In a bit of a bind... need help with an external hard drive...

Access

My father in law is retired and is a keen photographer.

I gave him a spare 320gb WD hard drive i had to backup his photos from his laptop... but he filled the laptop (80gb laptop) and so last year offloaded all his pictures and videos to the external drive i gave him... and has only about the last year or so of new pics on the laptop - instead of a one to one backup of the pics on the laptop and external.

Anyways, the drive has stopped responding... it is powering on and spinning and there are no mad sounds from it... no heads constantly parking or anything like that... but i have noticed that it seems to power down like it has been put to sleep every now and then... and then spins back up.

It is a WD3200JB drive.

I think i backed up this drive last time he brought it up to our house... so he would have a backup on my NAS just in case anything like this happened... but that backup is a couple of years old i think... Edit yep, sept 2010!

I really would like to see if i can get any files off it as some of the pictures involved him setting off to climb mountains/hike to locations/sit waiting for wildlife at ridiculous early hours of the morning, so it would be worth it.

invaderzimirl

well you could always get one of these USB adaptors for the drive in it and see if its the electronics/power supply (could be the USB UART)

if this dosent work time to up the atty a bit
IF your sure and you seem to be sure the heads/platters are good you can use another Similar drive board and replace the controller board it should be easy enough only a few screws BUT try this only of the above dose not work

Access

Cheers for the info...

Its a 3.5" IDE hard drive in it and luckly enough, i had a spare Toshiba ide enclosure in the attic... so have swapped out the WD drive into it to see is its the enclosure failing rather then the hard drive...

But, it still powers up, with no mad clicking or spinning down, but is not showing up on the laptop or another pc when plugged into them via usb.

Seems like it could be the drive so?... should i be looking to get a replacement controller pcb for it or is there anything else i can do before i go down that route?

invaderzimirl

id first of all try Gparted it might be able to see the disk before major surgery,
its a Linux OS drive tool (personally i think everyone should know and try this) don't do anything destructive to the disk.

if the Data is that critical its the road Id go down but also id suggest you wait and get other responses as your only getting one point of view at present and I'm sure there will be someone screaming at me about replacing the controller board plus might be other easier options I've over looked at present less invasive.

Access

how would I go about getting a replacement controller pcb for this hard drive?

Fatal Except1on

Grab an evaluation version of Hard Disk Sentinel and install it with the drive connected via USB. See if HDSentinel reports any major faults in the drive (power faults, startup/spin faults, etc)

riclad

You,d have to buy the exact same drive, model no ,if you wanted to get another pcb.
from ebay, adverts ie for sale. etc
with the sam,e pcb on it,

TRY installing it in an old pc, use the cd,dvd cables to connect it to the pc.
temporarily,
KNOCK OFF pc,remove power cable from pc socket, before you install it.
eg pc still has power going thru it ,even when its powered off.
my experience is
3.5inch drives don,t work off usb, ALONE,
ie they need a power cable from the pc psu to power up.
2.5inch sata hds can work off usb power

i use a special adaptor,or power unit, or else i get power from the powersupply,
eg usb not enough power for 3.5inch ide drives.

AT LEAST if its installed inside a pc, it,ll get enough power to spin up the platters.

Access

Thanks for all the replies!

I just wanted to update everyone about the solution i came across on this...

Im glad to say in my case it is a result and all, except 2 video files were fully recovered from the failing external hard drive.

After trying out a few programs and methods - different external caddies/different pcs etc. i came across this method in a forum...

Now in our case the external drive was powering up but gave the message of "this drive need to be formatted before it can be used by windows" each time we plugged it into the laptop.

Plug in your drive and do the following:

1. Look to see which letter the drive comes up as (e.g. H: etc.)
2. Hold windows key and press R key.
3. Type the following EXACTLY as shown: chkdsk ?: /r <-- where ? is, enter the drive letter of the one that needs fixing.

I'll write it in words on seperate lines to make it easier to see:

Type Chkdsk
Space
Drive letter
Colon (yes the : thing)
Space
Forward slash (yes the / thing)
Letter R
Press enter

This ran for about 2 hours and im glad to say it rebuilt the drive structure fully of the drive and it is in full working order again with all folders and files back.

It did as i say not recover two video files but that is okay by us.

Every file has now been copied to two new separate laptops and also another backup external hard drive.

We managed to recover 61GB of photos and videos that my father in law took over the past few years as he is a very keen photographer in his retirement and this is a brilliant outcome as some of the pictures involved him setting off to climb mountains/hike to locations/sit waiting for wildlife at ridiculous early hours of the morning!

My father in law is over the moon about this as he had thought he had lost the entire contents of the external hard drive.

I reckon what initially happened is that someone pulled the usb cable from a connected laptop without doing the "safely remove drive" method and possibly while it was in the process of being accessed by a program on his laptop.

I hope that this info help someone else out in the future as well.