Borked hard drive?

TheCenturion · 21 Oct 2011 at 17:15

Mate has an external hard drive, its enclosure requires it to be plugged into the wall. Apparently someone mistakenly tried to plug his laptop charger into the hard drive enclosure. This external HD no longer works anymore.

Either the HD has been killed, or the psu of the enclosure is broken. When he plugs it in, the lights don't come on.

I suggested testing the HD on a pc, but he doesn't have the know how to do that, nor is he able to retrieve the drive from the enclosure. Is there any other way to test whether it's the enclosure that's dead or the drive?

Thanks very much

kae2 · 21 Oct 2011 at 17:19

Plug drive into computer... that's the only way to test it.

Clav · 21 Oct 2011 at 17:35

He needs to get it out of the enclosure. Just google the make and model there are surely some step by step instructions out there somewhere.

marms · 23 Oct 2011 at 20:33

Youtube have videos of people opening most makes of external drives, it makes it easier to watch a video to see where the clips holding the drive closed are.

weird_dave · 24 Oct 2011 at 09:22

I suspect the drive will be completely knackered to be honest, too many volts from the laptop supply

If your mate does manage to get the drive out, to start with don't attach the data cable, only the power. If the drive powers up then you might want to try it with the data cable.

edscdk · 24 Oct 2011 at 09:25

take it to the local PC fixing guy...?