HEEEEELP...My Xtenal HDD has gone mental

[dusktildawn]

Bought a Freecom 350Gb external HDD about a year ago. When I plug it into my PC now it just clicks. No sign of it in "My computer" but when I click on the "eject hardware" icon its there as a USB Mass storage device?! When I plug it into my Mac a pop up window appears stating that the device is unrecognized but wants me to initialize it. Problem is I obviously don't want to do this as it contains all my images!! Anyone help?

Cheers
Charley :(

[Chris Hawkins]

Oh dear :-(

Sounds like a mechanical failure. Suspect that you may need to refer to a specialist recovery company to recover. I know it's not helpful to you Charley, but I maintain 3 copies of all my pictures - main drive, ext HDD and DVD.

Hope you sort it mate.

[StagePhotography.co.uk]

Yup doesn't sound good....


BUT

It "could" the hardware between the drive and
the computer...

It's a long shot, but you can buy "empty" external
drives which you can just plug in any harddrive.

I've got 2 of these...

If you like you could send the harddrive to me and
I'll see if you can plug it in...

If it's the harddrive then there's little you can do about it,
there are companies out there that can salvage it
but it really depends how dead it is..

[george.monaghan]

Hi,
Not sure how a MAC reads a FAT partition (not owning one) so it might want to format it into something that it can read.

Presume USB 2 device? Hve you tried other other USB ports on ur machine and other cables? Is the drive spinning up? Is the power light on? Does it have a fan? Is the fan OK?

You can get SpinRite for grc.com but it is not free. Can only suggest putting it into another Windows machine. If it is showing up as a mass storage device right click and try the properties.

Without the drive in front of me it is difficult to see where to go on this one. Hard drives should last a long time - contact the makers as well.

[N1ntend0]

D2D,

A suggestion - download r-studio - a supberb data recovery app which I have used for myself and a no of friends to extract the data from hdd's memeory cards, allsorts.

A good program will even work after formats (I've personally tested this)

The trial download is free but you can't recover anything but it will show you what it can find etc - http://www.r-tt.com/.

Download it, see what it can find and then decide if it's worth paying for yourself.

Let me know how you get on, this app is my ace up the sleeve, secret weapon and get out of jail free card all in one.

N1ntend0

[davegb]

Try plugging the drive directly into your machine (as in, take the actual drive out of the freecom box, and plug it directly into your internal IDE interface) - there's normally a spare cable (even if you have to take out your CD drive(s)). I had a similar problem with my external drive, and it turned out to be the enclosure, not the drive itself. Atleast you can get your images off, and buy a new enclosure (I'd recommend the ICYBOX from microdirect.co.uk, I tried the sumvision one, and that was the one I had the problems with, but the icybox one seems much better).

Good luck,
Dave.

[redbeard57]

had the same problem myself about 12 months ago. i bought a new external, plugged it in and it worked fine for about 3 weeks, then just after moving my own wedding photos over onto it the drive failed and panic set in....rang up the manufacturer who said just send it back and we will replace it 'what about the photos that are on it' i asked, "what about them" they said.....then i rang a data recovery company who quoted me £1200, even more panic set it, but then i found a company near the albert dock in liverpool who did it for me for £250, again we found that the actual drive was fine, but it was the electronics "in the box" that had failed, so try removing the drive from the box and plug it directly into your pc, failing that send me a pm and i will look up the liverpool company for you.
good luck....

[dusktildawn]

Thanks for all the info guys. Dare say I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and pay to get the info retrieved. I'll try to remove the drive from the housing andattempt to get another enclosure for it. When I initially plug the thing in (To either Mac of PC) The drive spins but makes a 'clicking' noise...A sorta tic..tic..tic thingy. The drive then stops spinning. On the MAC i get a pop up stating the drive cannot be recognised and prompts be to initialise it. No such warnings on the PC....Just dosen't mount. I'll persevere :)


Again, thanks for all your kind help

Cheers
Charley :)

[davegb]

Yep, this sounds exactly like the problem I had with the enclosure. Definately try removing the drive and plugging it in directly, or get a new enclosure. If you're bringing it to liverpool anyway send me a pm if you want me to take a quick look before you throw your £250 at them!

Cheers,
Dave