RobertMcC Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 Who's a PC wizard? I got 2 external HD one won't power up, the other will but makes a humm and a squeek. Both sounds like power issues to me. There's tones of photos on them, a lot from my tour overseas so very limited to who I can trust. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SQRLPWR Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 If you think the external PSU is dead, you might be able to pull the drive out of its case and install in a PC - the connectors may be the same. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that it is the PSU. On the down side.....I just had one of these in - humming, clicking and squeaking are generally a sign of more serious problems either with the on-board controller, the motor, heads or platters. What make/model? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomWood Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 Usually with that noise, the needle is unable to read the disk or stuck, are these normal size, laptop size or solid state drives? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4x4Mckay Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 Good luck. Toast. I just had this happen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomWood Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 Yeah, Brandi's corrupted the entire drive, wasn't able to recover anything even bypassing the case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nightpath Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 Pull them out of the cases and install them directly into your PC. If they still sounds like a bunch of clicks and beeps it's screwed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SQRLPWR Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 If the data is super critical, I have had some success with buying a replacement drive and swapping out the circuit board. To do this you have to buy an identical make/model ( & preferably firmware) of the faulty drive. Then swap out the good circuit board to the faulty hard drive. The circuit swap method is relativity cheap in comparison to full-on data recovery ($10s/100s vs $1000s), but will only get you going if the the fault lies with the electronics controlling the interface, power/data delivery, motor speed controller or head drivers. There can be a challenge finding an identical hard drive too - ebay/kijiji is your friend here. Physical faults with the heads or platters can't be fixed that way. There are some reports of deep-freezing drives, or using freezer spray to cool down the faulty component enough to get some data back. In 25+ years of electronic engineering & IT I've not seen this done successfully. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomWood Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 One thing I have seen work, and never would've believed, is slapping the hard drive. Hold it in your hand and flat palm slap it once. I have seen this done and work enough to get data off the drive. However there is risk involved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRUXterra Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 I've been successful with the deep freeeze method. The board was getting hot causing the HD to hang. In the freezer for a couple hours, and I was able to retrieve 10-15GB of data before it would hang again. I was "hot swapping the drive" into another CPU and it worked fine. It took me about a week to get all of the data recovered, but I was successful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SQRLPWR Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 I've been successful with the deep freeeze method. The board was getting hot causing the HD to hang. In the freezer for a couple hours, and I was able to retrieve 10-15GB of data before it would hang again. I was "hot swapping the drive" into another CPU and it worked fine. It took me about a week to get all of the data recovered, but I was successful. Respect sir....I was starting to believe that was an urban myth. We used to trace Monitor faults like that but with a can of freezer spray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SQRLPWR Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 One thing I have seen work, and never would've believed, is slapping the hard drive. Hold it in your hand and flat palm slap it once. I have seen this done and work enough to get data off the drive. However there is risk involved. forgot about that one too....that's for stalled motors. But like you said, there's a risk of damaging the heads with the G's Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobertMcC Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 Ones a Maxtor 160 GB and Ones a Seagate 360GB.. Talking Cira 2005 stuff. But I was able to hook the Maxtor HD onto the seagate external power supply and get the data off it. Seagate I think is fried. Both would not read in the PC. Seagate just hums and clicks... I found pictures from 2002, Lost pictures of my dog, My Accident, few other gems. I know the 360GB is the important one. The 160 was one I bought to replace the 360, Because I was serving in Astan and I was going photo crazy, my 80GB laptop couldnt handle the space. Esp for music, videos etc.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRUXterra Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 Try the freezer trick, sounds stupid but I can tell you it does work in some cases. Can the Seagate be directly connected to the CPU motherboard (IDE, SATA, etc.), did you change the jumpers so make the external a slave drive? I too have an IT background and have spent far too many hours recovering, re-building, re-formatting, etc., not only my own, but family computers. I wipe my CPU clean every year. Since buying a new CPU in Sept last year, I literally still have the HD that failed on the previous one in my freezer cause I have almost a year of pics that I could not attempt to recover...only due to the fact my new CPU has a 1 year warranty & a sticker on the side that cannot be compromised. Once my warranty is up, I'm cracking the ****** to retrieve data from the HD that failed! Missing about 5000 pics as I save pics once a year on Nov 11th, old CPU crashed at the end of Sept. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobertMcC Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 I just plugged the HD into plugs in the PC that matched up with the HD so I dunno..I can fix million dollar trucks, But when comes to PC's or anything that goes wrong, I have no idea how. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRUXterra Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 On the backside of most HD's there is a section with 8 "pins" usually 4x2 (4 over, 4 under). There will be a little (and I mean little) jumper that covers 2 of these pins at a time. If both HD's are set to Master, your CPU will not pick up the second drive. Pic here HD's can differ as to the jumper settings, and you OS (operating system) can sometimes accommodate for the error, but it's worth a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
autumnwalker Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 One thing I have seen work, and never would've believed, is slapping the hard drive. Hold it in your hand and flat palm slap it once. I have seen this done and work enough to get data off the drive. However there is risk involved. Sometimes I take it out, rub it a little, and put it back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
autumnwalker Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 Rob - ditch the ancient hard drives (based on size these are from early 2000's) and buy yourself a new external drive. Cut your losses and move on - once an HD goes bad it's bad. If you try and get it working again, it's only good to pull the data off of it and then stop using it. In the future (assuming you don't already) you should invest in some sort of backup solution - another external drive or something like www.crashplan.com which is what I use for all my machines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobertMcC Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 Rob - ditch the ancient hard drives (based on size these are from early 2000's) and buy yourself a new external drive. Cut your losses and move on - once an HD goes bad it's bad. If you try and get it working again, it's only good to pull the data off of it and then stop using it. In the future (assuming you don't already) you should invest in some sort of backup solution - another external drive or something like www.crashplan.com which is what I use for all my machines. Scott we got a couple new ones we use to backup, These were 2 I found cleaning out stuff at mothers place. On the backside of most HD's there is a section with 8 "pins" usually 4x2 (4 over, 4 under). There will be a little (and I mean little) jumper that covers 2 of these pins at a time. If both HD's are set to Master, your CPU will not pick up the second drive. Pic here HD's can differ as to the jumper settings, and you OS (operating system) can sometimes accommodate for the error, but it's worth a try. Theyre on Cable Select... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRUXterra Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 Remove the jumper and see if the CPU "sees" it. Refer to the specs on the back of the HD as every HD is different. My secondary HD has a jumper for slave, not open so Google it to be sure if it's not marked. If you have 2 lines connected to the HD from the MB (mother board), cable select does not work. Cable select is intended for IDE connections to the same cable Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
autumnwalker Posted May 29, 2013 Report Share Posted May 29, 2013 Scott we got a couple new ones we use to backup, These were 2 I found cleaning out stuff at mothers place. Right on! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrjoecanadian Posted May 31, 2013 Report Share Posted May 31, 2013 Back up, back up, back up!! I have a windows home server and everything on it and I have the hard drivers set up in a raid array. That puts data across several hard drives and if one dies I just replace the drive with no data loss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobertMcC Posted May 31, 2013 Report Share Posted May 31, 2013 Devin I tried the freezer trick, removed the jumper, tried different stuff, yeah she's fudged, oh well. We will never know what's on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eastcoastcam Posted May 31, 2013 Report Share Posted May 31, 2013 After having computer troubles and losing a bunch of stuff we didn't want to lose, I got a network drive. Now I copy it to the drive, so if the comp goes **** up, I still have a copy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRUXterra Posted May 31, 2013 Report Share Posted May 31, 2013 I now transfer data to a DVD every 3 months. Once the warranty expires on the new computer, I'll be installing a second HD to have data duplicated on 2 drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobertMcC Posted May 31, 2013 Report Share Posted May 31, 2013 Yeah I'm gonna pick up a new external tomorrow, just to back up what I found off my old one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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