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General discussion

External HD has failed, what can I do

by charlesrisner Sep 27, 2007 8:08AM PDT

I recently submitted a post inquiring about getting a new external hd for my laptop. I am creating a separate post along the same lines though because I have a WD 500 GB hard drive that has failed on me. The problem came on suddenly and I am wondering what my options are for recovering my data. Here's what happened:

I powered off my laptop and hd and took them with me on a trip. When I got to my destination (just drove, no airplanes or anything), I hooked everything up and when I plugged in the drive, I got 'write error' messages in the bottom right hand corner of my screen. I tried unplugging the drive and then reconnecting, thinking that that would solve the problem, it didn't. I continued to get those error messages, and when I would open My Computer, it would show the five partitions from the drive. However, instead of their usual names, it just had Local Disk for all of them. I opened each drive and nothing would be in there. If I clicked properties however, it would show that 20GB's here and 50 Gb's there were 'used' so it recognized that there was information on my drive, it just did not show the information when I opened the drive. I waited for a couple days and when I got home and hooked everything up I tried again. Now, the computer is not even recognizing the drive at all...nothing when I open up My Computer, and the drive makes a clicking sound about 7-9 times before ''giving'' up and just sitting there.

What is most likely wrong with this thing and what can I do to have it fixed. Would Best Buy work or do I need to send it out to a special HD recovery place. If I need to send it to a place, what are some good places that don't charge an arm and a leg for service?

Your help is most appreciated!

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"the drive makes a clicking sound about 7-9 times before

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Sep 27, 2007 9:07AM PDT

"the drive makes a clicking sound about 7-9 times before ''giving'' up and just sitting there."

There was a few drives that did that and a new drive case cured it. We guess it was the power supply in the case that had failed. Given the price of an USB case it's a cheap fix. If not the drive will still click and fail. If you have a desktop you can perform the test by connecting just the power connection from the drive to the desktop. If no clicks it's a good sign.

Bob

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