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General discussion

Anouther dead drive

Feb 4, 2011 8:40PM PST

I have a Internal HD in External case. Forgat and left on all day and burned drive motor out.
Any ideas on restarting so I can recover non backed up data? And I don't need the shoulda kept non replaceable stuff backed up lecture.
Thanks for any and all help.

The drive is WD EIDE. Not under warrenty.
Most is retrievable from other sources, but very time consuming.
I have anouther drive that the bearings are bad in. Is it possible to disasymble both and reassymble the good parts together?
What a think guys?

Discussion is locked

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Something doesn't sound right
Feb 5, 2011 12:45AM PST

Leaving a drive on all day doesn't normally burn out the motor. There isn't much if any difference in the basic design and materials used when making drives for external versus internal use. In fact, if you buy an external case, it's meant to house a drive that can be bought for internal use. How certain are you that the motor is bad? What are the drive's symptoms. Did you connect it directly to a motherboard port? If the drive has indeed failed within the sealed case, there's not much hope for self repair. You'd need professional services to extract data and this presumes the platters are in reasonable condition. Making 2 bad drives into one is generally limited to swapping controller boards between drives that are already identical.

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The first thing I try is.
Feb 5, 2011 1:22AM PST

The drive in a new case or in some PC Tower.

If the drive works there I move on. If it doesn't work I use the advice given in the top post of this forum.
Bob

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Doesn't sound right
Feb 5, 2011 7:31AM PST

I removed the drive and tried a different drive in enclosier (the one with bad bearings) and it worked.
I agree with you Steven.
It was running when i got home and I turned it off. Fired up the computer and after booted turned the external back on and nothing. No whir of the drive coming up to speed.
The drive with the bad bearings is also WD and of the same era. Only diff. is 60G and dead drive is 40G. Control boards would match if they can be removed.

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Good luck.
Feb 5, 2011 7:34AM PST

When it comes to bad things I suggest you go with what works. Here I would never try the enclosure since we find these fail with regularity. Of course it's your stuff and your files!
Bob

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would never try the enclosure
Feb 5, 2011 11:12AM PST

I would never use the common enclosier. The ones I use are the Sabrent EC-UIES7 purchased from FRYS Electronics. They have a fan to cool the drive.

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Sorry.
Feb 5, 2011 11:18AM PST

I think I didn't phrase this proper for you. After too many drives to recover we pull the drive and pop it into a tower or another known good enclosure. The desktop is preferred for many reasons.

But it's good to read you are trying other things and it seems you are making progress.
Bob

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Use sticky then...
Feb 5, 2011 11:43AM PST

Just open your PC case and "jerry-rig" the HD to connect to system. If it works, then get whatever files you want, provided you have a free port to attach HD. If is still doesn't work, then the typical end-user fixes may apply. While, it may or may not work since you mentioned, "burnt", this alone says you're going to find little success. But, if you do make it work and get the files, move on because a 40gb'er is suggesting a old HD and it saw better days, regardless of care, it will fail period. good luck

tada -----Willy Happy