problem with hard drive

Haku Mioje

Daemon Poster
Messages
593
I have a portable hard drive that was dropped and is not working now, when plugged in it connects but doesnt read properly, sometimes it shows up in disk manager and when it does it shows up as read only or not initialized... but when the drivers are read and i can open the drive i cant open any of the folders because it times out or freezes windows explorer... anyone have any suggestions?
 
I just typed up a big reply.. but it deleted when I hit "Reply to Thread". Here it goes again.

Does the hard drive make a ticking sound when you turn it on? When you plug it in and it does not work, does Windows say something along the lines of "The device was not successfully installed."? If it were my hard drive this is what I would do:

Plug it in to another computer. Look at the disk management and right click it to see what my options were... "Initialize" or whatever they may be. Just don't format it.
Run a HDD test on it.
If I couldn't get it to work on another computer (it still froze..) then I would open up the external case and reseat all of the connections. Plug it in and see if it works...
If that doesn't work I would take it out of the external case and set it up as a Slave in a desktop. This would act the same way an external case does, but it would be with new cables. If that doesn't work and I had important data on it I would leave it as a slave, install a data recovery program on my primary HDD and run it on the slave.

I'm glad I keep copying my post.. it keeps deleting.
 
Thanks for the reply sorry it gave you trouble but answers to your questions

Does the hard drive make a ticking sound when you turn it on?
---yes it does when it resets and when it initially turns on
When you plug it in and it does not work, does Windows say something along the lines of "The device was not successfully installed."?
---not always, each time seems to be different, it will sometimes recognize and do its start up application, or incorrectly install drivers, or not show up at all without any sounds

the things that ive checked and tried
--Ive taken it out of the case and actually swapped the connection plate with a HDD that i know is good and still the same things happened.
--I opened up the drive and did a visual check to make sure nothing was loose or scratch, everything came up clean.
--Plugged it into multiple computers and same results came up

my next step will be to try to set it up as a slave drive like you suggested
 
I swapped HDDs in the external case with a known good HDD and it is still not working (paraphrased - please confirm)
The only possible answer to that would be the external case is bad. Meaning the connectors. The OTHER answer (Not possible..) is that the second hard drive is also bad, but it's Not Possible because you said it was a known good HDD.

Put the original drive in a case as a slave. I'm betting it will work. A new external case isn't that expensive on Ebay if you want to go external again :)

Good job!

-Q
 
sorry i was doing like 4 things typing that, but what i meant was that i have 2 of the same portable HDDs, one is the one that will not read and freezes and the other is the one that i got to replace it, it has alot of my documents and files, both drives use an adapter board with a usb 3.0 cable connector, i took the board off of the good HDD and swapped it to the bad HDD to see if it was the board at fault, once it was swapped to the bad drive i reconnected it to my laptop and still got the same results as the board off the bad HDD..
 
Oh, so instead of switching the HDDs you switched the connector boards... lol. Ok.. then put the good HDD in the "Bad" board does that still work? If it does then the HDD is bad. I would still slave it and at least run HDD tests on it
 
when i switched the bad board to the good HDD the drive didnt work, so im going to find a good HDD diagnostic tester and run that on it
 
i took the board off of the good HDD and swapped it to the bad HDD to see if it was the board at fault, once it was swapped to the bad drive i reconnected it to my laptop and still got the same results as the board off the bad HDD

So the HDD is bad, assuming the board is good... which it is because you've checked.

when i switched the bad board to the good HDD the drive didnt work, so im going to find a good HDD diagnostic tester and run that on it

So the board is bad, assuming the HDD is good... which it is because you've checked.

-_- According to your test data both the old board and HDD are bad. Set the bad HDD as a slave in a desktop. If it doesn't work, you are correct, run a diagnostic on it. Find the manufacturer of the HDD and go to their site. They'll have a test specific to their HDDs.

Hope you find a solution soon!

-Q
 
Definitely agree here, bypass the external drive connector logic and plug directly into your system and see if it works or run diagnostics on it. It sounds like you might be dealing with more than just bad hard drives.
 
Back
Top Bottom