[fowlermj]

First of all, many thank yous to everyone who has helped me in the past!

Now on to the problem.

I have a Dell laptop with a 30g hd, running windows xp. I recently bought a 120gb Western Digital WDXMS1200TN external hard drive to allow me to take some of the burden off of the relatively small internal hd. Unfortunately, I had this drive for about five days before (apparent) disaster struck.

I have been using a powered USB hub to run this drive, as it requires more than my usb can deliver. Today when I plugged it in to continue transferring files, I heard that horrible clicking noise. The drive won't come up on my computer at all now, and I'm fearing that it is a sign of something very, very bad.

All of the things I have read and heard about this tell me that it's the end of the line for this drive. But I'm wondering if there could be anything else going on, since it worked for five days after purchase and then suddenly decided to die (which, wonderfully, was just long enough for me to transfer things to the drive and delete some on my internal hd to see how much space I could potentially save).

I have not moved it since I installed it; it's been on my desk the entire time.

I know that data recovery services are beyond ludicrous for the average user, but I've now lost the last 4 years of photographs, research papers, data, etc. It's not good. And I know I should have backed it all up. But the idea was to back up to this drive temporarily, making hard CD copies too. I just happened to transfer to this drive and then delete, just out of curiosity. And in that window this p.o.s. drive has died.

Any ideas on how to get a little of this back? Is it possible?

Any help, advice, anything would be appreciated.

Thanks guys!

-M

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I just had another thought.

Is there a way to "roll back" my computer a week? I think that's something that maybe I had to have set before this... which I know I didn't do.

Or is there a program I can use to retrieve deleted files? I know that it was less than a week ago that I deleted. Probably Tuesday.

Just a thought.

[fowlermj]

I just had another thought.

Is there a way to "roll back" my computer a week? I think that's something that maybe I had to have set before this... which I know I didn't do.

Or is there a program I can use to retrieve deleted files? I know that it was less than a week ago that I deleted. Probably Tuesday.

Just a thought.

[litefogg]

1 buy a new External HDD
2 take it appart
3 tahe the bad one appart
4 remove and swap the discs, inside
5 put them back together

This will not be easy and theres no conventional way to do it. It has been done, for years,by the FBI and they made the tools, for it, as they saw the need for them. Ii's in there. Good luck.

[123Runner]

To "roll back" the comp will only restore to a previous time. This is for corrupted programs and such. It will not roll back the data.

There are some free and paid recovery programs.
I used one quite well on my flash disk.
A google search turns up FREEBYTE
SMART PC TOOLS

[Tyger]

First to eliminate all the other things that may be at fault, plug it in to another machine that has a USB2.0 connection with enough power to run it and see if it powers up. If not, then you may need to open the case and see it you can make it a slave in another machine with XP. It may be an SATA drive so most machines won't handle it without installing a SATA card.

[fowlermj]

Thank you all for your suggestions.

I was able to use WinUndelete to recover about 90% of the deleted files from the original laptop hard drive, as I had only deleted them about a week ago, and had not used the computer much.

As for the external HD....

I tried it in another laptop and my desktop, both USB 2.0 and powered enough to run it. Comes up to speed and then starts this "click.... click.... click.... " noise that persists. The computers all were unable to read or access the drive at all. I'm thinking this is just a defective head or something internal.

Frustrating, but at least I was able to recover most of my files/data.

The secondary problem now is what to do with this thing. I know you can never really wipe a drive, and I wouldn't even know how if I can't get it to be read by anything. Which is bad, because there is some sensitive information on there. So I'm not real nuts about it going back to WD for service, only to have a new one shipped to me and mine sold at some computer expo for $5 for parts. You know?

Any fixes, ideas? Can it be slaved in even if it's making this pretty serious mechanical failure noise? And even then... it's not likely to function in its intended capacity ever again.

I guess I'm just out the cost of this drive? If so, worse things have happened.

Thanks guys!

Edited by fowlermj, 09 April 2007 - 12:42 AM.

[123Runner]

WD will probably have you test the drive with their diagnostics. Go to their site and download and test the drive.
You can always run some drive cleaners like Dariks Boot and nuke.

[EmperorWoodrow]

howdy..I've got a WD 40 gig that does the same thing..its dead and so is yours..but yours should still be under warrenty..take it back..nobody's going to get anything off of it..

[fowlermj]

Yeah it looks like I'm not experienced enough to even get anything to run any kind of diagnostics on it. Sometimes it makes noises... but then the computer acts like it's not even there - doesn't recognize it. So I'm clueless on having anything run on it.

In any event, looks like it's time for a warranty claim.

Again, I'm a little wary of the possibility of someone getting info off it in the future. Does that really happen? I mean I know it could...