External Hard Drive Question

[T J]

Hi all! I'm having problems and I wanted to check with all of you before I admit defeat and realize I'm boned. I have a Maxtor 250 Gig ext hd and this morning when I plugged it in there was nothing. After a few minutes of plugging it into different outlets it turned on, the single green light only dimly flashed and didn't connect.

Usually the light flashes for a second then stays solid green. Now it just weakly flashes and never connects. Am I totally screwed? I'm going back to where I got it soon but I thought I'd get ideas. Thanks.

 

[Chindogu]

Well it sounds like it could just be a power supply issue. So the drive itself is probably fine. You could open up the case, take the drive out and put it inside another external hard drive case. It's a simple enough process.

 

[Tyberius]

Sounds like a bad power supply.

Is this a 3.5 inch drive with its own power supply or is it a smaller on that gets power from USB?

If usb, try a different cable - one with an additional plug to tap power from a port. Or the port you are using may not supply enough power to the device.

If it is a big drive, those cannot use USB power. The power supply is probably bad.

Do you have a multimeter? Check the power output on the transformer and confirm that you are getting that volt and amps. If you are getting more than the spec, the drive is probably fried, as the supply gave overvoltage. If you are getting less then replace the supply.

 

[Sheep]

Hopefully it's just a power supply issue that can easily be rectified.

As someone who recently suffered a crashed external HDD leading to a bunch of data lost, I'll think good thoughts for you.

 

[T J]

Opening it up is gonna be my VERY last resort and it won't be me it will be the guys at Radio Shack. I'm sure knowing my luck I'd inadvertently destroy it I'm praying it's the power supply or bad cord. It plugs into the wall and connect to the pc with a usb cord.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I concur with the advice to check into the power supply. If all else fails, most external hard drives are really just garden variety drives inside a plastic enclosure. You could just as easily remove it from the case and stick it inside your computer. Or, use an IDE/SATA to USB cable.

 

[Hitman]

What brand and model is it? The HDDs of most of these external drives are very easy to remove from the casing, some by just removing some screws.

 

[T J]

Well it's confirmed, the hard drive fried, non-recoverable. As usual my luck holds. The manufacture will either give me a new one or they see it was cracked open and tell me to take a hike and I'll be out $250ish... Pity, only had the damned thing for a few months and it was plugged into a power strip. It's like this crap is being made cheaper and more shoddy than ever before. What happened to stuff that lasting 20 years! Sheez!

takes calming breaths

 

[Sheep]

Sorry to hear that. I had a similar experience with mine--it was an external HDD that was only turned on perhaps 2-3 times a month for backing up data. I was upgrading my PC and stored a whole bunch of data on it with no backup when it decided to crash, destroying almost everything on it. Needless to say I was a bit angry.

The freezer trick actually somewhat worked for me (do a Google search for it if you've never heard of it). I was able to pull a few hundred megs of data off of it. Since your HDD is hosed, you pretty much have nothing to lose trying it.

As for stuff lasting a decade or more--forget about it. That's a thing of the past with regular consumer goods which are designed to be as cheap as possible. Generally you'll fare better with higher-end stuff, but you'll pay for that quality.

 

[Tyberius]

Sorry to hear that. I had a similar experience with mine--it was an external HDD that was only turned on perhaps 2-3 times a month for backing up data. I was upgrading my PC and stored a whole bunch of data on it with no backup when it decided to crash, destroying almost everything on it. Needless to say I was a bit angry.

The freezer trick actually somewhat worked for me (do a Google search for it if you've never heard of it). I was able to pull a few hundred megs of data off of it. Since your HDD is hosed, you pretty much have nothing to lose trying it.

As for stuff lasting a decade or more--forget about it. That's a thing of the past with regular consumer goods which are designed to be as cheap as possible. Generally you'll fare better with higher-end stuff, but you'll pay for that quality.

If it's an electronics problem, like overvoltage from the power supply, then the freezer trick won't work. (Of course, try it anyway, because at this point there is nothing to lose)

I had a drive that went south, the freezer trick also allowed me to pull off most of my data (old photos) and was planning on recovering it using an outside data recovery service. At the time, the prices were too high, and I figured I would wait until I got more money or the data recovery prices went down. In the meantime I lost the drive.

 

[Lindley]

When my external drive didn't mount a couple of weeks ago, I just ran TechTool Pro and everything was fine. Of course, in that case it was being *detected*, just not mounting properly.

 

[Gaseous Anomaly]

When my external drive didn't mount a couple of weeks ago, I just ran TechTool Pro and everything was fine. Of course, in that case it was being *detected*, just not mounting properly.

I'll have to try that with my old external drive. It quit about 6 months ago.