Hard Drive Crashed :-(

Moley-UK

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Just gone to get some stuff off of my pretty new Iomega 360gb external hard disk to be greeted to a grinding noise, then a click every 10-15 seconds....

Not very happy bearing in mind all my photos of my baby girl were on there, and I dont have any other backup, as I bought the drive for that purpose!

Iomega say in their legal junk that data recovery is not included, as its costly, which is a bit unfair, bearing in mind the hard disk is about 8 weeks old, and has only been powered on a handful of times!

Any ideas on any options I have to try and recover the data. The unit doesn't get recognised by the computer now, as I guess the hard drive isn't getting spun up properly, and initilising.

Thanks
 
Just gone to get some stuff off of my pretty new Iomega 360gb external hard disk to be greeted to a grinding noise, then a click every 10-15 seconds....

Not very happy bearing in mind all my photos of my baby girl were on there, and I dont have any other backup, as I bought the drive for that purpose!

Iomega say in their legal junk that data recovery is not included, as its costly, which is a bit unfair, bearing in mind the hard disk is about 8 weeks old, and has only been powered on a handful of times!

Any ideas on any options I have to try and recover the data. The unit doesn't get recognised by the computer now, as I guess the hard drive isn't getting spun up properly, and initilising.

Thanks

this will not help m8 but try post in the pc bit for advice .
they know there stuff there
 
if the hard drive is not getting recognised by windows have a look in computer management and see if it's there, also using some software that i have you can pm me for it you can try running it...it's pretty neat.

Just coz it's not showing in windows might not be the end of it.

:Cool2:
 
drive

i used spinrite i think it was called when my drive done that. but i took ages m8. and there is a few better programs out there but i cant mind the name of them of the top of my head m8. sorry


thanks gsim

see what some outher users say first

good luck m8.
 
see if it's listed in here mate at the bottom but maybe says offline..

manage.jpg
 
Nope, doesn't get recognised at all.

It sounds like the motor has seized, I don't think the heads have crashed, just a bit annoyed about the fact that the unit is like 2 months old, and because its faulty they won't do any data recovery.

So annoyed at the moment because I wish I'd just bought a dvd rewriter instead, and backed them up that way.
 
does it show up in the bios when the computer boots

It won't show up as its a USB external hard disk.

Judging from Iomega's forum, it seems alot of people are having the same problem, and are having very poor customer service from Iomega themselves.

Great, can see this being fun...
 
Not a software boy myself, I advise on the best builds and that is about it, but for future ref a backup copy is a backup copy incase your originals go tits up.

Surely you did have an original copy somewhere on the main hard drive?

A backup device is pointless unless you are still running 2 devices mate. Unless they are hard printed on DVD (as you said earlier) then an external hard drive is not a safe method for keeping your one and only copy of very important stuff. You may as well have just kept it on your internal drive, the external is there to work with the internal and you backup as you go making a duplicte of the important things thus meaning you have 2 copies.

If they are really important then it should be able to get someone to access the drive and save the details, but it may cost you.

More peeps on here are better than I am at PC software and that sort of thing so will leave it to them mate.

Anyway good luck and I hope you get it sorted, just take my advice next time and use 2 drives for the important stuff at all times, even back them up online mate, look in the freebie section for free online storage space, you can get up to 50gb free on variuous sites thus meaning you have even more backup.

Good luck buddy.
 
Well I've set my mind to rest now, after spending all evening stripping the hard disk down, I have found that the spindle motor has seized to the point that it can not be loosened up to get it to spin just to get some data off.

Seems quite a common problem with newer hard disks due to the way the motors are made, and the strain they are under now, compared to 10 years ago, higher speeds, bigger platters etc...

Ah well luckily I have found a couple of cd's with photos on, which is better than nothing I guess.
 
An old trick, which I assume still works is to put the harddrive into a plastic bag then into the freezer for an hour or so. Take out the freezer and then straight back to PC. If it spins up get the data off as quick as you can, before the drive warms up.

Wiggy
 
Might sounds daft - but try plugging it into the back of the pc and not in the front usb sockets. I'd had this on a lappy with a broken usb socket and there was not enough power to the unit to get it to work.
 
Clicking usually means that the drive motors are going.

Unplug it from the USB socket u have it in and plug it into another one see if that helps

Make sure u have got the latest chipset and USB drivers for your PC.

If that does not help.

If it is under warentee then take it back to where u bought it from and ask them to backup the data if they can and put it on a replacement or ask them to remove the disk from the caddie so u can try to get the data back.

If not warenteed then take the hdd from the external caddie and put it directly into the pc. Back up everything then.
 
Well I took the top off the actual hard drive to see what was happening, as all I noticed was that the motor driver IC on the controller board was getting very hot.

After taking the top lid off of the hard disk (which would've voided the warentee) I tried gently moving the disc platter by pushing on the securing screws on the motor (which I have done in the past to other peoples hard discs that have crashed) and it was stuck solid, tried a hammer and screwdriver to free it up but it wasn't budging.

I know that it wouldn't have lasted long after freeing it up but it was just to get the data off then get it changed.

Anyways after firing it up with the lid off I could see it had totally seized up, the bearing must've gone,which seems to be pretty common with newer hard discs if they get a bit of a bump.

Took it back to comets all sealed up and they replaced it with a new one :)

Shall be connecting it upto a new router soon which has a usb socket for a hard disk, saves buying a NAS then :)
 
Well I took the top off the actual hard drive to see what was happening, as all I noticed was that the motor driver IC on the controller board was getting very hot.

After taking the top lid off of the hard disk (which would've voided the warentee) I tried gently moving the disc platter by pushing on the securing screws on the motor (which I have done in the past to other peoples hard discs that have crashed) and it was stuck solid, tried a hammer and screwdriver to free it up but it wasn't budging.

I know that it wouldn't have lasted long after freeing it up but it was just to get the data off then get it changed.

Anyways after firing it up with the lid off I could see it had totally seized up, the bearing must've gone,which seems to be pretty common with newer hard discs if they get a bit of a bump.

Took it back to comets all sealed up and they replaced it with a new one :)

Shall be connecting it upto a new router soon which has a usb socket for a hard disk, saves buying a NAS then :)


which router is that mate?

Cheers
MFCGAVMFC
 
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