Peripherals external hard drive prob

swintonac1

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i have a 500g external hard drive that has stopped working
its not showing up on pc
is there anyway i can recover my pics from it
 
Dont laugh but you can put in the frezer for five mins.it might get u some time to send to external.

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This as a last resort for a specific circumstance, not the first thing to try. Plus you would need to wrap it in a dry towel, and place it in sealed plastic bag/box.

@swintonac1, we need to trouble shoot before you do anything. Does the drive even power on?
 
no sign of it powering on have tried plugging into sata on pc but not making any noise

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would it be expensive to have it recovered at a shop
 
Depends on how old it is but 500g doesn’t sound like it’s very old

Why Control Board Swaps don't work anymore

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What's the exact model of the drive?

With some you may be able to transfer the ROM or controller chip if it has an integrated one to a working board, this will carry the unique calibration data to a working board, maybe. The board would have to be identical.

This bloke talks about it:

youtube.com/watch?v=Yn2eL4o-6Eo

Although I don't like the way he says you can't replace controller chips at home. Especially when his rework setup is naff :).
 
To replace the board on a hdd you would need to buy the right board with the corresponding serial numbers and then swap the bios chip from the old board to the new board. bit of soldering involved but not a massive job.
 
I've swapped out boards before on dead drives using an identical model, I didn't have to swap out the bios chip though - must of been lucky!
 
Try using Hiren's BootCD there are a couple of recovery software programs on there just connect the drive internally, disconnect your usual hard drive to prevent possible damage
 
I forgot to mention that Testdisk is a great bit of software for recovering files from knackered drives! It comes with another bit of software called photorec which is great at recovering photos from SD cards.
 
If there's no power then swapping out the board or getting someone to repair that would be your best option.
Other than that recovery firms will do it for you but believe you me, they ain't cheap. I now use 2 x HD's and cloud for my pics after I lost 250gb of stuff. It's belt and braces and some string nowadays just to be triple sure
 
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