External drive knackered - recoverable?

NotAGolf · 14 Feb 2010 at 21:40

Hi all.

Friend of mine bought round their knackered external hard drives to see what was wrong with it. Apparently it just stopped showing up in windows explorer one day. He bought a second one round as well that WAS working, but as soon as he plugged it in there was a smell of smoke and that too stopped working.

It just happened that he used the same power lead for the second one so we're pretty sure that there's something wrong with the power adapter and that it sent a power spike or something which fried the drives.

Just wondering if there's any chance of being able to get the data off them? Will probably have to rip apart the housing to get to the drive itself, but if I could do that, would it be possible to plug it into my desktop or even buy a caddie for it? Or would it have different connections so this method would be impossible?

Thanks for any help.

Lleot · 15 Feb 2010 at 01:15

Usually they are just normal drives in enclosures. So if you pull it apart you should be able to connect it to your computer, via a standard sata cable + power. If you a re using a laptop you'll probably have to buy an enclosure so you can connect is by usb. Something like this: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-004-AK.

NotAGolf · 16 Feb 2010 at 13:39

Lleot said:
Usually they are just normal drives in enclosures. So if you pull it apart you should be able to connect it to your computer, via a standard sata cable + power. If you a re using a laptop you'll probably have to buy an enclosure so you can connect is by usb. Something like this: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-004-AK.

Thanks Lleot. Is the data on the drive likely to be damaged or is the damage likely to be more to occur to something else? Just worried that I'll buy housing/wiring so I can connect it to my pc only for it not to work!

weird_dave · 17 Feb 2010 at 08:55

The actual data will be intact, the tricky part is getting at it.
I'd start with Lleots suggestion and plug it into your desktop PC like a normal drive.
But before you do, look for damage on the PCB of the drive, if anything has let its smoke out, don't bother.
The next thing to do would be to locate a drive with the same PCB and swap it over, this will probably involve buying one...