Comments on: How fried is my drive?

Question: How fried is my drive?

adverb — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 08:45:04 -0800

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.)

By: mmascolino

mmascolino — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 08:50:56 -0800

Enclosures are cheap...buy a new one....or borrow one from a friend.

By: inigo2

inigo2 — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:02:55 -0800

If you go mmascolino's route and get a new enclosure, check out this fatwallet thread.

By: unmake

unmake — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:25:09 -0800

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..

By: Myself

Myself — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:15:45 -0800

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!

By: any major dude

any major dude — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 12:32:58 -0800

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.

By: CrayDrygu

CrayDrygu — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:09:20 -0800

@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.