Faulty portable hdd repairers in Perth?

[waxdass]

I have a WD portable that's shat itself recently. Does anyone know where I can take it to get it fixed or at least grab all my data off it?

[Crammit]

Spectrum data is who we used to use. Be aware they aren't cheap though. Is the drive powering up and just not reading or is there no signs of life?

[waxdass]

drive powers up but no cigar

[ossie_21]

How much porn are we talking here?

[dmwill]

Elcotronics.

Be prepared to pay a shit load though.

Last time we enquired via work, they charged $300 just to inspect.

[3sgte]

If you open it up you will find it is just a laptop HDD, you can take it out and pop it into any other portable HDD case. it could just be the circuit board inside the case.

[MrSparkle]

Dr J on this forum worked some magic on a dead western digital hard drive for my gf.

Maybe send him a PM?

[dmanvan]

I have a WD portable that's shat itself recently. Does anyone know where I can take it to get it fixed or at least grab all my data off it? like others hav said it could be a very expensive exercise...
what trouble shooting have you done? Sometimes your computer could stop recognising your drive due to other drive conflicts etc, which means nothing may show up even though it is fine and connected. (this happened to one of my external HDD the other night).

If it is that simple to get to recognise again . If you are a bit techo minded and the case can be opened (some of the smaller HDD cases are pretty much sealed) you can remove from case and attach to one of these http://i.shopbot.com.au/i/2012/4/53463746-30_small.jpg that will enable you to run diagnostics and disk utility programs better. My sister had a WD drive (3.5in) that crapped itself recently and it ended up being a shitty powerboard inside the enclosure that the drive is attached to. I was able to remove it, put it in the NexStar and then chuck it back in a new standalone case.....

hope that helps or at least gives you some ideas..

[Phyber]

Yep good ideas so far, try another PC first, if no dice take out the internal drive (hoping its a standard PC/laptop style HDD inside) and use a caddy (or hook it up straight if you wanna google it, it's pretty easy), failing that one of the data recovery joints (used to use Elcotronics). Prices for a recovery are often thousands though.


Oh and ONCE I managed to get a good read by turning the drove on its side and powering it up. Copied that customer data ASAP. Probably worked on 50 failed drives over the years at my old job where it was home user with no backup regime. 2% is not a good success rate for this move though :P

[Chivalry]

I had a 2TB HDD fail out of the blue a while ago, I eventually found out it was a corrupted master boot record. I couldn't access the drive at all, couldn't even see it in My Computer and it would not enable via Disk Manager but it still powered on. After a lot of messing around with many recovery programs I eventually found a program called GetDataBack for NTFS that worked perfectly. It took a while, overnight, to completely access the HDD due to the size (only had <50MB free space on it) but I could then see and access all of my data on it and could easily copy it over to another drive then reformat/health check etc the corrupted drive and I was able to reuse it.

That was a normal/internal HDD though. Seeing as yours is an external, opening the case up and plugging the drive into your computer without using the cheap/shitty bit of PCB inside the casing could be all that is wrong with it. Docks can be picked up cheaply too.

Depends on your level of electrical confidence I guess.

[devilfish]

same problem here - i cloned the drive using software to another 1TB drive. worked like a charm even tho it took 24 hours, the software reads the basic bits off the platter bypassing the operating system.

this is what i used...

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

[dmanvan]

same problem here - i cloned the drive using software to another 1TB drive. worked like a charm even tho it took 24 hours, the software reads the basic bits off the platter bypassing the operating system.

this is what i used...

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php +1 have used prosoft and other similar software before. Definitely worth a purchased copy if you run a lot of HDD's as chances are you are going to get some errors somewhere along the way....

[shifted]

Have also used GetDataBack with some success for a drive that stopped working, and also for one that was dropped onto the floor, didn't get everything back though on both so lost a heap of stuff at the same time.

[Nugs]

IIf you are a bit techo minded and the case can be opened (some of the smaller HDD cases are pretty much sealed) you can remove from case and attach to one of these http://i.shopbot.com.au/i/2012/4/53463746-30_small.jpg that will enable you to run diagnostics and disk utility programs better. My sister had a WD drive (3.5in) that crapped itself recently and it ended up being a shitty powerboard inside the enclosure that the drive is attached to. I was able to remove it, put it in the NexStar and then chuck it back in a new standalone case.....

hope that helps or at least gives you some ideas..This is easy and worth a shot. I had a portable hard drive crap out on me, took it out of the case and hooked it up like a normal hard drive, and 5 years later it is still working. I also have on of those dock things somewhere if you want to borrow.

[waxdass]

OK cheers boys I will try the above

[waxdass]

So i bought one of those from MSY $59, have plugged in my HDD, spins up for abit however then dies.
PC hasn't picked up anything apart from the Nexstar drivers

spewin

[waxdass]

I can see it on my device list tree - but its not showing up in my computer. thoughts?

[Sfidz]

If you open it up you will find it is just a laptop HDD, you can take it out and pop it into any other portable HDD case. it could just be the circuit board inside the case.

Not the case for many of them anymore especially the 2.5" ones. They have the USB port as part of the board on the HDD itself so not that easy....

http://i1279.photobucket.com/albums/y523/Luminadata/wd_3_zps63b39f9a.jpg

[dnl777]

If you can see it in your device list are you able to see it in disk management?
If you can't see it in disk management open up a command window and type the below,
diskpart
list disk

Can you see it in this list?
If not you may need to get it professionally recovered, will cost you well over $1000.00

[waxdass]

this is how mine looks, are the jumpers supposed to be there?

http://i57.tinypic.com/35m3bza.jpg

[waxdass]

If you can see it in your device list are you able to see it in disk management?
If you can't see it in disk management open up a command window and type the below,
diskpart
list disk

Can you see it in this list?
If not you may need to get it professionally recovered, will cost you well over $1000.00

List disk gives me:

Disk 0

Status online
Size 465 GB
Free o B


Never mind this is my laptops HDD.

[dmanvan]

List disk gives me:

Disk 0

Status online
Size 465 GB
Free o B


Never mind this is my laptops HDD. --- does it have a drive letter next to it?

also will it let you right click properties and run / tools / check for errors?

[Sfidz]

put it in the freezer for about 15 minutes and try accessing it straight after you take it out. Something that used to work sometimes when I had to recover data.

[waxdass]

put it in the freezer for about 15 minutes and try accessing it straight after you take it out. Something that used to work sometimes when I had to recover data.

Yep tried that, nothing happened.

[dnl777]

Disk 0 would be your primary PC hard drive.

I would say your HDD is dead and to recover any data it is going to cost quite a lot of money.

[waxdass]

yep. Spewin!

[waxdass]

wow good news, I am seeing the drive again in disk managament.
I still cant see it in my computer

what do I do now?

[dmanvan]

wow good news, I am seeing the drive again in disk managament.
I still cant see it in my computer

what do I do now? add a drive letter to it. (right click / change drive letter and paths.)

[waxdass]

the only option on disk manager I have on right click is delete volume.

[dmanvan]

the only option on disk manager I have on right click is delete volume. - that not good.... although I have used "Paragon Hard disc manager" in the past to fix a drive and get info off it when a similar thing happened. It must have some errors that your OS can't get past to look at it.

[waxdass]

OK I ended up deleting the volume, formatted it back NTFS and assigned a drive letter.
I downloaded that program to try salvage my data back, its currently scanning the drive.

Pretty happy either way, hopefully I can at least recover some stuff tomorrow.

[dnl777]

Good luck man.

[Chivalry]

In my experience, GetDataBack > Paragon. I've had a few drinks but if I am reading your post correctly, deleting the volume and reformatting means you are worse off now then you were yesterday. Yeah, good luck!

[shifted]

I had to reformat mine to have it readable by the computer - GetDataBack still managed to get about 50% of the data back. So he may end up with something at least?

[waxdass]

all sorted - recovering atm