Help !!! Hard drive died

Levidog

Levidog

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Sean Cameron
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I have done a fairly stupid thing, I was tired on Saturday evening and had been working on some pictures downstairs. As usual I transfered them over to an external hard drive (Seagate FreeAgent). I took everything back upstairs and managed to plug the laptop mains lead into the hard drive. The result is that the hard drive will not spin.

I tried plugging it into another external casing but it still wouldn't spin up.

I have had a quote of £275 for retrieving my pictures

Yes I do have a second hard drive as back up but I tend to do it monthly so I have lost a months worth of pics. Daily job now I reckon.

Any ideas ?
 
Sorry to hear that. I'm sure we could all make a simple mistake like that. I was going to suggest you did just that, but as you have already tried it, I can't offer any further suggestions.

I must say I am quite surprised the drive is damaged. I would have expected the power supply to be damaged, but not the disk itself.

Best of luck and hope you manage to sort it.

Graham
 
Eeek.

You may just have fried the innards of your hard drive enclosure and the drive itself might possibly be operable. It could be worth your while getting a hard drive enclosure [they're cheap] and swapping the drive itself out of the Seagate enclosure and into the new one to see if that works. I bought a Transcend Storejet enclosure when I upgraded the HD in my MacBook using a Seagate drive, they're currently around £12 at Amazon so could be worth a punt if you're handy with a screwdriver - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transcend-StoreJet-2-5-enclosure-SATA-150/dp/B000N7EXSU
 
Agree with the above, although you do say you tried plugging into another hard drive casing, or maybe you mean just the power supply? If not, certainly the way to go is to transplant the drive itself first. Another option would be to buy the same hard drive and transplant the circuit board and see if that works? Would be cheaper than £275...and I suspect that is if they think it is just a case of removing your hard drive and attaching it to their computer. If they have to do other stuff I suspect it would be a lot more expensive if they can do it at all. Can't see them messing around transplanting pcbs etc. unles it was a well paid job.
 
I had three Maxtor one touch drives die on me... well the enclosures did, but the hard drives were ok. Open them up, get the drive out and get an external case for her from somewhere like maplins.
 
Most people seem to be missing the part that states: "I tried plugging it into another external casing but it still wouldn't spin up."

As Blackcloud mentioned, easiest is usually replacing the circuit board from a working, same model drive. I would test it directly on the motherboard\psu first though. If it spins up and does other crazy things, then you'll have to start a whole new thread...
 
Might sound weird but put it in the fridge for 30 mins then try it in an external caddy. I work for an IT Company and this has worked numerous times on dead drives, depending on the state of the drive you don't get long to copy what you need, about 15 minutes then it might pack up again.
 
popping it in a PC whether or not hes tried it in another caddy is worth the 5 mins it takes before spending 300 quid on recovery. stranger things have happened.

the freezer trick usually only works for stuck heads/platters, if the drive has been fried then its more likely to of blown a component if anything and freezing wont help. but like i say above stranger things have happened and it may be worth the time before spending out.
 
I've had to do the control board swap from an identical drive before, it worked partially for me, at least long enough to get most of my data off. I guess you have to decide how important the images are to you, how many keepers were there?
 
Oddly enough I tried putting a failed HD in a freezer for a few hours and managed to back up all the data on it until it died.

But why bother with external Hds when it's far cheaper and safer to back up onto DVDs or CDs.

I do this all the time and have no problems.

I always use DataWrite blanks and still have DVDs written over 6 years ago.

I also set them as multisession disks so that I can write extra data as I need until the disk is full then close it.
 
Only having one back up point is a recipe for disaster! What ever media it is.
 
BlackCloud said:
Another option would be to buy the same hard drive and transplant the circuit board and see if that works? Would be cheaper than £275.
Click to expand...

PC boards are specific to the drive so that idea no worky!
 
If the CB is in two parts you could try a swap but you will need the exact model of drive as you have now, right down to the revision number. The circuit board contains the logic that does the disk geometry translation. There are areas on a hard disk that are only accessible by the hard disk controller card. This is likely to be different for each hard disk.

Changing the circuit board on a hard drive is not too difficult but don't open the case that contains the platters. Once you do that you can more or less bin it.
 
admirable said:
PC boards are specific to the drive so that idea no worky!
Click to expand...

Specific to each version of a model, maybe. The boards can change during the lifetime of a model but there is usually a version silk screened onto the PCB.
I have used donor circuits many many times to recover data from drives - mainly Maxtor Diamond series 9 drives which were complete tosh.
Hopefully if the problem was just over voltage then only the power circuit has been fried. If it got through to the motor drives then chances are it's had it :thumbsdown:
 
James Pardon said:
Might sound weird but put it in the fridge for 30 mins then try it in an external caddy. I work for an IT Company and this has worked numerous times on dead drives, depending on the state of the drive you don't get long to copy what you need, about 15 minutes then it might pack up again.
Click to expand...

This only works for drives that are naturally failing. It won't work for a drive that has a fried circuit board.
 
Anal for sure, but my photos are on my MacBook, backed up by time machine on external HD, also on our desktop PC, mirrored by an external HD and finally burnt to DVD and kept off site - HD failure is one thing, but being cleaned out by some robbers or the house burning to the ground is another. Belt and braces...
 
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