Hard drive issues

[SFC K]

Hey all,

Had a bad week last week. Our dog was running through the house last week Wed and got caught on my laptop power cable and knocked the lap top onto the floor. Essentially the computer/hard drive are toast.

I had recently back up my computer on my 2Tb external hard drive so not all was lost, until the new laptop showed up over the weekend. Now I cannot access that drive either. It spins up for about 30 seconds and stops. UGH!!! I can see it on the new laptop, but cannot access the data. It is a WD and I tried every troubleshooting message I read on their site.

I know I could send it away to have the data recovered at a premium, but has anyone used hard drive recovery software and do they work? I will be buying a 2 new external drives, so I have a backup of a backup from now on. This seems a little redundant, but I do not want to have to go through this again…

[GoMachV]

I do recovery for friends all the time. Problem is if the disc doesn't stay spinning you won't be able to read it anyway. I have a dedicated pc I use just for recovery and cleaning viruses. If you get stuck, I'd be happy to help. The programs I use are by runtime and are called getdataback

[SFC K]

Thanks Jeff. When the external HD powers up, it spins for about 30 seconds or so and then the light comes on solid like it is done opening up and stops spinning. It still does not show up under devices and drives listed with the "C" drive section.

However, I can see it with the windows disk management tool and it says that I have 2048.00 GB Unallocated for that drive. Funny, because 1 TB is 1000GB. This is a 2 TB drive...

I did down load a free trial version of EaseUs data recovery and I could see the drive but it was partitioned out in 4 separate drives. I should just buy the full version so I can save the data. In trial mode, you can only save 2G worth of data. I need to save way more than that...

[GoMachV]

Can you see the documents using that program? Just can't save em? Just checking cause most recovery programs I tried were terrible. Getdataback is super simple

[SFC K]

I did not run it as it would have taken forever to get to that point. I was happy to at least be able to see data was there though.

[GoMachV]

Yeah, plan on it taking overnight pretty easily.

[R Cane]

If you end up needing to ship it out, I can help too, if Jeff is really busy (and it sounds like he often is ) ... I've been building/rebuilding pc's and laptops for more than 25 years now, along with software evals, and a little beta testing for Blizzard.
VERY IMPORTANT (if you don't know this already) - if you do happen to get it to recognize some files for recovery, NEVER recover to the same drive, you can overwrite other files and then you really do start to lose stuff.
luck!

[DaveM]

Hi Jeff,

Try the external drive on another computer in case it is a problem with your Laptop not the drive itself.

Older BIOS's cannot read a drive larger than 1 TB. ( I think this only applies to using a drive larger

than 1TB as a boot drive.)

Cheers, Dave.

[DaveM]

Hi Jeff,

This may help,

http://community.wdc.com/t5/External-Drives-for-PC/My-Passport-2TB-USB-3-0-keeps-randomly-disconnecting-HELP/td-p/477224

Cheers, Dave.

[DaveM]

Hi Jeff,

This is interesting,

"Some laptop USB ports may not be powered well enough to sustain the demands of an external drive. I don’t know particulars about your specific hardware, but I would use the drive on a desktop computer to narrow down the problem."

Cheers, Dave.

[edwin pibal]

is the disk a full size "brick" or a smaller 2.5 inche size ?

if its a brick, you would need a laptop with usb 3 or 3.1 to get enough power to run it, which is why most of them have a external psu.

a usb3 "portable" drive also uses a ton of power, id be recommending a mains powered usb hub to solve this.

which from your description matches a power issue.

ed

[SFC K]

Thanks for all the reply's.

The one I have is the WD Elements Desktop. It uses a 2.0 USB.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=304&lang=en

Next time I get to my brothers, I'm going to try it on his desktop...

[DaveM]

Hi Jeff,

When you try your brothers desktop computer, don't use the front panel USB ports, rear USB

ports are directly on the motherboard and so have better power.


Does your drive have a external power supply?

If it doesn't you could do what what Ed suggested try a powered USB hub, they are cheap to buy.


Lastly you could also try taking the hard drive out of your old laptop, just because the Laptop died

doesn't mean the hard drive has failed.

If you have access to a desktop computer install the drive as a second drive and try reading your

files from it.


Let us know how you go,

Cheers, Dave.

[Coelacanth]

I did down load a free trial version of EaseUs data recovery and I could see the drive but it was partitioned out in 4 separate drives. I should just buy the full version so I can save the data. In trial mode, you can only save 2G worth of data. I need to save way more than that...

I use EaseUS Partition Master software (it's free and full-featured) to manage drive partitions. The 4 drive partitions is pretty commonplace with store-bought brand-name computers. I personally hate that practice, I usually just want two partitions--the system partition and a backup partition. All data should ideally be backed up to another location such as an external drive, in the event a drive disaster such as yours occurs. The multi-partitions you see on all Dell, HP, Sony, Lenovo, Toshiba, etc. laptops usually include a diagnostic boot partition and proprietary recovery partition in addition to the usual system partition. This is usually because you don't get the actual Windows Setup disks, just their proprietary image recovery disks. It's rather annoying.

If the boot files are corrupt, and not the disk physically being dead, you can usually restore Windows WITHOUT reimaging and losing all your data & settings by doing a Windows Startup Repair, or a Windows reinstall (this is for Windows 7), but you need a Windows 7 CD matching the version you had installed on the computer (Win 7 Home/Pro/Ultimate, 32-bit or 64-bit). You can download the ISO's of those from Microsoft. You'll need your Windows product key to do the full reinstall. The sticker should be on the bottom of your laptop.

Of course, those last 2 options won't be helpful if your drive is unreadable and physically damaged.