External Harddrive Not Working!!!!

roosterMAP

My 1TB external harddrive isnt working. when i turn it on, it makes these sets of clicking sounds for 30sec then its stops. the comp detects somethings connected, but i cant open it to recover my files. any ideas?

Ben Apuna

Sorry to say, sounds like it's dead.

I've heard of a trick where you wrap it up and put it in a freezer for a while and then you are able to get some data off it, never done that myself.

Unless you want to spend big $ at some sort of file recovery company, you should do a search for that method.

EarthQuake

clicking is generally a pretty bad sign. You can try ripping it out of the enclosure and hooking it up to your pc(generally IDE or SATA) to see if you can recover anything from it.

Malus

I had the same issue.
Sadly 1TB drives are often 2 separate 500GB drives linked together with RAID.

If one drive fails the data is gone as they store the zeroes on one drive and the ones on the other....speeds up access but completely fucks you over when drives fail....

Lamont

Are you connected by USB or eSATA? If you are running by USB, then use the USB as power and connect by eSATA. It may be a simple power issue. If the drive is out of warranty, crack it open and install it in the computer, most likely the shitty controller on board went toast, not the HDD itself.

Ruz

happened to me. just went dead that was it. lost a bunch of work. I tried what EQ said and I got a few files, but then it totally died.
1TB hard drives seem a bit fragile compared to older drives.