Externally-connected (unenclosed) HDD droppage & failure

[Dooling37]

When my primary system began freezing up daily a few months back, I simply took out the hard drive, and started accessing it via an IDE<->USB drive cable (such as this) from my laptop. No problems, and I was planning to copy all of the data over when I buy my new system, any week now.

Except, last night, I forgot the USB-IDE cable and drive were attached the laptop, and moved it off the desk. The hard drive fell to the ground, while still powered on. Real bad. The cables all came loose, including the power. Visible damage to the drive was limited to the four inner-most IDE pins being bent. I carefully bent them back to be more-or-less straight. None broke. However, when I try to power on and re-attach the drive to my laptop:
- the drive will not power on if the IDE cable is attached to the drive
- if I detach the IDE cable, the drive then powers on fine, and everything sounds normal (maybe louder, but that may well just be my imagination)
- once the drive is powered on, I can attach the IDE cable and it remains powered on, however, when I connect the USB to the laptop, the drive is not recognized. I *do* hear the "drive detected" sound effect in Windows, followed a few seconds later by the "drive stopped" sound

I do have backups, but only going back as far as the original system failure -- meaning the last several months' of data is not backed up. I'm dumb. I know.

Any suggestions for how I might be able to repair this drive and re-gain external access to it?

If I'm unable to recover the data myself, what are my best service options? I see GeekSquad has a data recovery service from "failing" or "extremely damaged" -- very pricy. I will pay what it takes to get this data back, though...

 

[btcomm1]

Well there is geek squad, there is also drivesavers.com, I'm sure there are more then just this in your area, you might be able to look in your phone book and find a place too.

I would go with one that has a good reputation though.

Keep shopping around, sorry to hear about your misfortune I hate when things like that happen.

 

[Dooling37]

Thanks for the drivesavers reference -- have you used their service, or do you know people who have?
The more places I can get an estimate from, the better..

thanks again.

 

[robisbell]

the cost is in the thousands and no guarantee they will get any usable data.

 

[Dooling37]

FWIW, when I try the connection on another Win XP laptop, I receive the following pop-up notifications in the system tray, in this order (paraphrasing):
- found new device: USB to IDE
- found new device: USB mass storage device
- a problem occurred while installing new hardware: may not work correctly

Although this obviously is not good, it gives me a bit of hope, based on the fact that the hard drive is still detected..

 

[robisbell]

but it failed which in this case means the board has some serious damage to it.

 

[Dooling37]

There were no event recorded in the Windows Event log related to the new device discovery & error notifications -- does anyone know if this information might be logged in more detail in a file somewhere on the system... ?

 

[Deptacon]

I have had this same problem recently. I dropped my drive, (WD compact drive) and it will not read the data anymore. I opened it up, No visibile damage. The drive itself draws power from the USB cable that connects. The drive starts up, but Windows can not read it. After awhile, Windows reads the drive, but says it must be formated. Any suggestions before I send it off for recover?

 

[Old Hippie]

Try GetDataBack. Free to try.
Before I spent for a recovery service, I'd be trying a 2.5 to 3.5 converter to hook the drive directly to my machine, and then try GetDataBack.

 

[Dooling37]

I should've posted my results here.... before sending to a recovery service, I decided to try copying data with dd_rescue ("a version of dd which will not stop when it encounters errors"), and buy a new USB-IDE converter. Both worked. ; )

So, I was able to back up the data with dd_rescue*, and then, when the new USB-IDE converter arrived, I was able to view the contents of the drive normally as well -- although, I haven't used the drive extensively, so I can't guarantee that everything is accessible.

I also like the suggestion of a 2.5 to 3.5 converter -- I imagine it was the USB power source on my USB-IDE converter that was having issues in my case, so drawing power from the desktop PSU would've probably worked for my purposes, as well.


*note - I can't remember if I actually used dd_rescue or ddrescue, which are two slightly but importantly different tools.

 

[Old Hippie]

I love it when a plan comes together! :thumbsup: