External 1TB hard drive not recognised by XP!!

[Mickk1]

After dropping my Iomega 1TB external drive it made a strange clicking/beeping sound everytime I switched it on. At first i thought it might be the usual 'Click of death' but the beeping sounds are periodical. As a last resort I tried taking the case off and stuck the hard drive in the freezer for 2 hours.

When I took it out and plugged it in it still made the beeping sounds even after I gave it a little tap. I left it switched on for a while (plugged in to laptop via USB) and the beeping stopped, a while later the device drivers were installed. Although the drivers are installed windows cant detect the device and so I cant recover my precious data!

Any help is much appreciated, Thanks.

 

[crazylegs]

You dropped it!!

Its dead Jim!!!

 

[TriplexDread]

The Freezer?!!!

I've never heard of that one before.

I think if there was any time to buy a new drive now is a good a time as any

If the data is really important you may have to send drive away. Be warned a hefty bill will be introduced

 

[Mickk1]

Aww man I sure hope its not dead! Yeah even though the data is important I aint willing to pay a hefty bill so I think I'll just go for a new drive.


Yeah the freezer hah! It actually made me some progress as well, i'm told / have read that sometimes when HDD's are dropped the arm can stick to the disk and when you freeze it (in an airtight bag) it allows you to give it a nudge and get it working again - even if only for a short period of time.

The only thing that gives me any hope is the fact that when I plug it in, the device drivers are installed? Even though the drive doesnt show up under my computer.
I thought maybe theres some decent software out there for finding 'unrecognised' hard drives but I'v yet to find any.

Btw anyone seen any good deals on hard drives recently?

Cheers!

 

[floppybootstomp]

In all mechanical hard drives there is a circuit board containing the board's electronics. This circuit board failing is the most common cause of hard disk failures rather than mechanical failure.

In most cases a semiconductor that's faulty on this board will overheat and crash, causing the board to fail. Therefore putting the HDD in the freezer is not as daft as it sounds as this could give you a whole few minutes to extract data until the cct board warms up.

In this case, however, dropping the hard disk would only cause mechanical failure and therefore the freezer option is a waste of time.

Hard drives are more delicate than people realise and it's a very likely possibility that this hard drive has gone to the great hardware cemetary in the sky.

 

[Mickk1]

Ahh I see, thanks alot for clearing that up I wasn't really sure why it would work - it was more of a shot in the dark tbh!

Looks like its time to start hunting for a new HDD then.

Cheers guys.