# External Hard Drive cases...



## texican (Oct 4, 2003)

GF's notebook croaked Saturday, screen went dead, everything. Troubleshooting tells me the charger's fine. Carried it into local computer shop and they tested it and said it had a short somewhere.

I bought an external SATA hd enclosure, took the hd out, hooked it up, and nothing. Listened closely and nothing but click click click... which, to me sounded like a dead hard drive also. All of her work was on the hd, and told her it was toast... and would take thousands to recover the data.

She'd been using my old notebook (same age as hers) and I thought, in a last gasp effort, to pull my hd and install hers. Took about five minutes to boot up, but it did work.... amazed windows 7 would work on a clunky windows vista hardware.

So, we're pulling pertinent files off piecemeal, onto flash drives.

Question is, did I get a faulty enclosure, everything seems to be working. Cost of shipping is almost the cost of the enclosure, so going to live with it. Anyone know of any tricks I might use? to make it work? Otherwise, it's a fancy $9 paperweight.


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## backwoodsman7 (Mar 22, 2007)

Try different orientations -- upside down, and on all 4 edges. If it's a mechanical problem, sometimes one position or another will make it work long enough to pull off some data.

If not, put the drive in the freezer until it's thoroughly cold soaked, then plug it in right away. If it works, it'll only work while it's cold, so work fast.

If you don't hear it spinning, give it a few fast twisting jerks around the spindle axis while it's powered on. Sometimes that gives it the help it needs to start up.

And... use the opportunity to impress upon her the importance of backing up. There should never, ever be less than 2 copies of anything one doesn't want to lose.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

I haven't found a lot of reliability in 2.5" hdd enclosures. I've had a few arrive DOA.


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## backwoodsman7 (Mar 22, 2007)

Nevada said:


> I haven't found a lot of reliability in 2.5" hdd enclosures. I've had a few arrive DOA.


They hardly make sense anymore, as cheap as flash memory is now. And for workbench or recovery purposes, a SATA & IDE to USB cable is a lot more practical. $10 or so on Ebay (make sure to get one with a power supply if you need it).


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## texican (Oct 4, 2003)

She's learned a new respect for 'backing up'...


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## Stev (Jul 16, 2013)

Hey, Texican. This is an older thread, so you probably have it all worked out by now. If the hard drive is clicking (and it's coming from the drive, not some electronics in the enclosure) then that drive is in SUPER bad shape. If it's not already 100% dead, it's about to be.

You can do a couple of different things to try to get the important data off - as mentioned above, trying to put the drive in different orientations (upside down, on the sides, etc) might help. If you get to the point where you're completely out of options and think the data is 100% lost you can try flicking it very hard with a finger a few times... sometimes that's enough to get it spinning up long enough for you to pull the data off.

Good luck! Glad she's learned the importance of backing up... I always use Cobian backup with an external hard drive and manually audit random files to verify everything seems to be copying well.

If you have the money for it, think about switching to a Mac with Time Machine at some point in the future. It's super easy, super effective, and 100% hands-off.

Good luck!


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## arabian knight (Dec 19, 2005)

Stev said:


> If you have the money for it, think about switching to a Mac with Time Machine at some point in the future. It's super easy, super effective, and 100% hands-off.


That is what I have also. Along with a mini external drive super easy and like you say 100% hands off. Works great


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## texican (Oct 4, 2003)

Stev said:


> Hey, Texican. This is an older thread, so you probably have it all worked out by now. If the hard drive is clicking (and it's coming from the drive, not some electronics in the enclosure) then that drive is in SUPER bad shape. If it's not already 100% dead, it's about to be.
> 
> You can do a couple of different things to try to get the important data off - as mentioned above, trying to put the drive in different orientations (upside down, on the sides, etc) might help. If you get to the point where you're completely out of options and think the data is 100% lost you can try flicking it very hard with a finger a few times... sometimes that's enough to get it spinning up long enough for you to pull the data off.
> 
> ...


I've had them die before...and the clicking has always told me they were boat anchors... as a last chance gamble, I swapped it out into my other notebook, and it worked... was able to copy all the documents off of it. Windows popped up warnings this was an illegal copy of windows...

My GF works from a notebook only, so doubt if she could finagle an external hard drive...

I lost data ....*once*... and learned my lesson. I backup everything important to multiple medias...


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## wannabechef (Nov 20, 2012)

The heads are stuck, try tapping it with screwdriver handle.

Sent from my GT-P3113 using Tapatalk 4 Beta


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

wannabechef said:


> The heads are stuck, try tapping it with screwdriver handle.


I haven't heard that, but I've been told that stuck hard drive heads can be freed by holding the hard drive in one hand and snapping the wrist back & forth, to quickly twist the hard drive in the same plane that the platters turn. I've never had success with it myself, but I've been told by reliable sources that it works.

Of course you wouldn't want to trust a hard drive that had the heads stuck enough to put it back into service, but I've heard that it might work long enough to recover the data.


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## wannabechef (Nov 20, 2012)

Nevada said:


> I haven't heard that, but I've been told that stuck hard drive heads can be freed by holding the hard drive in one hand and snapping the wrist back & forth, to quickly twist the hard drive in the same plane that the platters turn. I've never had success with it myself, but I've been told by reliable sources that it works.
> 
> Of course you wouldn't want to trust a hard drive that had the heads stuck enough to put it back into service, but I've heard that it might work long enough to recover the data.


Ive got some workstations to boot with the screwdriver handle method.

Sent from my GT-P3113 using Tapatalk 4 Beta


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