Hardware External Hard Drive Problem

telsave

DW Member +
Joined
Jun 8, 2002
Messages
658
Reaction score
33
Location
Newcastle
Hi Mates

Can anyone please help if you can.

I have been living lately from my laptop and using an external 2TB hard drive that contains everything. This morning on switch on, laptop it failed to recognise the existence of the external drive.

I have tried Mini Tool Partition Magic but it too fails to see the drive with say the designation letter missing it should be the 'F' drive.

I have tried plugging the USB into other slots and other computers and have changed the USB cable to no avail.

As I say the HDD contains all my work although I do have a small amount on the 'C' drive of the laptop.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am going grey haired with concern.

regards
 
You could try a Windows Data Recovery Professional Program and see if you can get the data back from the drive..


when you plug in the external drive is it making a clicking noise ?
 
Hi Spud

Many thanks for taking time out to try to help it is appreciated.

Unfortunately, my External Drive does not click, nor does the Kaspersky ask if I want to scan the drive.

I have attached a desktop image showing the feedback from the PM software.

As I say the power light is flashing but that is about all.2015-09-10_1513.png2015-09-10_1513.png

regards
 
looks like its only picking up your internal laptop hard drive

see if any one ells reply's to your thread m8
 
Is it USB powered or does it have it's own power supply?

Is there a power light on the drive to indicate it's on?

Either way, I have a feeling that you're going to have to crack the case open to attach the drive locally/in another caddy. As there are two most likely reasons for the failure:

  1. Some part of the USB to SATA converter in the caddy has died - most likely from the symptoms.
  2. The drive itself has failed - not as likely from the symptoms you've posted, bit don't want to get your hopes up by not mentioning it.
 
Is it USB powered or does it have its own power supply?

Is there a power light on the drive to indicate it's on?

Either way, I have a feeling that you're going to have to crack the case open to attach the drive locally/in another caddy. As there are two most likely reasons for the failure:

  1. Some part of the USB to SATA converter in the caddy has died - most likely from the symptoms.
  2. The drive itself has failed - not as likely from the symptoms you've posted, bit don't want to get your hopes up by not mentioning it.

Many thanks little_pob for trying to help me. I have taken the drive apart and have just done what you suggested. At first I plugged it direct into my PC to no effect the PC saw it then decided to run a windows Update and could not see the drive after the update. It is now in the hands of my son "Dutcho" who will create a caddy to try to activate the drive that way.

By the way, it does have a separate power input and the power light was on.

have a great holiday and thank you again it is appreciated.
 
Re: External Hard Drive Problem - Now Urgent - no CRITICAL

Update on the above problem. We have removed the drive from its casing and tried connecting it direct to the PC but the PC cannot see the drive. Tried it on three computers with the same result yet it was seen by Kaspersky yesterday but not now.

Has anyone any ideas please how data can be recovered when the drive is not recognised so cannot be accessed. As normal my whole world is on the drive. Here is the ironical situation the PC was backed up to the drive before upgrading the PC the idea being to restore the data back to the PC when it had been upgraded.

I know some friend out there will have a solution to help this old guy get his world back, I cannot face having to try to remember all the files and folders and images as well as outlines for my new website. Plus a lot of other stuff the drive is a 2TB WD drive just over 1-year-old.

Please, any help greatly appreciated.

regards
 
Re: External Hard Drive Problem - Now Urgent - no CRITICAL

when your plugging the drive into your pc's.
are you going into disk management and checking if the HD is there?

It could be there as unallocated storage, therefore not appearing in the normal way?
 
Re: External Hard Drive Problem - Now Urgent - no CRITICAL

had the same problem it was suggested i try ubuntu a linux platform you will get it free from the website and put it on a usb stick it did recognise the drive but i have not got the knowledge to retrive it but it did work sorry if i got your hopes up
 
Re: External Hard Drive Problem - Now Urgent - no CRITICAL

when your plugging the drive into your PC's.
are you going into disk management and checking if the HD is there?

It could be there as unallocated storage, therefore not appearing in the normal way?

Hi, Thanks for trying to help. Yes, we did look for it in Device Manager also Partition Magic still could not be seen. Difficult to do data recovery if you cannot access the disk. The idea was to see if Partition Manager could see it and reallocate drive letter.

- - - Updated - - -

had the same problem it was suggested i try ubuntu a linux platform you will get it free from the website and put it on a usb stick it did recognise the drive but i have not got the knowledge to retrive it but it did work sorry if i got your hopes up

Hi, Thanks for that I will have a look.
 
Re: External Hard Drive Problem - Now Urgent - no CRITICAL

Hi, Thanks for trying to help. Yes, we did look for it in Device Manager also Partition Magic still could not be seen. Difficult to do data recovery if you cannot access the disk. The idea was to see if Partition Manager could see it and reallocate drive letter.

- - - Updated - - -



Hi, Thanks for that I will have a look.

Yes, but not device manager, have you looked in disk management, you can allocate letters to unallocated drives here, assuming the drive is working at all..

Capture.PNG

any unallocated drives present should show up blacked out
 
Re: External Hard Drive Problem - Now Urgent - no CRITICAL

Hi Buzzer

First thank you for trying to help me.

The reason for the delay in replying is that I handed the hard drive over to a company to try to extract the files. They were vital to my work as I explained. They reported that they probably could salvage the files in their clean room and after six weeks and just under £1000 I have a new drive back with 99% of my files recovered. A very expensive lesson.

makes you wonder what you can do to safeguard your information I had backed up to this external hard drive from my PC, which of course was useless as the HDD crashed and the only eway to get at the contents was to hand it over to a company who could recover files.

Thanks to everyone who offered help it is as always really appreciated just how helpful everyone is on this forum.

regards

Dave
 
Re: External Hard Drive Problem - Now Urgent - no CRITICAL

hi telsave did you manage to get hdd working ??
if not theres a program called Seagate tools
its free just type in Seagate tools in google and dl it
let me know if it helps
good luck!!!!!
 
Re: External Hard Drive Problem - Now Urgent - no CRITICAL

hi telsave did you manage to get hdd working ??
if not theres a program called Seagate tools
its free just type in Seagate tools in google and dl it
let me know if it helps
good luck!!!!!

Hi Smet

Thanks for replying and trying to help I did get the problem sorted. I had to send it off and for just under £1000 I did get about 80% of the files recovered fortunately my main work files were intact.

All OK and BACKED UP in three places :)

regards

Dave
 
Re: External Hard Drive Problem - Now Urgent - no CRITICAL

wish id seen this earlier I would have tried to get it back for you m8 free of charge
ive had a couple of hdds over about last 10 years which I had to recover
1 was a terabyte and full took over a day to read it
anyways m8 glad you got it done !!!!!!!!!
 
Re: External Hard Drive Problem - Now Urgent - no CRITICAL

wish id seen this earlier I would have tried to get it back for you m8 free of charge
ive had a couple of hdds over about last 10 years which I had to recover
1 was a terabyte and full took over a day to read it
anyways m8 glad you got it done !!!!!!!!!

Hi Smet

Not to worry M8 that's the way it goes. The main thing of course is that I am now able to get something done. There was just over 1TB of data to recover, which took over two weeks in their clean room, and they reported a recovery of 98% but I think some of the folders were empty so files had still been lost. As far as I can see the main files are there but £1k out of a pension means no turkey this Christmas, well that's what I am telling my wife and maybe the family will take pity if I turn up in rags with ash on my head :)

Thanks again for taking time out to try to help and I did download a copy of that software in the belief that if I have it I won't need it.

take care

David
 
Back
Top