External HD Problems...

So today I went to transfer my music over to my laptop and about half way through it just completely stops transferring...time remaining skyrockets and the external HD starts making these clicking sounds. So I tried again and again nothing worked and then plumed it into my desktop and it wont even get halfway through the auto-run. This seems like a pretty big problem and I have a lot of important stuff on it. Anything I can do?

 

What happens if you plug the HDD into another computer?

Was it a 2.5" or 3.5" HDD? Some of the 2.5" HDDs need a separate power supply (but this should have stopped to from working at all).

Kill the auto-run when it starts. Can you then see the HDD (a) as a Hard Disk in Device Manager; (b) with partitions under My Computer > Management > Disk Management; and (c) can you see any files using Explorer?

John

 

I'm not sure whether it is 3.5 or 2.5 but I does have its own power supply adapter and Ive made sure everything is secure in that area. It is an iomega 80gb
Ok, now it won't even come up as a hard disk. I plug it in and I hear the typical hd starting to spin and then it stops and just makes clicking sounds. It did before but it would just freeze when I double clicked it.

 

If it has a powersupply then its pretty sure that it is a 3.5" Desktop disk inside. If it is really important you can take the case apart and connect it as an internal disk on a desktop. You can also try buying a another USB case to check if the disk works with it.

 

I've had this issue happen on my external HDD. It is a 3.5" with its own power source.

The issue is with the HDD itself. Certain areas are marked as bad clusters. I'll have to get rid of it soon.

 

That clicking sound and the behavior of the drive almost certainly means it's dead. Sorry! If this stuff contained is really important there are companies like DriveSavers which specialize in data recovery for situations like this but their services are quite pricey.

~ Brett

 

Does Device Manager show a USB Mass Storage Device when the external HDD is connected? It might show up as a different name but if you open Device Manager before you plug in the external drive then you can see if anything else is added.

If nothing appears then it may be the enclosure, not the HDD, which is having a problem. If another device appears then it is most likely the HDD.

The next bit of troubleshooting is to try to figure out whether it is the partition or file allocation table which is corrupted or the disk itself. You can try a recovery software like this (which lets you try before buying).

John

 

Yup it popped up as a usb mass storage device...but I can't access it in my computer

 

It looks like a HDD problem, but my next moves would be to:

(a) Try a recovery software and see if it finds anything

(b) Open up the external HDD unit, disconnect the HDD and then reconnect it, just in case a connection problem has developed.

The final test would be to connect the HDD into a desktop and see if the recovery software detects anything.

How old is the HDD? Is it still under warranty? (Most have 3 year warranties but this doesn't cover your data).

John

 

could the drive letter be off?

see if it shows up through ...

Control panel, then administrative tools, then computer management, then disk management (on the left), then it should show up.... if it does, then try right clicking on it and selecting "change drive letter and paths" and change it to something different

 

Ok, opened it up made sure the connection was good (disconnect, connect) but still is making the sounds when plugged in and wont run

I just tried that and no luck It showed up on the list but didn't really change anything..thanks though

 

If you have access, try it on a different os, not just a different flavor of windows, but a non-windows os like osx. My external has been giving me a lot of problems as well, dying part way through most transfers (but strangely working on others). It may be bad clusters, but in general windows is just a lot more finicky than it should be. When I mounted mine in FreeBSD, it spontaneously worked on the same files that had been failing before. Now if FreeBSD would just get ntfs write support...