Ooops I dropped my external hard drive

**Troll** · 3 September 2007, 07:15

Originally posted by fzbucks View Post

the drive does not show on my computer anymore but when i plug the usb cable in it trys to start up and makes this feint buzzing noise.

I know it's probably fooked as it was writing when it was dropped but is there anything that can be done?

You could in desperation try grasping the drive and give it a sharp rotaion in the axial plane...but don't hold out too much hope

Originally posted by fzbucks View Post

also does anyone know of a cheap data recovery service - only need to recover the photos from it, nothing business related.

Assuming you are not Paul Francis Gadd & cost is an issue, you could try the muppets at PC World

**n5gooner** · 3 September 2007, 12:54

Originally posted by Troll View Post

You could in desperation try grasping the drive and give it a sharp rotaion in the axial plane...but don't hold out too much hope

#or more commonaly know as the Connor Pray.

I've used these people for my clients before www.retrodata.co.uk Duncan there is very good.

**ferret** · 3 September 2007, 13:34

My first job would be get the fecker out of its external housing (it is probably just a plain IDE drive in there) and plug it into the PC to see if that fixes it.

If no good then chuck it and buy another. You do have multiple backups don't you?

**King Cnvt** · 3 September 2007, 13:37

"Ooops I dropped my external hard drive "

Is that Britney's new comeback song?

**Clippy** · 3 September 2007, 14:27

Originally posted by n5gooner View Post

#or more commonaly know as the Connor Pray.

I've used these people for my clients before www.retrodata.co.uk Duncan there is very good.

I can recommend http://www.disklabs.com/uk/ who I've used before a few times. They have a no fix, no fee service which is true and not BS. I sent a drive into them once and they spent ages trying to recover data from it but with no luck. They only charged for delivery costs back to me.

As an aside, any data recovery service is not going to be cheap.
It's one of those services where shopping around can be a false economy.

You need bods who know what they are doing.
i.e. have a sealed work environment, can strip the drive, re-build it etc and not just run some s/w on it.

**fzbucks** · 8 September 2007, 10:14

I've taken the drive out of the housing - it's just a plain old 3/12" IDE drive.

tried all sorts to get it working - spinning, "gentle" knocks etc - still same old grindy/buzzy tune when I plug it in.

Have contacted the company and they have asked me to return it to them, so will do that next week - never know they may send a new one back.

luckilly I found all the photos that I had transferred to it on my old laptop (I copied them off that onto my new laptop) so all's well in the recovery department - just need to spend a few hundred hours downloading all the videosI had on it.

**ferret** · 8 September 2007, 15:16

Ah well, if the drive is out and still won't boot up then sounds like some component or other has bitten the dust.

The videos you need to re-download - are they legal? If not do you really want to send this drive back to the manufacturer or a repairer? If you have all the valuable stuff elsewhere then for the sake of a new £60 drive is it worth sending back?

**fzbucks** · 9 September 2007, 07:10

the vids are legal as i filmed them from the back of the cinema myself

the drive is only a week old and still in warranty so it was worth the £2.60 it cost me to post it second class recorded delivery.

If they say it is not covered by warranty then Iwill fork out to buy another drive - maybe get a 1TB drive so I have more to lose next time - oh and a dvd burner so i can backup the photos etc

Ooops I dropped my external hard drive