Dead external hard drives - fixes or recovery?

[KabeRinnaul]

Kheldarson's died lately (I'll let her explain that) and it reminded me I've still got an old one hanging around. But, mine's just going "click" now. Anything I can do to rescue it, or, failing that, just pull a couple folders off of it?

I think Kheldarson's problem was more complicated than mine, though.

[Kheldarson]

Mine's doing the click thing, but I can get the computers to register it once in a while if I press hard enough on the connection at the hard drive. But the name comes up corrupted. Like "New harddrive found" followed by "(insert bunch of symbols) hard drive ready".

I've got some papers I wrote in Ireland on there so I'd like to be able to recover the files. I can throw them onto my mom's hard drive until I get a new one.

[Imprl59]

Very easy fix can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMhdE...layer_embedded

Steve B.

[Pedersen]

One thing that works sometimes is to put the drive in the freezer for a bit. Somehow, this loosens the bearings, and things are able to work long enough to retrieve the data.

[Exaspera]

One thing that works sometimes is to put the drive in the freezer for a bit. Somehow, this loosens the bearings, and things are able to work long enough to retrieve the data.

LOL! What a great answer! Nice low-tech fix!

[ravevolution]

My external is doing the click also as well as not being registered by my desktop (Last time I buy a Western Digital external)

I thought about after my trip and have some money saved up I would take it to a recovery place (since I live in silicon valley and well duh lots of tech companies ) as well as get my other desktop fixed since it went kaput a while ago. I have stuff from college as well as other things dear to me I want to keep and not loose

I might try the thing on youtube or the other trick, just get my stuff from it before I throw it out the window of a 5 story building lol

[KabeRinnaul]

I'll try the freezer tonight. Funny thing is, the far older drive I just use for videos is still running fine, it's the newer one (that served as a backup hard drive usually) that died.

Edit: Freezer didn't work for me, but I think mine might have been dropped or something. I suspect actual physical damage inside.

[Der Cute]

When you hear the click, you are thisclose to losing everything.

I recently purchased an external HD for myself. I migrated 300gb of data to it. The next day (yes, 48 hours of ownership) it had the click of death. I lost all the data, even after trying these tricks.

Find another way to back it up and save the data...NOW.

[Kheldarson]

So I just tried the freezer thing, and the message I got was that it found the hardware (again with corrupted name) and then told me that there was a problem installing the hard drive and I may have issues. So...anything else I can do?