Accidentally plugged laptop charger into my external hard-drive. Whoops!

So I plugged in my laptop charger to my external hard drive and now it seems to be dead. It wont boot and i cant hear any mechanical sound at all when I plug it in. I'm no expert in this type of thing but what have I screwed up? Is it gone for good? Or is as simple as replacing a fuse oir something? I really dont have a clue. Its got a lot of valuable files on it that I really need for work and other things. Along with some confidential information that by law can not be shared with anyone, so I'm not really up sending it off to a shop.

Laptop is a Novatech X50 MV Pro and hard-drive is a Western Digital 1 Terabyte HD.

Any help appreciated.

 

Think the output of my laptop charger is 19V DC, and my hard-drive has an input of 12V DC. Dunno if that means anything.... or if its even right.....

 

So is it the HDD which won't start, not the laptop?

You have probably blown the electronics in either the enclosure or the HDD itself. 19V is a lot more than 12V.

The first test would be to remove the HDD from the enclosure and connect it to a desktop computer. If it still won't start then you have blown something on the HDD and it will need specialist (and expensive) attention. If the HDD desk start, then you can get a replacement enclosure.

John

 

I had my external harddrive plugged into a incorrect power source, and it damage the enclosure, but the hdd was fine. I just bought a new enclosure. maybe you can try removing the hdd and put it into a external enclosure to check if it's still functioning?

 

Yes it is the HD that wont start. Thanks I'll have a go at your suggestion.

 

I think you fried the circuit board in your external. They are usually designed to use between 11.5V and 12.5V DC. The adapter on the hard drive is most likely completely fried. It should have saved the hard drive though. Take your external hard drive enclosure apart and try connecting the internal hard drive to a desktop.

Good luck, hopefully the adapter sacrificed itself to save the hard drive.

K-TRON

 

Ok so i took it into the shop and the guy said he's try another enclosure. It worked in the shop. It worked for about half and hour when I got home. Now its dead again. Started crashing, files wouldn't transfer, now my laptop wont even recognise it. So obviously the hard drive has suffered some damage.

Then I realised that the hard drive came with a one year warranty. I then also realised that when the drive was openend the seal which says 'warranty void if broken' has been slightly defaced.

For christs sake.

Any suggestions as to what the hell I could do?

 

Too bad

Well, as it was your own fault from the beginning, that you accidently put in the wrong cord in, then the warranty is not valid for that anyways. So it doesnt matter.

I guess your only choice is to buy a new one, or try putting the seal back togheter
If you wanna save the data on it, i guess you could search for a circuit board for the hard drive and exchange it yourself to see if you're in luck, i would say it's a very big chance that it'll work out good for you as you only fried the circuit board.

 

lol I once plugged in a lacie AC adapter into my antec esata enclosure and than it stopped working. I than put the HD into my lacie usb enclosure and it started smoking....than I plugged it into my computer and it started up than promptly shut down and refused to start till I took it out. Good thing it was just a backup drive and I had just recently bought it...I went and returned the enclosure and drive to compusa. I love compusa (now owned by TD) because they have the same awesome prices as tigerdirect but I can return stuff and buy stuff in person....

Sucks for you guys that they are only in south florida xD