I accidentally plugged in the wrong power cord to my 1TB Toshiba external hard drive and seemed to have fried it. (Doh!) It won't come on for my laptop to detect. (just blinks off and on) Any reputable data recovery specialists that won't cost an arm and a leg? A place on six forks gave me a quote of between $500 to $1800... i guess they have their own clean room

2/9/2012 12:04:40 AM

If you take the enclosure apart it should just be a regular SATA HDD. I would try that first.

2/9/2012 1:10:32 AM

better hope you don't have any porn saved

2/9/2012 2:23:19 AM

^ the place that gave me the quote asked which files or folders were the most important.

My response was My Pictures, My Music, and XXX

2/9/2012 7:44:39 AM

yeah, if it's a desktop drive (which is most likely is since you have a power adapter), there's a 99.273% chance that there's a standard SATA drive in there...take it out and put it in your own desktop if you have one...if you don't, buy one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182221

for $14 ($20 with free shipping and $6 off using promo code EMCNHNC58)...most likely scenario is that you fried the USB/SATA controller board and not the hard drive itself

2/9/2012 7:47:59 AM

Quote :

"yeah, if it's a desktop drive (which is most likely is since you have a power adapter), there's a 99.273% chance that there's a standard SATA drive in there...take it out and put it in your own desktop if you have one...if you don't, buy one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182221 for $14 ($20 with free shipping and $6 off using promo code EMCNHNC58)...most likely scenario is that you fried the USB/SATA controller board and not the hard drive itself"

+1

2/9/2012 9:35:25 AM

I just recovered files from an external hard drive that had issues with this program.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

2/9/2012 9:44:19 AM

thanks guys. i'll try the HDD enclosure kit first as per the suggestions. gonna drop by CompUSA after work and see what they have.....or order one if they don't have what i need

hopefully this will fix it. and if not, maybe repair service will give me a 20% discount if i share naked pics of my ex folder

2/9/2012 10:22:02 AM

I see this all the time at work, and as others have said, usually the enclosure fails rather than the actual HDD. You should be good to go with a new enclosure.

If there are corruption issues with the drive, I've had pretty good luck with http://www.piriform.com/recuva as far as free programs go.

[Edited on February 9, 2012 at 1:20 PM. Reason : I've also used TestDisk like BSTE02 posted. More powerful, but harder to navigate.]

2/9/2012 1:18:21 PM

ughh...... new HDD enclosure didn't work. it still doesn't come on

2/9/2012 10:39:44 PM

I have some Seagate drives that I was hooking to a usb converter to test out and I flipped the power connector on one of them and it fried. Turns out that it had a reverse polarity protection diode that bit the dust, but once removed, let the drive work just fine (it should probably be replaced, but w/e). I've got a couple that I did this to before I figured it out, but now they work fine.

If the board is super-toasted, then you can just get another identical drive and swap the controller out.

2/10/2012 7:22:11 AM

Those Rosewill docks are giant pieces of shit. I've been through 3 of them and will never buy anything Rosewill related again. 2 were DOA out of the box and the other was dead within 2 months.

I use these and they work very well:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153071

[Edited on February 10, 2012 at 10:42 AM. Reason : they are more expensive but you get what you pay for. Rosewill makes cheap shit.]

2/10/2012 10:41:40 AM

thanks. i'll try the dock first.. if that doesn't work i'll look into removing the diodes... i'll report back in case someone else runs into this crap

2/10/2012 10:56:52 AM

Quote :

"If the board is super-toasted, then you can just get another identical drive and swap the controller out."

I've done that before and was pretty surprised when it actually worked...

^^ when you plug it in via enclosure/dock does the drive actually spin up? if so, run that testdisk and recuva posted above and see where that gets ya. if no luck, then buying an *identical* drive off ebay or somewhere and swapping the controller boards (painless) would be the next step imo.

[Edited on February 10, 2012 at 11:18 AM. Reason : ]

2/10/2012 10:57:31 AM

FWIW, I've used several Rosewill enclosures and various hardware components and they've always worked flawlessly. Maybe you just got a bad batch?

If the new enclosure you bought didn't work, buying a dock isn't going to do anything for you. Neither one of those is anything special compared to any other dock or enclosure out there. They're just made to allow you to pop a bare drive in and out (which is pretty dumb for anything but SSD's IMO)

Verify that the new enclosure is good with another drive, and if it's definitely the drive at fault, then you're going to have to look at actually repairing or replacing the controller on the drive.

2/10/2012 11:16:49 AM

if i'm hearing you correctly since my HDD didn't spin in the enclosure then it won't in the dock either. Is that right? And if that is right then removing the TVS diodes would be my next step/last resort before just going to a shop. i don't wanna risk fudging anything up worse than i already have.

2/10/2012 11:58:09 AM

richthofen, I will have to try that out next time. I totally agree about it being hard to navigate.

2/10/2012 1:04:10 PM

Quote :

"if i'm hearing you correctly since my HDD didn't spin in the enclosure then it won't in the dock either. Is that right?"

not necessarily...it all depends on what was fried

my first bet would have been the SATA/USB controller...if the drive isn't getting power because the board is toast, it wouldn't turn on

if you put the drive in a dock and/or another enclosure and it STILL doesn't spin up, second bet is the HDD controller attached to the drive itself...which you can (usually) swap out with an identical one

i'm not an electrical engineer and so take this for what it's worth, but i'd be very surprised if there's damage past the HDD controller board...purchasing an identical drive would be my next step before paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to get data recovered

2/10/2012 2:54:43 PM

^^^Correct. The dock is just a USB enclosure, well, minus the actual enclosure. The adapter is the same.

What went wrong depends on what was "different" about the power adapter you plugged in versus the factory one. Was the polarity reversed? Was it higher voltage? Generally, I would be willing to bet that the damage was limited to the adapter in the enclosure, as it does some voltage regulating of its own to get 12v down to 5v. Reversed polarity or incorrect voltage damage should have been at least somewhat mitigated by the adapter.

On the drive itself, the only thing that gets from the 12v/5v supply lines to the inside is all run through motor drivers and other IC's on the controller. Worst case scenario, a new controller should do the trick, but I'm doubtful it will come to that. Knowing exactly what you plugged in will help narrow down that possibility.

I assume this a SATA drive?

2/10/2012 3:11:34 PM

Yes it is a SATA drive. the exact model is Toshiba ph3100u-exb. The power cord that i plugged in was from my laptop (a Toshiba Satellite l67dd-S7042)

2/10/2012 4:32:05 PM

Quote :

"ph3100u-exb"

thats the model number of the external drive as a whole.

whats the model number on the drive itself?

2/10/2012 6:15:40 PM

the model number of the drive itself is HD103SI (samsung)

2/10/2012 8:30:40 PM

GREAT news!!! on a tip i located and tested the 12V TVS diode with my multimeter. (it read close to zero ohms) This was a clear indication that it was shorted. My flush cutters were missing from the tool box so i used my wife's hangnail clippers to snip off the 12V diode. reinserted the HDD into the enclosure and it worked like a charm! This is where it was located



thanks for everyone's help

2/10/2012 8:48:10 PM

now, get a new drive and copy all your data to it. don't keep using a busted controller

2/10/2012 8:55:40 PM

GG. Glad you got it fixed up.

2/11/2012 7:57:36 AM

bttt

I have an external that gets power but it won't read anything off the drive when I plug it in.

Only has mp3 files on it, I used it years ago as my main DJ drive.

Any ideas for a cheap fix or someone that might be able to look at it on the cheap?

9/29/2015 4:10:40 PM

Have you tried multiple computers?

[Edited on September 29, 2015 at 4:16 PM. Reason : Is anything in disk management under administrative options?]

9/29/2015 4:15:40 PM

Ok so i removed the drive from the enclosure...

I suppose the next step is to hook it up to a computer and see if it can read anything?

SATA...

I'm hoping it was just the USB connection that went bad...

any advice? anyone near campus have the tools to check this thing?

I bought another external that I want to transfer these files to if I can switch them over.

12/9/2015 3:41:17 PM

fregac can check it for you: https://www.facebook.com/Undead-Electronics-225728880901259/?fref=ts

12/9/2015 4:22:56 PM

^update...took it to Carl aka fregac and he took a look...it was so shot it started smoking

needless to say it's gone bad lol.

Thanks again Carl, you da man and glad to see you're business is thriving.

[Edited on December 9, 2015 at 5:50 PM. Reason : posted and went right to his place...great minds think alike]

12/9/2015 5:49:37 PM