bust! I put the broken one into a computer but no joy. So where abouts do you live iRock? Anywhere near Mayo/Galway?

$tormer

Kevster wrote: »

I had a similar problem (heard that 'clicking' noise too). Sometimes, my computer could read the disk and it was then that I copied everything I could off it to my main hard disk. I then simply went out and bought a new external disk.

Look, the data is still on your disk, but you may need to get professional service to get it off.

Thanks for your quick reply Kevster. So how much roughly is it to get the data professionally accessed and taken off it do you reckon?

$tormer

CHW wrote: »

I recovered data from a clicking hard drive a few months ago using File Scavenger and a USB>IDE/SATA cable.

And having freaked you out saying that, it might be worth opening the enclosure, and making sure the hard drive is connected properly (disconnect and reconnect it up)

Thanks for replying CHW. So does it make a difference if I connect the hard drive through USB rather than through the enclosure? I can get a cable on eBay pretty cheap which is a plus!

10-10-20

For any type of data recovery where there is suspected head damage, you're looking at ~€1000+. I've known it to be up to €5k though.
If the issue had been non-mechanical (controller board) then you could be looking at something in the range of €250.

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk/hard-drive-recovery/
http://www.drivesavers.com/recovery-services/international-service/

gman2k

If you do manage to get it connect via the usb/sata route, try unstoppable copier
I had this same problem before with a hard drive that I dropped.
Luckily, my drive was visible to windows on connection, but normal copying method crashed regularly.
Using the above programme, I was able to recover about 99% of my files!

BostonB

Clciking sounds mechanical.

Movies and music doesn't sound important. Especially if you never thought it was important to back up. Probably easier just to start collecting it again. I'm guessing, you probably only use a tiny fraction of that data. It would take you years to watch/listen to it. I think we've got into a habit of hoarding data because we can. But we rarely need most of it.