Resolved HDD recovery

Hi guys,

I've been handed an external hard drive by someone who can no longer access it. What happened to it I don't know.

I tried plugging it in using the USB and power cable, and got nothing. I disassembled the HDD enclosure, and plugged it into my PC using SATA cables. Still nothing.

I've checked device manager, and it's not present there. Neither is it present in Computer Management or under the storage devices in My Computer.

The external hard drive is hitachi ls-1000-emea.

Anyone got ideas on how I could get my PC to pick up the drive?

Thanks
Chris

 

When you attach it directly to the motherboard in your PC like you did, it should show up in the CMOS/BIOS Setup. If it doesn't, no Operating System is going to be able to see it.

After you connect it and flip the power on, gently touch the top of drive and you should be able to feel it running (spinning platter). And if it's not fastened in, rock it gently from left to right, forward and aft, and you should feel that 'gyro'-type of resistance, (spinning platter again). If you don't feel it spinning at, you got a serious hardware problem.

Let us know what you find.

 

I checked the BIOS, only two hard drives listed are my SSD and my storage drive. The drive is definitely spinning. Can feel the slight vibrations from the spinning, and get the resistance when turning it.

One thing I did notice however was a slight clicking for a few seconds when the PC was booted up; the sort of clicking that I personally attribute to a failed/failing hard drive.

 

Ouch, that's not good. When the heads are having trouble locating track 0, they keep retracting the heads and trying over and over and over again. Eventually though, they usually give up. Some hard drives even shut themselves completely down at that point.

When it reaches this damaged hardware stage, there's not much that can be done but seek professional help. One of those, that's been around a l-o-n-g time, is Ontrack.com. Their services can get expen$ive but, it you "gotta have your data back! ", they have the equipment and the expertise to get it done.

 

I did hear about putting it in a freezer. How many hours would you recommend putting it in for?

 

I never put one in the Freezer. I always put them in a Zip Lock bag with a paper towel in it and all the way in the back of the Fridge. That is the coldest part of the Fridge. Leave it in there for at least a day and a half. Got many of them fixed enough that way to get data off. I know somebody who claims that after he did that, he still uses the drive to this day and that was about 4 years ago. I wouldn't trust it.

 

I have it in the freezer at the moment, so will see how that goes. Apparently it's only music and unimportant files on there, but would like to try and get the data retrieved for him at the very least.

Will let you know how it goes.

 

Well, I took it out at different intervals to try it, and nothing either time. Left it in overnight, still nothing. Think I'll call it a day on this one.

Thanks guys