Lacie Hard Drive won't power up

[patsyp]

I have had a Lacie external d2 320 gig hard drive for five years. It suddenly shut down and won't power back up. I smelled burning inside. The power connector is fine and I assume the power circuit in unit crashed. I attempted to extract data by connecting the two drives inside that are linked via raid to two drive connectors in my desktop. This knocked out the power of my desktop. After disconnecting the Lacie, my desktop power was restored. Help! How do I get the data off of the Lacie drives?

 

[inzone]

How is the extrenal drive unit connected to the desktop? If it's usb then cannecting it by sata will be a different power setup so you may have to get another external box and put the drives in it and then you may be able to use them.

 

[patsyp]

How is the extrenal drive unit connected to the desktop? If it's usb then cannecting it by sata will be a different power setup so you may have to get another external box and put the drives in it and then you may be able to use them.

Thank you for responding, inzone.

Following a tip I found online, I attempted to bypass the power circuitry of the external hard drive by connecting the two raid disks therein to the connectors for additional hard drives in my desktop. I then connected the USB out from the external drive to a laptop. I was hopeful that the desktop would power the raid disks and that I could extract the data from them onto the hard drive of my laptop. However, as soon as I connected the external raid disks to my desktop, the desktop shut down. I freaked thinking I blew its power circuitry also. However, it did boot up later. Does this explanation change your response? I am hopeful that the external raid disks are still functional and the problem is powering them. Perhaps the 115 volt desktop couldn't handle the additional current pull of the external drives and shut down. Is there another way to see if the raid disks are functional? Your reply would be most appreciated. Thanks.

 

[inzone]

I'm thinking that the desktop shut down because of the connection to the laptop, I also think that the circutry of the external enclosure is fried and that's what can also cause the shutdown.
The only way to get your data is to have the two drives connected in thier raid format.
What I would like to know is the exact setup of this external enclosure , how was it powered and how was it connected to your Pc. Then the internal connections were they sata or usb/mini usb and the internal power is it sata power connector. This is all important because the hard drives can be set up with certian insrtuctios in thier bios to accept certian things.
So as I said in the previous post you may have to get a similar enclosure to have the two drives connected inside to have any chance of getting your data back.

 

[LaCieTech]

Thank you for responding, inzone.

Following a tip I found online, I attempted to bypass the power circuitry of the external hard drive by connecting the two raid disks therein to the connectors for additional hard drives in my desktop. I then connected the USB out from the external drive to a laptop. I was hopeful that the desktop would power the raid disks and that I could extract the data from them onto the hard drive of my laptop. However, as soon as I connected the external raid disks to my desktop, the desktop shut down. I freaked thinking I blew its power circuitry also. However, it did boot up later. Does this explanation change your response? I am hopeful that the external raid disks are still functional and the problem is powering them. Perhaps the 115 volt desktop couldn't handle the additional current pull of the external drives and shut down. Is there another way to see if the raid disks are functional? Your reply would be most appreciated. Thanks.

Hi,

My name is Michael. This model of disk uses a hardware raid configuration that is managed by the communication board. There will not be a way to bypass any component of the setup in order to access the data. It doesn't sound like the drives are defective but the fact that they're configured in a RAID will make them unreadable unless a working communication board is between them and the computer. There are three options for you though:

1) Data recovery professionals. We offer a data recovery service at d2recovery.com. This is your safest bet on recovering the data. We do free consultations and there is no charge to send us the drive to test it to see if recovery is even possible.

2) You can try and find another Big Disk identical to yours (same size and model) and swap out the disks. If you have a working enclosure it won't matter if its the original disks or not and could transplant them. There is a risk though, if the disks caused the issue or if you have them in the wrong order the data will still be inaccessible and the new enclosure will reset them.

3) You can connect the two drives to a motherboard directly and attempt software recovery with recovery apps. Most are not free and are not guaranteed to work. This method takes out the external enclosures and communication boards entirely but you will need to have two open IDE or SATA connections and the software to decrypt a RAID.

If you would like to talk with our techs about this and get more details or ideas, we are available at www.lacie.com/mystuff or 503.844.4500 (USA) and will happily help you determine the best course of action.

~michael, LaCie

 

[patsyp]

Best answer selected by patsyp.