How fried is my drive?

September 14, 2007 8:45 AM

Is my USB hard drive recoverable? Due to some bad wiring on my part, one of my USB ports rendered my external hard drive useless.

It still runs, but Windoze doesn't recognize it anymore. It doesn't show up in Device Manager, My Computer or even in Knoppix.

I'm wondering, though, if whatever power surge the miswired USB port gave to my drive affected only the connectors/HD enclosure and not the disk itself. Is it worth buying a new enclosure, or should I just use it as a doorstop? (I know that there's only one real way to find out - go buy one and see for myself - but I'd like some advice on whether it's even worth pursuing.)

posted by adverb to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Enclosures are cheap...buy a new one....or borrow one from a friend.
posted by mmascolino at 8:50 AM on September 14, 2007

If you go mmascolino's route and get a new enclosure, check out this fatwallet thread.
posted by inigo2 at 9:02 AM on September 14, 2007

Prior to purchasing a new enclosure, you might try connecting the drive directly to your PC's (powered-off) motherboard via IDE or SATA cable..
posted by unmake at 9:25 AM on September 14, 2007

Definitely worth trying. I keep one of these around (actually the pre-SATA version, though I plan to upgrade soon) for just such occasions. It's an enclosure without the enclosure, essentially. Being able to take any drive external for diagnostic purposes, just perched on the desk, is supremely handy.

After that, if the drive enumerates but the files aren't accessible, try GetDataBack.

Good luck!
posted by Myself at 10:15 AM on September 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

Myself,

can I use that gadget you link to to hook up my SATA laptop hard drive to another computer? I just had my laptop go dead and my old hard drive enclosure doesn't work with SATA.
posted by any major dude at 12:32 PM on September 14, 2007

@any major dude: "can I use that gadget you link to to hook up my SATA laptop hard drive to another computer?"

You absolutely can. With IDE, desktops and laptops use very different connectors. But SATA is just SATA. I put laptop SATA drives in a desktop-sized enclosure pretty frequently.
posted by CrayDrygu at 7:09 PM on September 14, 2007