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Recovering data from a 2.5" external HDD

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  • 06-08-2015 7:12pm
    #1
    Irish Stones
    Registered Users Posts: 2,307 ✭✭✭


    I'm desperate! :(
    I have two 2.5" 2 TB HDD by Western Digital, almost brand new, about one year old. One of the two is a backup for the other one.
    I always tried to keep them up to date, but lately I hadn't enough time to do that regularly, so in the last few months the two disks hadn't the same data.
    Tired of this situation yesterday I purchased a NAS with two disks in RAID 1.
    Today I was going to transfer all the data from the HDD with more files to the NAS, but the HDD is dead!!! :(
    It was working fine two days ago, now it's dead!
    I know that it's possible to open it up, pull the disk out and try to use it and recover the data.
    Have anybody of you done that before? Any luck?

    In the last few days the tech stuff around me is failing at a fast rate. My tower PC has all the USB ports out of order, the netbook PC is behaving strange, the HDD is dead...
    I am thinking to hang myself :(


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    #2
    Wright
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,120 ✭✭✭Wright


    Irish Stones wrote: »
    In the last few days the tech stuff around me is failing at a fast rate. My tower PC has all the USB ports out of order, the netbook PC is behaving strange, the HDD is dead...
    I am thinking to hang myself :(

    Can I have your PC? :P

    Sounds to me like you got him by a power surge mate. Did any fuses trip in your house?


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    #3
    Irish Stones
    Registered Users Posts: 2,307 ✭✭✭Irish Stones


    Wright wrote: »
    Can I have your PC? :P

    Sounds to me like you got him by a power surge mate. Did any fuses trip in your house?

    No fuses tripped in here and nothing else showed signs from a power surge...
    The tower PC hasn't been used for a long while, I turned it on three days ago and the USB ports were gone.
    The HDD was last used on the netbook PC which was working on battery.


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    #4
    Wright
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,120 ✭✭✭Wright


    Irish Stones wrote: »
    No fuses tripped in here and nothing else showed signs from a power surge...
    The tower PC hasn't been used for a long while, I turned it on three days ago and the USB ports were gone.
    The HDD was last used on the netbook PC which was working on battery.

    Its your USB ports that suggest something electrical happened to your equipment. They're fried, or part of your motherboard is fried. From personal experience anyway. Something happened in terms of surge or power loss, I'd bet on it.

    The outcome in that situation wouldn't be great I'm afraid.


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    #5
    Irish Stones
    Registered Users Posts: 2,307 ✭✭✭Irish Stones


    Wright wrote: »
    Its your USB ports that suggest something electrical happened to your equipment. They're fried, or part of your motherboard is fried. From personal experience anyway. Something happened in terms of surge or power loss, I'd bet on it.

    The outcome in that situation wouldn't be great I'm afraid.

    I forgot to say that the tower PC is supplied through a UPS with surge protection.
    I was thinking of opening the external HDD, get the disk and try to connect it to another PC with a SATA to USB adapter.

    I spent a huge amount of money for this NAS that in one night should have saved me further troubles, the troubles arrived faster! :(


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    #6
    Wright
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,120 ✭✭✭Wright


    Irish Stones wrote: »
    I forgot to say that the tower PC is supplied through a UPS with surge protection.
    I was thinking of opening the external HDD, get the disk and try to connect it to another PC with a SATA to USB adapter.

    I spent a huge amount of money for this NAS that in one night should have saved me further troubles, the troubles arrived faster! :(

    Huh; well you've gone to extraordinary lengths, sucks. I wonder if UPS' can fail.


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    #7
    Irish Stones
    Registered Users Posts: 2,307 ✭✭✭Irish Stones


    Wright wrote: »
    Huh; well you've gone to extraordinary lengths, sucks. I wonder if UPS' can fail.

    If the UPS generated a surge, then other devices should have suffered, like the modem and the network switch, but they're fine.
    And they're always on, the PC was off in the last six weeks.

    I'm off to water the garden, probably it's the only place where I can't do damages...


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    #8
    Irish Stones
    Registered Users Posts: 2,307 ✭✭✭Irish Stones


    A friend of mine offered to help me. He will pick up the fault disk and he'll take his home where he'll disassemble it and connect it to another controller to recover the data.
    If this doesn't work my only chance is to send the disk to a data clinic where they'll surely be able to perform the job.
    I can't afford to lose what's inside.


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    #9
    Wright
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,120 ✭✭✭Wright


    Irish Stones wrote: »
    I can't afford to lose what's inside.

    Dropbox or similar then, in future


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    #10
    Irish Stones
    Registered Users Posts: 2,307 ✭✭✭Irish Stones


    I have drpbox already, but I have in excess of 1 TB data, that's why I bought a NAS. Not just the same as Dropbox, but good enough I think.
    For my needs I should pay 600 euro a year.

    I have just found out that the USB 3.0 ports (a PCI express card) give 7.48V rather than 5V, so this is the source of the problem!!! The hdd was last connected there, it didn't work, was moved elsewhere but it was too late!
    Hopefully it's just the controller that burned out!


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    #11
    enniscorthy
    Registered Users Posts: 1,046 ✭✭✭enniscorthy


    mate is it one of those little usb powered ones have you checked the cable itself personally that was my problem all the best brian


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    #12
    Irish Stones
    Registered Users Posts: 2,307 ✭✭✭Irish Stones


    enniscorthy wrote: »
    mate is it one of those little usb powered ones have you checked the cable itself personally that was my problem all the best brian

    Yeah, it's a 2.5" WD external hdd.
    I did check the cable, I swapped it with the cable from a working device.
    This friend of mine opened it up this morning and thinks that the situation is worse than expected. He'll try to connect the disk itself to another controller card, disk and its controller inside the case aren't physically separated, it'll be a great challenge and results won't come up for a couple of days.
    Finger crossed, next option is the data clinic!


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    #13
    bonzodog2
    Registered Users Posts: 6,220 ✭✭✭bonzodog2


    I came across a WD 2.5 drive a couple of years back that had the mini-USB port directly on the circuit board, so no SATA interface exposed, can't connect to anything else easily. If your mate is going to try swapping PCBs, its a good idea to get the mfg date very close as well as all the model # and firmware version etc matching.

    Good luck!


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    #14
    Irish Stones
    Registered Users Posts: 2,307 ✭✭✭Irish Stones


    bonzodog2 wrote: »
    I came across a WD 2.5 drive a couple of years back that had the mini-USB port directly on the circuit board, so no SATA interface exposed, can't connect to anything else easily. If your mate is going to try swapping PCBs, its a good idea to get the mfg date very close as well as all the model # and firmware version etc matching.

    Good luck!

    My friend did his best, he swapped the controller with another hdd of mine of the same brand and model but not bought together. As matter of fact this didn't work, he thinks that the overvoltage from the USB port could have damaged the heads as well and it seems they don't align with the sectors of the disk.
    He told me that the only chance that I have to retrieve my data is to send the disk to a recovery centre. Tomorrow I will call some of them to have a quote, though I know it won't be cheap... I don't need to recover the whole disk because until a certain date this disk was synchronized with the other one, I only need the difference between the two disks. If the cost of the recovery is proportional to the amount of data, I won't have to sell my right kidney :-)


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