Wrong Power Adapter Caused External Harddisk Data Lost

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tohkokchian

Mar 29, 2018
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I have a 2TB WD external hard drive, which the power adapter is malfunction, so I bought another adapter to replace it.

The voltage (12V) and Ampere (1.5A) of the new power adapter are same with original, but I overlooked that the polarity was reversed, and the harddisk is now like unformatted/unpartitioned drive, and not shown in My Computer.

I have taken out the harddisk from the casing and used USB harddisk docking station + Zero Assumption Recovery v9.2 and O&O DiskRecovery v7.1 and tried retrieving data, but no files nor folder was found after more than 10 hours processing.

Any idea that I should supposedly do in order to recover the data? Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
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Maybe my speculation can help understand. There is a good chance that the actual HDD unit inside the external drive case is OK. However, the incorrect power connection probably damaged the circuit board inside the external case, and THAT is why you computer cannot communicate with the drive inside.

Then there's the secondary issue that mdd1963 told you. The data was recorded on the HDD unit in a non-standard way. So, when you transplant it to your computer via a docking stand, the computer can read data but it makes no sense at all, so it says it cannot read. That's a deceptive error message. Trying to use a data recovery tool or service may not be the right solution. What you may really need is to replace the printed circuit board in...
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tohkokchian

Mar 29, 2018
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I believe it is not burnt out as the harddisk is still accessible by disk management...
 
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Phillip Corcoran

Phillip Corcoran

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Then try a professional data recovery service, and yes, that's very expensive.

That's why it's imperative to have at least two external drives so you can store backups on the second one.

I thought computer users were eventually getting the message about the importance of backups - - - but apparently not - - :/
 
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tohkokchian

Mar 29, 2018
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Yes, I have multiple backups myself, but not the owner of that spoilt harddisk :D
 
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Paperdoc

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Maybe my speculation can help understand. There is a good chance that the actual HDD unit inside the external drive case is OK. However, the incorrect power connection probably damaged the circuit board inside the external case, and THAT is why you computer cannot communicate with the drive inside.

Then there's the secondary issue that mdd1963 told you. The data was recorded on the HDD unit in a non-standard way. So, when you transplant it to your computer via a docking stand, the computer can read data but it makes no sense at all, so it says it cannot read. That's a deceptive error message. Trying to use a data recovery tool or service may not be the right solution. What you may really need is to replace the printed circuit board in the external drive case that was damaged. That board would know how to deal with the non-standard data forms on the HDD unit.

Contact WD Tech Support with full details of your problem. They can advise whether this speculation is correct, whether the damaged board in the drive case can be replaced, and whether that will repair the damage and give you your data back.
 
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