Broken External Harddrive

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efocycletron

New Member
Hey guys i am new to this forum and hope you can help me!

I am having a bit of trouble with my external harddrive. Last week I accidentley plugged my laptop charger cable into the harddrive and seem to have fried the insides as it stopped working. Initially i thought it would have just been the circuit board on the caddy that was broken as that is where the melting smell had come from (:eek:) so i purchased a new caddy, an icybox at that, and installed the harddrive into that. This did not work either as it failed to spin up. Just wondered if anyone could shed any light on how i might be able to retrieve my data??

Heres hoping!!
thanks
Henry
 
Try removing the HD from the external case and plugging it into another system (you may need to use an adapter), see if it will read. Probably not, given your description.

There are companies that perform professional data recovery, but they are insanely expensive (like $350.00 CDN per hour to try software recovery, and $2000-$3000 to open the drive in a clean room). If unable to read it yourself, it depends on what the data is worth to you.
 
Well, the info should still be ok, as the only damage would be on the hard drive's board, so if you buy another hard drive of the same exact model, then you can switch out the platters and it should work. Be careful not to touch ANYTHING to the platters, though.
 
PohTayToez said:
Well, the info should still be ok, as the only damage would be on the hard drive's board, so if you buy another hard drive of the same exact model, then you can switch out the platters and it should work. Be careful not to touch ANYTHING to the platters, though.
Click to expand...
Just curious...Have you ever switched out platters yourself and had it work successfully?
 
munkyeetr said:
Just curious...Have you ever switched out platters yourself and had it work successfully?
Click to expand...

I've never had the need to... but it's not an unknown tactic for recovering lost data on a hard drive, I've heard of it being done successfully several time.
 
Use extreme caution:

Most articles I've read stress the need for opening of hard drives to be done in a clean room. Many say that it can be done outside of one, but most suggest to very carefully (and use your own interpretation of that at your own risk) swap the platters, then if the drive is working, get your data off and onto a new, unopened drive as quickly as possible; that there is no way to say how long your drive will last after you have opened it.

So again, it is dependent on how much your data is worth to you because to even to do-it-yourself "properly" you should need two new hard drives. One, exactly the same make and model as the one you are trying to recover the data from, and a "good" drive to transfer the data to afterwards.

I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has done this themselves. I don't want to hijack this thread so feel free to PM me, or if efocycletron is going to consider trying this himself, maybe keep it in this thread.
 
How to Swap Hard Disk Drive Platters

This is an article regarding swapping hard drive platters. This is not a procedure for the technically inept or faint hearted. The following carries no guarantees, and defiantly voids and nullifies any existing warranty.
Steps
  1. Know that this is only a last resort. You have tried everything else, your data is not extremely important, and/or your cash flow restricts the use of a professional service.
  2. Purchase a new HDD with the same model number and firmware version.
  3. Test the new HDD. Make sure you can read and write data to and from it.
  4. Set up a clean work environment. You can not make a super clean environment at home but use some common sense, and do the best you can. Keep air flow to a minimum.
  5. Assemble and layout your tools.
  6. Don powder-free latex gloves.
  7. Ground yourself! If you don't know what is, or how to do it, ask google.
  8. Remove the cover of your dead drive. If the cover doesn’t just lift off, look for more screws! There are screws under labels.
  9. Once the cover is off, inspect the platters. If they are scratched, scorched, warped, or other wise damaged, stop you are done!
  10. Set the cover back on and remove the cover from your donor HDD.
  11. Remove the platters from the donor HDD. This is you chance to learn how they are assembled, if you slip and damage parts you can get a new donor.
  12. Remove the platters from your dead HDD.
  13. Reassemble the donor drive with dead HDD’s platters inside.
  14. Mount the donor drive.
  15. Quickly copy your data. You might only get one or two chances to read from the HDD. It might make some horrible noises.
  16. Unmount the HDD and discard it. Continued use of the HDD is ill-advised.
Click to expand...
Thought this might help if you decide to try it...
 
Thanks for all the advice guys, however i do not feel confident that i will be able to replace the circuitory in a completeley clean environmenti think it may just have to go to the bin. As for value it was only movies and music but to be fair there was 100 gigs of it so a little gutted!!
 
At least you didn't loose anything really important. I wouldn't want to try and swap the patters either, you buy a new drive and essentially wreak it when you do that.

On a side not, if anyone has successfully swapped platters outside of a clean room can you PM me as well?
I'm not saying it can't be done but I'd expect the failure rate to be very high.
 
Well I have several identical hard drives... I think I just might try it on a couple of 4GB Fireballs just to see if I can do it.
 
Bad Idea, I took a HDD apart before (faulty one for curiosity). Its not easy and I broke the drive arm :o. They are very delicate.
 
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