My husband’s external hard drive (Western Digital, 500 gb) crashed, and after a full day on the phone with tech support, it seems to be well and truly dead. He was quoted a cost of about $3K to recover the data. That isn’t feasible for us, right now, so I’m looking for other possible solutions, and I figured if anyone would know, somebody here might.
He tells me (keep in mind, he’s an IT person and I’m not, so forgive any incorrect terms I might use) that the little computer chip processor in that drive went bad, and because the unit is still under warranty, he can send it back and they will replace that chip for free. But that won’t recover any of the data stored, which is the main concern. They would just wipe the drive and send him a new one.
So is there a cheaper way to recover that data? Or is there a way to replace that little chip without losing the data?
If you can open the case and get the exact make and model of the drive, there are places that will sell you replacement boards for the drive. The board is simple to replace. Probably cost you a couple hundred bucks.
Now he knows how to do that on a CPU, as he builds all of ours from scratch. But he says the thing in this little external drive is just a chip, not a board. Does that make any sense?
these drives are a standard desktop hard drive inside a housing. In some cases, its the USB interface components or power suppy that have failed not the drive itself.
Is it spinning up?
Is it making an obvious clicking noise?
Any PC shop will have the stuff to test the drive out of the housing and just may be able to read your data.
The circular light stays on but it doesn’t flicker as mine does when it reads, and it makes no noise, no spinning, no clicking. Just dead silence. So we know it’s getting power, but it’s just… not working.
I don’t care so much about the drive, I just want the data, for less than a small fortune. I have a better computer and external drive, but I’m not a hardware expert.
USB and power supply are good, as he switched those out to check.
Breaking the case is a given now. If you send it to a data recovery place they will have to extract the drive too. Its going to be a normal 500GB hard drive hiding in there, that can be plugged into normal SATA or IDE cables in any PC or an adapter like I linked.
It’s not clear that you’re grasping drachillix’s very sound advice. Your external harddrive is composed of two parts - a very standard, off-the-shelf, 500GB WD SATA drive and a circuit board with a CPU chip that translates the SATA connection to an ethernet connection. It is very possible that the circuit board has died but the drive is fully functional. You can pull it out of the housing and connect it to your PC directly, just as with any internal drive, with either a SATA connection or a USB connector, as drachillix linked to. If that is the case, you will have all your data and still have a fully functional 500GB harddrive as well. You can buy an inexpensive housing if you want to keep the drive external.
And, to follow up on what flex727 noted, the very standard, off-the-shelf 500 GB drive has it’s own circuit board on it, which is also easy to replace (3-4 torx screws), provided you can find an exact match.
So I’d trouble shoot this as follows:
Ditch the current external case and hook the actual drive up to a SATA or USB connection (per **drachillix **'s advice).
If no success, find another WD drive with the same circuit board and swap out the boards.
If no success, think long and hard about how much your data is worth to you. If the answer is “More than $1500,” contact a professional data recovery service.
You are absolutely correct, as I am not a hardware person at all. I’m just relaying info to and from my husband, who understands all of this a great deal more than I do!
As soon as he gets home from work, I’m going to make dictate posts or whatever, because I know I’m way over my head here. But I thank everyone for the help, and he appreciates the info passed along, so far!
And of course, after my husband talked to drachillix on the phone for 10 minutes, they solved the issue.
(Take the clear rubber seal off, and there are clips under it, and the drive pops apart.) Now he knows what he’s dealing with (SATA), and can go forth from there.
drachillix, thank you so much! And thanks to everyone for the input!
I have had 3 of these external USB drives fail on me. All three were WD 500gb drives. What I did in each case is what drachillix is suggesting, take off the housing for the HD and hook it up like an internal HD. I then copied that to a new external HD, which cost me much less than what a data recovery service would charge.
A Big part of the challenge with their unit was trying to disassemble it without destroying it because there were no obvious screws or disassembly points. Glad he was able to identify it and get it apart.