portable hard drive corrupt?

nicnac1 · 17 Aug 2009 at 15:51

Hey all

Got a portable hard drive which I bought a couple of years ago to backup my system. Now when I plug it in and try to open it the whole computer grinds to a halt! i can't do anything unless I yank the usb cable out. Have left it like that for a couple of hours to see if it would do anything but the computer stays frozen until it is unplugged.

Does it sound like it's corrupt? Is there anyway I can retrieve the info on it?

Many thanks

mattyfez · 17 Aug 2009 at 15:57

Remove it from its caddy and hook it up to your PC as an internal drive, then you can run diagnostics on it more easily

nicnac1 · 17 Aug 2009 at 16:06

thanks mattyfez

are there any good diagnostic tools for this sort of thing?

mothermachine · 17 Aug 2009 at 17:22

my external WD 1TB drives do this sometimes. they take aaaages to be read and vista periodically decides to have a little play with them while im in a game or working, pulling the system down to a slow grind. that said it's not as bad as you're getting.

nicnac1 · 17 Aug 2009 at 18:28

mattyfez said:
Remove it from its caddy and hook it up to your PC as an internal drive, then you can run diagnostics on it more easily

just removed the outer casing and there's no other connectors to connect it to the motherboard

Keltik THC · 17 Aug 2009 at 18:32

this is my worst nightmare, i have too much data on external HDDs and everytime i use them im paranoid they fail.

I really need to get my finger out and sort out some backups for my external data.

nicnac1 · 17 Aug 2009 at 18:40

i'm just installing the latest drivers for it
i'm praying that works...

mattyfez · 17 Aug 2009 at 20:07

nicnac1 said:
just removed the outer casing and there's no other connectors to connect it to the motherboard

Is it a laptop HDD or a standard size HDD? you may need an extra cable to plug it into your PC as a second drive, is it a SATA drive or an IDE drive?

mothermachine · 17 Aug 2009 at 20:57

i personally only ever use externals for backups. i keep all original files on internal HDDs then SyncBack everything over.

as has been said you'll need the data cable and power cable to run the thing outside of it's enclosure. either sata, pata or usb, whichever the drive has.

OldComputerGuy7 · 17 Aug 2009 at 23:55

I had a similar problem with a portable harddrive but turned out it was the caddy that was playing up not the drive. So maybe when you get the drive connected like said above it should be okay.
Im thinking of getting another portable drive as a double backup just incase.

mattyfez · 18 Aug 2009 at 00:14

OldComputerGuy7 said:
I had a similar problem with a portable harddrive but turned out it was the caddy that was playing up not the drive. So maybe when you get the drive connected like said above it should be okay.
Im thinking of getting another portable drive as a double backup just incase.

Good point, I took a caddy back to a shop once because it stopped working, I got the distinct impression It wasnt the first one the guy had seen... it was only a cheap one though, and the replacement is still holding out.

nicnac1 · 18 Aug 2009 at 12:22

well, last night i installed the latest drivers, removed the casing etc and no joy. Computer still grinding to a hault.
When the case is removed there are no other connectors, just firewire and usb so not sure i'll be able to plug it in to the motherboard as an internal drive.

it's the 60GB version of this

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/...ata_sheets/onetouch_iii_mini_datasheet_en.pdf

not sure what else i can do now