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Hard Disk Crash

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So here the problem, i have an internal hard drive in an external enclosure. I accidentally pulled the USB cable and tumbling down came the hard drive. When i plug it in Windows (Vista home premium) recognizes it as USB mass storage but it doesn't show up in "My Computer". Now when i plug it in i get a bunch of weird beeps (I don't want to have an argument about hard drives beeping its beeping!) the disk doesn't spin up and nothing else happens. I already looked at professional data retrieval, and although i'm upset about losing the data i don't have 1500$ to recover it. I tried freezing it but still nothing. I get a cable error when i run diagnostics and nothing else. My only remaining option is to open it up or RMA it. The drive is a Western Digital 400gb WD caviar SE16. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with something like this? Could i retrieve the data myself, or just give up and Send it in for a new one?

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Have you tried connecting it directly (i.e. without the enclosure)?

Reply to ethel

I would connect it to another computer to see if the disk has the same symptoms. If it is not spinning up then it is pretty much time to ship it away for the RMA.....

Reply to slycanman

That funny user negligence and it's RMA. He should eat it, it was HIS own careless actions that caused the drive to fail. Do the right thing.

I have no sympathy for him what so ever.

Reply to bydesign

Well, I'm going to argue....HD's don't beep., so your enclosure may be damaged and its interface may be damaged causing the beeping..., not the HD.

I would pull the drive out of the enclosure and plug it in direct. My suspicion is your HD is fine but your enclosure is damaged.

------------------------------ Evga X58 3XSLI : i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz :GTX295+ x 2 :12GB XMS3 Dominator 8-8-8-21 1600 :XFi Fatal1ty:150GB WD VelociRaptor: 150GB Raptor: 4TB WD 32MB x4: Monsoon Vigor III: Lian Li P80 (black): BFG 1Kw PS: 37" Westinghouse 1080p 8ms :Vista64bit
Reply to warezme

RMA it? Are you nuts? You dropped it; and therefore it isn't covered by warranty. Buy a new one if you must but don't waste your time trying to make someone else pay for your mistake.

Reply to roadrunner197069

right click on my computer, manage, disk managment, and if you dont see your HDD there, it's damaged.

------------------------------ "You can call me Lood, Robin Lood" (Lood means crazy on my language).
Reply to torcida_kutina

I agree with warezme, eliminate the enclosure as the source of the problems before you do anything else.

Take the enclosure apart, pull the drive out, mount the drive in the computer as an internal drive and see what happens. Once you get some indications from that, then you'll be able to determine how to proceed.

------------------------------ - SomeJoe7777

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Reply to SomeJoe7777

Unless the drive was actually writing at tumble time, the disk is probably ok. It is true, that I have never heard a hard drive make any noise that vaguely sounds like a beep, so the external enclosure may have some error associated with it. This would be especially suspected if the drive does not spin up within the enclosure.

Another USB enclosure is not expensive so I would just get one and transfer the drive.

Reply to onestar

I'm not too familiar with model numbers but if your WD drive is an ATA drive then maybe you need to play around with the jumpers on the back of the drive.

I found when using some hard disks in my enclosure I had to remove all the jumpers or set it as master with no slave (i.e. direct connection) - only then did my hard disk get recognised and allocated a drive letter in My Computer and also offer the autoplay feature. Of course this I found out on my own accord as the manual on my hard disk made no mention of this. Also this wont apply on SATA drives as there are no jumpers to set.

Also try connecting your drive directly to the computer without any enclosure to narrow down possible causes.

Reply to marshahu

Unless he moved a jumper, they do not need to be played with.
My opinion is that the enclosure is at fault and it is the enclosure that is beeping, not the hard drive.

Reply to onestar

Same problem here. The drive does BEEP! The spinning speed is very low, a faint whirrr. However during the more or less periodic beeps it stops spinning altogether. The casing seems ok. My desktop ony supports IDE so I'll take it to some shop and then see what happens...

PS: Seems the beep is the noise the heads makes while 'scratching' the platter.

Reply to ayushrai

Man.., I know how desperate u r to retrieve ur data. Even i have the same problem here. It possibly is the problem of ur HDD i dont think there's a much problem in ur Enclosure...Just start saving ur money for Recovery........All the best.!

but i would also say u to never give up and just keep it just as ur last resource..

Message edited by blazing4champion on 08-09-2009 at 04:10:30 PM

Reply to blazing4champion

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