trying to access dying external HDD

[ushumgal]

I have an external 250 GB Western Digital drive (purchased in an external case under the ChiliGreen label here in Austria) which has just croaked on me. I have used it daily for about 1 year, and it started acting up a few weeks ago. It randomly powered down while in use 2 or 3 times, so I started backing everything up, expecting a crash. Unfortunately, I hadn't backed everything up before it finally stopped working.

When I start it up, the disc will start to spin up, and then usually just cuts out. I get the chime indicating that a new device has been detected, but nothing else until I turn off the power switch, and the device removed chime sounds.

I swapped it into another external enclosure, and now it will power up fine (and stay that way), and Windows (XP) will recognize a drive there and assign it a drive letter - though not the default drive name ("250GB" in this case) - and the activity light winks sporadically, like the drive is being read. But if I try to access the drive via Windows Explorer, I get an error message saying the drive is not ready.

Any ideas on how I may be able to get access?? Or suggestions on what the root problem might be? Would appreciate any comments!!!

[xenotype]

You dont have too many options. First off, I would remove the drive from the external case, and see if i could get the BIOS to recognize it as a slave. Then I would check the status of it in windows from Disk Management. If neither of those turns up anything (no bios detection, and no windows disk management detection) you could try the freezer trick as one last ditch attempt to get your data off of the drive.

[ushumgal]

thanks, Xenotype! I don't have a desktop at the moment, so I'll have to wait to try it as a slave until christmas, when I'll have access to one. If that fails...could you kindly explain the freezer method to this total n00b?? XD

[Old Hippie]

The freezer method (http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html) is for HDDs that have a mechanical problem. I would only suggest this as a last ditch effort to recover data, IF your drive doesn't spin up.
It sounds like your drive is spinning up.
A direct connection (drive to MB port) is always the best situation for trying to recover data. The interface in an external case is just one more roadblock to a successful recovery attempt. If you're serious about a successful data recovery, get GetDataBack (http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm) and it will attempt to recover your files. It WILL cost you $79.00 to actually recover the files, but at least from the demo, you can see what's left of your files.

[ushumgal]

Thanks for the tips! Yeah, it spins up just fine, so I doubt the freezer trick will do me any good. But I'll try it in a desktop as a slave as soon as i can, and try this software as well. Thanks!