Example Manufacturers:
LaCie (eg. Big Disk, Bigger Disk, Bigger Disk Extreme, Quadra
etc), Iomega, Freecom, Maxtor (eg. OneTouch), Western Digital
(eg. Passport, MyBook), Toshiba, Seagate (eg. FreeAgent)
 Data
Clinic are able to recover data from any type
of external hard disk.
Problems: External USB and Firewire hard
disks basically consist of a case containing a standard IDE
or SATA hard disk with a USB or Firewire interface adaptor.
Thus, these units are prone to all the usual
problems relating to IDE & SATA hard drives
plus some others that the external case and interface may bring.
Two of the most common additional problems we have noticed with
these drives are:
- They get knocked over, dropped, banged etc. In almost all
cases, the resulting impact they suffer will cause problems.
- They have a tendancy to overheat. This is due to inadequate
ventilation on the external case. Some external hard drives
don't contain any ventilation at all, a small number of devices
may contain a fan inside the actual case to combat temperature
build up.
Symptoms:
- If Knocked / Dropped etc: The drive will
probably make a ticking / buzzing / musical noise when powered
on. This is usually indicative of damage to the read / write
heads &/or the motor.
- If Overheating: The drive will suddenly
die and not be recognised by the BIOS, or the computer will
appear to start running slowly and noises from the external
hard disk may be heard.
Recovery possibilities: Entirely dependent
on the nature of the problem. Heat associated problems are often
easier to tackle than impact damage problems.
We are currently seeing
many high capacity hard drives (> 200GB) that have
become faulty and make a ticking sound when powered
up. This is almost always indicative of a head failure,
internal to the hard drive. Recovery of data from drives
with these symptoms is difficult and don't let anyone
tell you otherwise - please phone for guidance and an
idea of price.
Click
here to read more about clicking / ticking hard disk
drives |
Do Not: Under no circumstances should you
continue to use the device as you may cause further damage to
the unit. Also, you should not allow the system to run
a repair utility on the drive (such as Scandisk / Chkdsk / Norton
etc) - this can often render recoverable data unrecoverable.
Read our pages specific to
Read our page specific to failure
and data recovery from Iomega Zip and Jaz disks and devices
Related symptom: Click here if
your hard
disk drive is making a beeping or bleeping sound
What if I have one of these drives but the
symptoms are different?: This is quite possible. These drives
are still prone to all the other problems hard disks suffer
from ie. mechnical failure, logical failure, bad sectors etc.
What should I do?: Call the Data Clinic
and talk your problem through with us on 0870 140 2525,
or fill
out our auto-form and we'll call you back
Links:
|
A 500Gb Seagate FreeAgent drive
A Western Digital MyBook external
disk
An external LaCie USB hard disk
An external Iomega Firewire hard
disk
|
