External HardDrive BackUp

aka79

Ok i have a Maxtor External Hard Drive in which i use to back up all my data, music, photos, college work, etc. Ive got a lot of stuff on it. Its a 500GB Drive. Anyway, i was uploading photos from it, the other night, onto an online site, and due to the internet speeds been slow the download wasnt success, so i just left it and then about an hour later, the HD started making a strange noise , kinda like a ping pong ball dropping noise from the HD. And now my computer wont read the HD.Is the HD dying? Is their anyway, i can save my data? Im talking nearly 7 years worth of stuff here!

JonathanAnon

Had a guy ringing me about something similar a few weeks ago.. External hard drive is not a good means of storage as they are likely to just stop working ... I told the guy to try it every few days, and luckily enough it worked long enough for him to get all his stuff from it... And maybe you could try something similar..

I also told him to try the external drive on another PC to make sure that there was nothing wrong with the hardware/software that was preventing the drive from working, BUT if you are hearing noises from the drive then I wouldnt think there is any point in doing this.

good luck..

DannyBuoy

aka79, if your only copy of your data is on 1 external hard drive then thats not a good situation to be in. Given the price of them at the moment I'd suggest having 2 and keeping them in sync.
I've found with external hard drives its not if it'll fail, its when...
A bit paranoid maybe but I've lost data because of a hard drive failure and it wont happen again.
Def try the hard drive in an other pc, and if that doesn't work then have someone strip out the hard drive out of it and connect directly to a pc. If you're not comfortable doing this give it to a geeky friend!

wolfric

Please don't tell me it sounds like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbq8vfs1wYY

You'll need more than plugging it directly into your pc to get it work

There are various quick fixes and solutions. One good one that's proved to work over and over is to freeze your hard drive in the freezer and then try it. This will probably only give you long enough to retrieve your data. Make sure you have enough space ready before you go for it.

BostonB

I've never had an external drive fail. Even the one I carry around all the time. Mind you they are mainly 2.5 drives which are more shock proof.

But any drive, internal or external can fail. So you should have multiple copies of your data. At least three of your important stuff.

If this drive is a backup, there should be an original copy on your PC.

Otherwise is not a backup. If its your only copy, I'd run out get two replacement drives, then do the fridge trick and copy everything off it. don't use the bad drive until your ready to copy from it. The fridge trick worked for me on someone else drive.

xtal191

My 500gb external hard drive stopped working recently, does that freezer trick really work??

BostonB

I've seen it work once. Just enough to get the data off the drive.