I made a mistake in purchasing a Western Digital external HD seeing they are not very durable or reliable for portability. It falls on its side once or twice and then stops working. Anyway I can recover the files?
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I made a mistake in purchasing a Western Digital external HD seeing they are not very durable or reliable for portability. It falls on its side once or twice and then stops working. Anyway I can recover the files?
Put it in your PC as a secondary drive, and see if you can access the HD data. The drive should appear in my computer but if it doesn't, right click on my computer > manage > disk management > does your 2nd drive appear there? If not, it iis probably screwed.
It does show up on Disk Management but as an unknown drive. It gives me the option to reformat or initialize, but I think neither one worked.
Did it show up when you plugged it into your PC or as an external HD?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mad Pino Rage
I don't understand the question. It is an external HD. I have to plug it into my PC via USB. It doesn't even have its own lettering. It's the same when I tried on another PC.
Right ok you just answered my question.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mad Pino Rage
Something similar happened to a guy I work with recently. He was able to use a piece of free software to recover his data (can't remember the name), then format the drive and it worked again. Maybe this is worth a try, however if you cannot format the drive, then you may have fucked up the drive.
Roger that. At least I know there is a probability to recover all my files.
Put it in a ziplock bag in your freezer for 2-6 hours.
When you plug it in, if it still doesn't show up, check the drive management section under Computer Management in your CP> Administrative tools.
see if the drive shows up there, just with no letter. if that fails, you can try to take it to a shop. They sometimes have some tools they can use to recover files.
A free data recovery tool you can get- testdesk
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
This is fucking terrible advise. Freezing hard drives is a last ditch resort. Aka, if it doesn't work, it's getting trashed.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArmedMonkey
I had a similar problem a while ago. I took the hard drive out of the external case and put it into my PC, there I was able to retrieve most of the files off it.
Personally I will never buy another external hard drive.
So I know that this might be slightly off topic, but are external hard drives worth it? I have a buddy who swears by the one he's got (a 500g one to hold all of his music, movies and porn) but he's not too comp savvy so I am wondering if not upgrading my comp would be better?
Externals are nice, I use mine for extra storage and to backup certain files as well. I built mine (ie bought a good drive and an enclosure and put it in it) around 2.5 years ago and just recently it stopped working, but only because the power supply for the enclosure I bought was pretty crappy.Quote:
Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries
So yeah, drives still good, now I'm just looking around for another good enclosure.
It also makes it easy to switch stuff between computers if you do that sort of thing.
I personally suggest buying an internal drive and an external enclosure, just as Jared mentioned. I have two 300GB externals, split up between media and games, and they are still going strong, even after three years. The way I see it, is have them as a first line of defense, and then use DVDs and other expendable media to backup the really imporntant stuff. Time is the only problem, as I still haven't gotten around to backing all my stuff up double time. Then again, I'm probably just too paranoid to bother with losing stuff anymore.
Thanks. I'll check it out and hope it works.Quote:
Originally Posted by Coolio
I think it's worth it. Just wish I had one that didn't crap out of me everytime it fell on its side.Quote:
Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries
I never stand them up, I always lay them flat for this very reason.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coolio
It didn't list the external HD. I guess it didn't work.