repair of external hard drive

scammer101

Can anyone offer advice of how to repair an external hard drive which is experincing the 'click of death'? Or do I need to bite the bullet and pay for disc recovery Thanks in advance.

Komplett: Marc

I hate to say it, but disc recovery tends to be the safest way to go... as someone who lost a drive a couple of months ago, my heart goes out to you

ricman

You could try hardrive freeze trick,google it.
Back the data to another drive,once you turn off the drive it may not work again.OR put it inside a hardrive caddy.Place tape on the hd pcb board,to gaurd against short circuits , or static damage.
Can you read any data at the moment, is the pc detecting it .
OR GENTLY place it inside a pc,set jumper to slave, ie its drive d,or e.
Maybe the mbr master boot record is damaged.but clicking noise shows its nearly dead.
OR try a linuz livecd or see www.ntfs.com ,for a windows livecd.
Boot from the cdrom, can you browse the drive.
LEAVE the pc on until all the data is backed up to another drive.
See here http://fracturednoesis.com/?p=129

bonzodog2

You might investigate trying a replacement circuit board for the disk. If that doesn't work the drive probably needs to be opened, which strictly needs a clean room environment. There are some interesting videos on YouTube that may interest/help you.

Good luck, and for next time.......BACKUP STRATEGY !!
Maybe its just some family videos/pics this time, but think how it would be if it were mission-critical data for a business.

scammer101

Hi Fellas,
The advice is very much appreciated. I reckon its data recovery experts who'll be 'helping' on this this one. Ricman, I tried the freezing technique, didn't work, but good fun having a go at it. The youtube clip of the hammer approach was very tempting . The funny thing is I got a 1tb mmhd to back all the data from the dead one, but on attempting to start it up to transfer, it decided to give up. Bloody WD!! Thanks again fellas, I'll let you know how it goes, if you want.

ricman

you can swap in a pcb from another drive eg seagate wxm760l, it must be exact same model.

bonzodog2

A video I was watching tonight on HD recovery suggested its a good idea to get one (replacement PCB) manufactured within a couple of months of the recipient drive, as sometimes the firmware can change, and the board could be made by a completely different factory.

Here's the video, pt 1 of 9

Capt'n Midnight

unless there are only a few files to recover then learn about ddrescue with a linux live cd

freezer trick + ddrescue to second HDD ( later you can mount the image and run photorec on it)

the try swapping the motherboard, make sure exact match though , but it won't help if the problem is a drive crash

after that then you have to spend the big bucks

scammer101

WTF, I've time to try it out. I'll keep you guys posted to see how much damage I do!!Thanks again for all the help.

unnameduser

Best of luck!

Eircom_Sucks

ive a 2tb western digital my book external drive

i dropped it and the actual usb connector into the external drive came out , like it ripped off the circuit board.

ive got all my data off it with ide leads and another drive but id like to get this drive repaired as long as it doesnt cost the earth

Capt'n Midnight

if you got the data off with an IDE cable just buy a new enclosure for it

not worth repairing for two reasons , the repair will cost more than an empty enclosure from komplett and besides there is a chance the board has been streessed and may fail in the future

anyone can replace hardware, but no one else can replace your data

zerohamster

its true, a new enclosure would be the way to go and much cheaper then repair

Eircom_Sucks wrote: »

ive a 2tb western digital my book external drive

i dropped it and the actual usb connector into the external drive came out , like it ripped off the circuit board.

ive got all my data off it with ide leads and another drive but id like to get this drive repaired as long as it doesnt cost the earth

cable842

that happened too me and i ripped out the hard drive and hook it up using a external usb adaptor

Eircom_Sucks wrote: »

ive a 2tb western digital my book external drive

i dropped it and the actual usb connector into the external drive came out , like it ripped off the circuit board.

ive got all my data off it with ide leads and another drive but id like to get this drive repaired as long as it doesnt cost the earth