Let this be a lesson!

Crazyhorse

Crazyhorse

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I have two external hard drives for my photos.

Took one of them away with me on holiday, kept the unit in its box when not in use, didn't allow it to roll around in the car etc, etc, downloaded my images via my laptop to the external hard drive. All well.

Then, last night, I somehow got my foot tangled in the wires, stood up and pulled the wires out. :bonk: I've bent one of the USB ports on my main computer, bent the USB port on the external hard drive, along with the USB cable.

I managed to use another USB cable and gently insert it into the external hard drive but I don't know if I can trust this one to work properly.

So, it is a good idea to have two or more external hard drives and back them up. I'm only a hobbiest but I must admit, I did actually nearly cry when I saw what I'd done.:'(

By the way, is there any hope of getting the bent USB port on the external hard drive fixed?

Lisa
 
In theory, it's quite a simple job - if you've got anyone who's remotely skilled at soldering, it should be relatively trivial. All they need to do is take the old mangled USB plug out, and solder a new one on (you can get spare parts really easily). However, if you don't know anyone that can do it, any repair place will probably charge a small fortune to do it - and external drives are so (relatively) cheap that it just wouldn't be worth it, aside from data recovery of course.
 
Just take the actual hard disk out of the housing and get another housing for it, they can be picked up cheap.
 
As above just look for a icy box enclosure and put you old hard drive in that
 
WOW!!!! Thanks ever so much, I have a friend who builds computers, so he could do it for me. There's me thinking I'd have to buy another external hard drive.

You rock!!

Lisa
 
The only reason why I didn't mention the 'new enclosure' is because a lot of manufacturers are nowadays putting proprietary connections into their enclosures, rather than just shoehorning an internal drive into an enclosure with a SATA connection board. How old is the drive?
 
freecom2 said:
The only reason why I didn't mention the 'new enclosure' is because a lot of manufacturers are nowadays putting proprietary connections into their enclosures, rather than just shoehorning an internal drive into an enclosure with a SATA connection board. How old is the drive?
Click to expand...

Icybox should be alright, they use Ian and esata.
 
Hi

Thanks for the replies

One is maybe 18 months old Seagate 1TB and the other is a couple of months old WD elements 1 TB.

(It's the Seagate one with the bent USB port).

My desktop computer also has a bent USB port but I can live with that at the moment.

I save everything to each external hard drive.

Lisa
 
neil_g said:
Icybox should be alright, they use Ian and esata.
Click to expand...

No no, it's the broken external hard drive which is often the problem, not the replacement enclosure. Some manufacturers make it a bit of a pain by having either a proprietary connection inside their external hard drives, or even worse, just having the whole connection with USB attached straight to the drive, rather than the small SATA ribbon cable as in previous years.

But you should be alright with the Seagate. Is it a FreeAgent?
 
Hi

It just says Seagate External desktop drive, 1 TB, product of China.

Also, whilst people are helping me. I always use the 'safely remove hardware' icon on my pc.

My laptop is newer but that doesn't have a safely remove hardware icon and I searched on the help thing and it said it doesn't need it. Is that correct?

Lisa
 
Crazyhorse said:
Hi

My laptop is newer but that doesn't have a safely remove hardware icon and I searched on the help thing and it said it doesn't need it. Is that correct?

Lisa
Click to expand...

You may find it's hidden in the notifications area, there will be a small arrow pointing upwards next to the icons on the taskbar.
 
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