Help external hard drive jiggered.

Help. I had backed up my RAW photo's on an external hardrive Oyen Digital usb, because I did not have much room on my laptop. Now however, something gone wrong, and I cannot access the hardrive, think something must be jiggered inside, thought it was the usb, so bought an esata as the hardrive has one and tried this, but no go, although I do not have an esata on computer, so I bought a usb/esata lead to connect between the computer and the external hardrive. But no go again. Anyway can anyone help me retrieve my photo's please. Thanks

regards susan

Have you tried it on another PC?

Has the external drive suffered any unusual trauma, like being dropped or overheated?
If yes, it's probably physically damaged and your data is most likely unrecoverable.

You may need to contact the manufacturer here.

Tip for the future:- Always keep two copies of your images. If you need to make space on your PC, uninstall any software/applications that can easily be reinstalled rather than delete irreplaceable images.

Tip for the future 2:- Buy more memory cards.

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Peter E Smith

My flickr Photostream

Usb also dc 5v for a power point, although I do not have a power plug for it. Usually use the usb, it had been playing up, the usb I mean, it was bending when you attached it to the hardrive. I have tried it on another computer and it still doesn't work,afraid my laptop was old and didn't have any space for extra's like photo's. Have another computer now which I can save on it as well as save onto another hardrive which I going to buy today. Never thought about an external drive going wonky.Thanks the website, will look at it better when I come home later, have to go out now.

Try using this freeware, to recover files.
http://www.piriform.com/recuva

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My piccies.

I have a lace hard drive I've owned for two to three years and is working very well but last month I bought a Hitachi 1tb that didn't work from the get go so I returned it and bought a new lace I plan to buy a new external hard drive every 12 month.

At the end of the day you get what you pay for.

sorry to hear your having trouble with your hard drive send it back they may be able to retrieve your data by taking the cd/ROM out of the old one and placing it in a new one.

James

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My Fluidr

"To see in colour is a delight for the eye, But to see in black and white is a delight for the soul" ANDRI HERY

There are several reasons you cant access the drive, one is as Peter suggests, physical damage, the other is corruption of the file allocation tables, if its the latter you could also try this:

link

It can detect a hard drive that even windows cant see.

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My Names Alan, and I'm a lensaholic.
My PPG link
My Flckr link

Things to check:

1) Does the HDD spin up? Put it to your ear as you power it up and you should hear a high pitch soft noise as the drive spins up.

2) Do you hear any clunking? If the drive is physically damaged you usually hear a regular clicking/clunking sound as the HDD tries to sort itself out. Often they will try for a few minutes then shut down.

3) If you hear NOTHING from the drive, then you may find the USB connector is physically damaged. If you have a 5VDC PSU (check and double check that it's the right spec and polarity first!!!!) then you can try plugging that in. Note, however, that some USB drives won't spin up until they see USB signals - even if powered.

4) Failing all that, it's possible that you can dismantle the HDD casing, extract the drive, and use one of the eBay-available USB-to-SATA/IDE drive adapter cables to rescue the drive... or PC-World do sell replacement HDD-USB cases (but it does depend on the age of the HDD. If it's an IDE drive you may have difficulty getting the correct case)

Matt

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http://www.mattmatic.co.uk
(For gallery, tips and links)

Hi Sue,

I agree with Matt that there may be a problem with the controller chip in the external HDD (things to do 4). If this fails, however, you could, as a last resort, try freezing the drive. Whilst this is not a method I have ever had to resort to, there are many 'out there' who claim that this has brought their drive 'back to life' just long enough for them to recover their data.

Here are a couple of links that describe the process:

http://www.brighthub.com/computing/hardware/articles/66059.aspx
http://thepcreport.net/tutorials/the-hard-drive-freezer-trick/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhHReUaX-l4

Good luck!

Jon

Hi all, first, it started when the usb started to get wobbly, I am wondering if the connection inside the external hard-drive has jiggered, as I have tried to connect a different usb, but it doesn't work, I cannot use the recovery snappychappy as I put the RAW photo's straight onto the external drive not the computer.I dont have a power up plug Matt. At least I cannot find one. I have bought the esata leads with usb, but it didn't work.I don't think the freeze methods is going to work Jon if the inside of the usb is jiggered. I did open it up, but couldn't find anyway to connect to computer, I have done a lot of work on computers in updating them, but this I do not know how to recover. I may have to resign that I have lost everything and start again from scratch.
Thanks everyone for your comments though.I will keep the external hard-drive though, just in case something comes up and I can recover my photo's. Because some of the photo's are which I have won on competitions, and would have like to have kept the original's.
regards susan

A local computer repair facility should be able to help, if only to identify the problem.

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Best regards, John

Thanks, I will have to try and find one.We are a small community on this side of scotland, but not sure if they are able to retrieve info from a hard-drive.
regards susan

You can almost always recover something from the hard drive, it just depends how badly you want it As a last resort a specialist recovery outfit can remove the platters from inside the drive and install them into a new drive mechanism. This will likely cost several hundred pounds and usually means sending the drive away. Most local computer shops won't be able to do this.

A note about the freezing technique, I have used it with success, twice in fact. Both times it brought a dead hard drive back to life for about 30 minutes (long enough to copy the client's Documents folder). In one case it worked a second time as well (managed to grab about half his photos), but not in the other case. I've also tried it three other times where it had no effect. You have to be quick and get the data off while the drive is still cold, so a set of USB-esata bridge cables save you wasting time trying to put the drive back in the case.

In extreme cases I've heard of people leaving the drive in the freezer while accessing it from a laptop.

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Tim
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I am in a chat room with oyendigital now to tell them, as i just found the receipt and realize that it is still under warranty.

Well now - that should help

Good luck

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let the education continue

proud owner of a couple of cameras and a few bits and bobs

Hi Sue!

From what I've read here it appears that the actual HDD is ok; it's the USB connection thats failed.

If that's the case it will be possible to transfer the drive from its existing case to another and get it working again. Replacement cases are quite cheap and can be bought on-line or in shops like Maplins, or a computer repairers will help.

Oyen only seem to make one ext HDD; I see they also sell the external enclosure separately so with luck they'll send you one. All you'll need to do then is swap the HDD itself from the old enclosure to the new one.