External Hard Drive issue.

Ribos · 09-22-2008, 11:54 PM

Loathe though I may be to ask the internet for technology help... I messed this one up, and the troubleshooter is no help (as expected).

So, we had a flood in our basement about a week or so ago. In the basement was my backpack in which I stored my electronic doodads for the summer, and importantly, my external hard drive. It's a Western Digital Passport style, 80 GB. Before anyone asks, no idea if it got wet.

The problem was, I thought I had emptied the entire backpack before putting it in the dryer to eliminate the copious amounts of water it had absorbed. You see where this is going. Upon taking it out, I found I had a warm but dry hard drive in there.

Now, when I attempt to connect the hard drive, the device manager seems to recognize its existence as a USB Mass Storage device, but not what kind of hard drive it is. Furthermore, it does not appear in Windows Explorer.

So. Can I make it work, or do I now have a $100 paperweight?

DeusExMachina · 09-23-2008, 04:24 AM

Hmm this one sounds tough.

So the computer does detect it as a USB mass storage device but doesn't pop up on explorer?

If you really want the data recovered you might need to take it to a professional data recovery center and have them remove the disks out of the drive and placed into a new drive to be read.

Ribos · 09-23-2008, 08:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeusExMachina

Hmm this one sounds tough.

So the computer does detect it as a USB mass storage device but doesn't pop up on explorer?

If you really want the data recovered you might need to take it to a professional data recovery center and have them remove the disks out of the drive and placed into a new drive to be read.

Don't need the data recovered, it's just a backup hard drive anyways. Everything I've got on there is on my laptop hard drive, so screw that noise.

I apologize for the giant picture, but in case there was any question, this is what I see:

Excel-2010 · 09-23-2008, 10:32 AM

Open up Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) and post a screenshot of that.

DeusExMachina · 09-23-2008, 10:46 AM

If its just a software or data integrity issue such as an accidental erasure those can potentially be recovered with software done by yourself. But if the disk or drive isn't showing up, its possible that its a hardware error such as a faulty reading head or IC damage which is likely to be the case if it has been rumbling in high temperatures for a good number of minutes. If its a hardware issue, data recovery is guaranteed to exceed the cost of the HD.

Ribos · 09-23-2008, 11:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jacal

Open up Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) and post a screenshot of that.

Here ye go.

Note that the properties window was opened through the diskmgmt.msc. Thinking it's probably a hardware issue, meaning I have to go get me a new external hard drive. Ugh.

**dieKatze88** · 09-26-2008, 11:44 AM

95% of external hard disks are just regular hard disks in fancy plastic casings. Your external hard disk converter is working great, however the disk inside of it is gone man. You're either going to have to:

1. Crack your existing enclosure open, find out what drive type it takes, go buy one of those and put it in there

or

2. Buy new external hard disk.

Excel-2010 · 10-01-2008, 07:56 AM

I've cracked open a Passport before. It's possible, but you will need several eyeglass screwdrivers and at least two extra hands to pry it open.

Have you tried that leave the hard drive in the freezer for 24 hours trick yet?