Reviving a hard disk…

Spider · 22 Jan 2008 at 09:55

We had a power cut the other day and my external USB hard-disk now wont turn on; even though it was plugged into a surge protector. The illumination on the bottom of the case now just flickers and the disk doesn’t appear to be powering up at all. As you can imagine there is some data on there that I’d really like to salvage, but the disk is just making a very faint clicking noise and not seemingly powering up fully.

Are there any ‘tricks’ I can use to get enough juice into the thing just to get some data off it?

Thanks

rpstewart · 22 Jan 2008 at 10:08

Is this a pre-built external unit, ie could it be easily dismantled to allow you to access the disk inside?

Spider · 22 Jan 2008 at 10:13

yes, its just a USB enclosure with a standard IDE HDD inside.

rpstewart · 22 Jan 2008 at 10:16

If it's easy to get the disk out then the obvious first step is to get the disk out and connect it internally within your PC. That will tell you if the disk is knackered or not.