Don’t wait – ALWAYS backup your backups – a cautionary tale

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System is Windows 7.
I have an internal HDD in an external caddy. I had a couple of occasions recently when I turned on the drive
and Windows threw up a blue screen to prevent a sort of failure. After re-booting it happened again but the third
time was successful. I immediately back up the drive to another external drive and, a couple of days later the ailing
drive failed. I felt quite pleased with myself, but it was short-lived.

The backup drive was now my only copy. It sat on top of a second identical Western Digital drive, both flat-down
on my glass-topped computer table. But my hand accidentally knocked it sideways and it ended up at an angle, having
struck the glass. To me it didn’t seem that bad, but the drive no longer works. The platter/s spin up, getting faster,
then they slow down again, and it doesn’t show up on my PC. So all my files have gone.

The two attachments show a ‘before’ and (roughly and ‘after’. I doubt very much if any remedial treatment can
be carried out.

45136-P102069945137-P1020700

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T.M.,

You may have only juggled/loosened/broken the internal circuit board or USB connector. Those drives can be disassembled and the bare drive can be connected up to USB withsimple $10 item you can purchase on Amazon.

HTH :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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RetiredGeek: Looking at the casing of the drive there’s no indication
of how it’s put together. No hidden screws or anything.

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T.M.,

Yes you will have to “break in”! But then if the drive is currently unusable so what?

Of course, I’m assuming it is out of warrenty.

:cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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The drive is definitely out of warranty, and Youtube has info about ‘breaking in’.

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Your unfortunate story is one I very much try to avoid.
When one of my two assigned ext HDs goes bad [*], I always immediately get a 2nd external HD and immediately make another set of full images onto said 2nd ext HD, to go along with the surviving 1st ext HD.
Long ago, I lost a set of backups by not having two ext HDs assigned to each computer, had to rebuild one computer’s Windows OS and all successive 3rd party stuff from scratch.

Addendum:
[*] A logical error can often be fixed to good as gold status, a physical error – HD replacement time

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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RolandJS: I fully agree with you, but we always think it’s going to happen to the other guy and not to yourself.
As my son is more ‘hands on’ than I am regarding computers, I’ll have to wait a week or so before he’s free to visit me. I’ll post again when I have some news – good or bad!

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It’ll be real bad luck if you’ve lost your files. I agree with RG, it’s very probably something got jarred loose, and you’ll be able to recover fairly easily.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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I’m wondering if the enclosure of that hard-drive can be replaced with an exact same enclosure. I might have missed it, did that hard-drive [without the external enclosure] get placed into another computer to test for recovery?

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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To recap and clarify: My original files were on an IDE drive that had been put into an external (USB) caddy. I was in time to back it up before it failed. As the drive is some years old and making groaning and clicking noises I’m presume it’s mechanically come to the end of its life. But there’s nothing to lose by removing the drive and trying it in the PC, so we’ll
give that option a go.

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@thatman:

Oh boy, the drive already makes noises?

IT S TIME FOR THE PROFESSIONALS!

No, I do not hawk my own services! I want to point you to an experienced specialty service with seemingly very reasonable prices that has saved my daughter’s bacon in the past. Recovery Force Inc contact information.

Good luck.

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I backup monthly to a USB external drive that sits in a fireproof box when it’s not being used.

A copy of the most recent backup also goes onto a mirror NAS, which also holds the bulk of the files I don’t want to lose (and I really do need to archive some of that stuff since I am a packrat).

There are a few files that I keep on Dropbox for easy access from mobile devices.

There are a number of files that I keep on OneDrive that are accessed daily.

So, while it’s entirely possible that some disaster could really cause me major problems, normal day-to-day problems probably won’t be too hard to recover from.

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eikelein: The drive that is making noises held my original files. It’s one of the black-cased Western Digital drives (see photo) which accidentally received a sideways knock, that was the backup drive.

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eikelein: The drive that is making noises held my original files…

thatman,
That is exactly how I understood you and the word “original” is exactly why I said – and I repeat it:
IT IS TIME FOR THE PROFESSIONALS!

Don’t “try” anything, bite the bullet and admit that you are at the end of the rope as far as home remedies go.

Exactly the noises you describe IMHO spell doom for your original files! Good luck!

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I finally have the result. The external Western Digital drive that received a knock was removed from it’s case and connected directly to the PC – it worked! RetiredGeek, it looks like you were right. A big thanks to everyone who responded to the post. It just remains for me to purchase a backup drive to copy over the files, and to scrap the other ‘clicking’ drive.

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T.M.

You have a good drive sotry one of these.
I just buy bare drives (very inexpensive as you’re not buying enclosures and electronics for each) and plug them into one of the above referenced devices. Makes it easy to rotate drives and eliminate single point of failure. I now only have one point of electronics failure that can be very easily and inexpensively replaced. Note: the unit will accommodate 3.5″ & 2.5″ drives!

HTH :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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…try one of these…

I never completely got the point of one of those. You can easily connect a bare drive to computer via a cable so why buy something that’s little more than a stand? Am I missing something?

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I never completely got the point of one of those. You can easily connect a bare drive to computer via a cable so why buy something that’s little more than a stand? Am I missing something?

Graham,

Yes, you can get a cable but you also need power (at least for 3.5″ drives). This has it all in a nice enclosure and accepts both common size drives. I guess it all boils down to personal preference. BTW I have 2 sets of cables w/power bricks and I find the single unit much more convenient. As always YMMV :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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RT: That looks like a good idea, I’ve not heard of it before. It’s listed on Amazon here in the UK, so I’ll definitely consider it. Thanks for the info.

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Another option is to use an external hard drive designed to be able to take a few knocks. I’ve been using the Transcend brand for years without any trouble. http://us.transcend-info.com/Products/No-284

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