External Hard Drive not responding

[Pancho 45122]

My laptop ran updates last week while I was asleep, which is cool.  However, since that update, my external hard drive will no longer connect.  The blue light on the external will light up as if it's trying to boot, but it never opens on the File Explorer window.  It actually makes the File Explorer window freeze and go to "not responding."

I used the same cable for that external to check and see if it would work with another external, and sure enough it worked.  So it's not the cable.

Is the external fried?  Do I need to do data recovery?  Anyone do this in Houston on the cheap?

[Orange&White 5539]

Try to re-assign the drive letter in "Disk Management".

 

 

[Irish Wrist Watch 1398]

They all go out eventually. I recovered about 750 gigs off of a fried 1TB Elements type external HD. Used an old Kim Komando trick. put it in a plastic bag, suck the air out and stick it in the freezer for an hour or two. I'd pull it out, open the zip lock bag only enough to get the power and data cord in, seal the bag and away I'd go. (I figured that resealing it would help keep moisture from forming on the cold surfaces). Early on, I got large amounts of data off it before it would fuck up, then I'd repeat the process. Each time I got a little less data, but I kept at it and got pretty much everything off it that I wanted.

[Hate 20149]

I’ve never heard of that trick before. It’s worth giving it a shot.

OP, it would help if we knew what kind of external storage device you were using.

[Pancho 45122]

3 hours ago, Hate said:

I’ve never heard of that trick before. It’s worth giving it a shot.

OP, it would help if we knew what kind of external storage device you were using.

Toshiba 2TB

It’s not even connecting to the laptop so I can change the drive letter, but the blue light still flashes as if it’s trying to connect.  When I do connect it to the laptop, File Explorer acts like it’s loading but it’s really just frozen, when then freezes the entire laptop. 

An older Toshiba external works just fine.  The problem is I need info from the one that doesn’t connect anymore.  I haven’t dropped it, no water damage, and I’ve only had it for 1 year. 

Edited April 22, 2020 by Pancho

[crash_davis 23119]

have you tried connecting the hd to another computer or laptop?

[Hate 20149]

I was hoping, for you sake, that you were talking about a “NAS” device with an actual hard drive inside. It’s easy to daisy chain those to your PC If you have the correct cables. In your case, there may not be much you can do. There are some recovery software solutions available, but they require the disk to at least be accessible through windows explorer. There are a bunch of recovery companies in the Houston area that may be able to help, but it won’t be cheap. Off the top of my head, I would assume it would cost at least $200, which may be worth it in your case.

Have you at least tried to connect the device to a different computer?

[Pancho 45122]

14 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

have you tried connecting the hd to another computer or laptop?

Yup. Won’t work. I’ve contacted a few data recovery places, and damn they are expensive

Edited April 22, 2020 by Pancho

[Pancho 45122]

8 minutes ago, Hate said:

I was hoping, for you sake, that you were talking about a “NAS” device with an actual hard drive inside. It’s easy to daisy chain those to your PC If you have the correct cables. In your case, there may not be much you can do. There are some recovery software solutions available, but they require the disk to at least be accessible through windows explorer. There are a bunch of recovery companies in the Houston area that may be able to help, but it won’t be cheap. Off the top of my head, I would assume it would cost at least $200, which may be worth it in your case.

Have you at least tried to connect the device to a different computer?

You’re correct. One here in town charges $95 for diagnostics then they’ll call with 24hrs with a firm price. 
 

 

[crash_davis 23119]

14 minutes ago, Hate said:

I was hoping, for you sake, that you were talking about a “NAS” device with an actual hard drive inside. It’s easy to daisy chain those to your PC If you have the correct cables. In your case, there may not be much you can do. There are some recovery software solutions available, but they require the disk to at least be accessible through windows explorer. There are a bunch of recovery companies in the Houston area that may be able to help, but it won’t be cheap. Off the top of my head, I would assume it would cost at least $200, which may be worth it in your case.

Have you at least tried to connect the device to a different computer?

some programs are able to access drives that Windoze Disk Management and Explorer cannot. 

 

7 minutes ago, Pancho said:

Yup. Won’t work 

i would dload some free recovery software. it'll only cost you time. if they don't work, nothing but time lost on another Groundhog day. if it works, then you have your midget porn back.

edit: i've had good success with Minitool Partition Manager accessing drives that Windoze couldn't. their data recovery tool is free for up to 1TB. that's a like 2TB in midget porn.

https://www.minitool.com/

Edited April 22, 2020 by crash_davis

[Hate 20149]

It may also be worth your time to download a bootable Linux disk like Ubuntu and see if that OS can access the drive. There are free ISO images for Ubuntu on the net and it’s pretty simple. I’ve had some success doing that, but those were with NAs devices whose native software was Linux so the partitions were XFS instead of windows based NTFS.

[Hate 20149]

I just noticed the “laptop ran updates” part of your post. You could always uninstall the last updates to be installed and see if that helps. You may also be able to restore to a last know good configuration if available.

[crash_davis 23119]

1 hour ago, Pancho said:

Yup. Won’t work. I’ve contacted a few data recovery places, and damn they are expensive

 

22 minutes ago, Hate said:

I just noticed the “laptop ran updates” part of your post. You could always uninstall the last updates to be installed and see if that helps. You may also be able to restore to a last know good configuration if available.

he said he tried connecting to another pc/laptop and still didn't work. most likely has nothing to do with the OS update. it's prob the hd.

[MonkeyDoughnut 10368]

I've had great luck with this tool when I had similar issue as you in the past:  https://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizardpro/

They have a trial as well so you can get an idea if it will work (gives file list, maybe allows few file recovery, can't remember).

[Hate 20149]

Yeah, I also forgot that he had connected another device that worked properly. You’re most likely proper fucked.

[torre 1286]

4 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

I've had great luck with this tool when I had similar issue as you in the past:  https://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizardpro/

They have a trial as well so you can get an idea if it will work (gives file list, maybe allows few file recovery, can't remember).

Have done the same. 

 

  https://www.easeus.com/storage-media-recovery/external-hard-drive-not-responding.html

 

Above link is a checklist from the easeus site.   Note the driver check.   Check your drivers,  update may have installed a driver not compatible.     Also,  check the below forums.  Lot of 'nerds that can give advice and recommend free or low cost recovery software before you have to pay $$$.    Use the search bar if you prefer not to post. 

 

https://www.tenforums.com/

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/

 

 

[Bam Bam Sam 303]

No idea if this same process will work, but my old dinosaur of a PC (10 years old) failed to boot to windows the other day, and I had to recover some files. Sometimes command prompts will still work despite the OS not being able to access the drives. I booted into startup repair mode, but you should be able to go to the start menu, type in "cmd" and press enter to open the command prompt and do the following, ensuring the eHDD is connected first:

1. Type "DISKPART" and hit enter - you should see your drive change from whatever letter (if in startup repair it may be X: drive for example)

2. Type "LISTVOL" and hit enter - this will list all your drives connected via USB and through SATA, so make sure the eHDD is connected before doing this.

3a. You will have to identify your drives based on their size. For example, if you have a 1TB hard drive on your computer, the drive listed closest to 1 TB (1000 GB or 1,000,000 MB) is your HDD. Your eHDD may have a different drive letter than you normally see on your OS, so note the drive letter. Also note the letter of the drive you want to recover your files to. If this is your regular HDD on the computer itself, usually the C drive, again note that it may not show up as C, but another letter. Remember these drive letters.

3b. type "exit" and hit enter to exit diskpart. You'll then have to navigate to your eHDD. If your eHDD drive letter was "F:" for example, you should be able to type "F:" or "cd F:" to change your current directory to the F drive, which is your eHDD. 

4. You can copy the data you want to recover using the following commands:

cd - changes your current directory. e.g. if I'm in Users, and I want to go to Users/Name/Desktop, I would type cd ./Name/Desktop. If I'm in Users/Name/Desktop and want to go back to users, I can use "cd ../..". "." means "this directory", and ".." means parent directory. Use this command to get through different folders and files on your eHDD

copy - usage: "copy <file/folder name in current directory> <C drive letter you found above>:" which will copy the file or folder to whatever drive your HDD is. This is made easier if you only have one folder for everything on the eHDD and you only have to use the copy command once. 

For example, if your external HDD has one folder with all its files called "eHDD folder" and your C drive letter in command prompt is actually labeled as D, you would do the following: "copy "eHDD folder" D:".

 

Link that might explain it better: https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001592.htm

 

If you aren't afraid of using command prompt (I have no idea how well you're versed in PCs) then this option may* work for you like it did for me. I refused to spend money on data recovery tools so I found a way to do it myself, resulting in this.

Edited April 22, 2020 by Bam Bam Sam

[NWBuck 8588]

"External Hard Drive not responding"

You know, that happens naturally when we get older.

[Bam Bam Sam 303]

8 minutes ago, Bam Bam Sam said:

<my long post>

If you can't see a drive when you type LISTVOL that is around the size of your plugged in eHDD, you're fucked m8. Data Recovery place may be the only option

[Irish Wrist Watch 1398]

You're not going to revive that drive. It will never work properly again and you sure don't want to store important data on it in the future. Don't do anything risky with partition commands and all that until you've tried the freezer. You could end up wiping the drive. Google gets 23 million hits on the freezer trick

https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&source=hp&ei=xA2hXui9EMegtQWPlr34CQ&q=freeze+a+faulty+hrd+drive&oq=freeze+a+faulty+hrd+drive&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzIKCCEQFhAKEB0QHjIKCCEQFhAKEB0QHjIKCCEQFhAKEB0QHjIKCCEQFhAKEB0QHjIKCCEQFhAKEB0QHjIKCCEQFhAKEB0QHjIKCCEQFhAKEB0QHjoFCAAQgwE6AggAOgYIABAWEB46CAgAEBYQChAeOggIIRAWEB0QHjoFCCEQqwI6BQghEKABOgcIIRAKEKABUIIMWK9GYMhIaARwAHgAgAGHAYgB8RWSAQUxMi4xNpgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXo&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwjor8Diz_3oAhVHUK0KHQ9LD58Q4dUDCAg&uact=5

Edited April 23, 2020 by Irish Wrist Watch

[crash_davis 23119]

so???? what's the update?

[Pancho 45122]

One of the websites mentioned here did work as I can see some (not all) of the missing files.  To recover those, it would cost $70 is looks like which is way cheaper than what some of the data recovery businesses in Houston/Austin are offering. 

The problem is if I pay, am I going to recover everything or just what I can see versus paying out the ass for a data recovery business to get all of the files, if they can even do that. 

[elfenix 34344]

On 4/22/2020 at 12:17 PM, Hate said:

I was hoping, for you sake, that you were talking about a “NAS” device with an actual hard drive inside

what, exactly, do you think is inside an external hard drive?

 

less likely than the drive going bad, the USB - SATA converter card inside the external has gone bad.  fix for that would be removing the drive from the enclosure (shucking) and putting it in a computer. 

[torre 1286]

6 hours ago, Pancho said:

One of the websites mentioned here did work as I can see some (not all) of the missing files.  To recover those, it would cost $70 is looks like which is way cheaper than what some of the data recovery businesses in Houston/Austin are offering. 

The problem is if I pay, am I going to recover everything or just what I can see versus paying out the ass for a data recovery business to get all of the files, if they can even do that. 

https://www.tenforums.com/general-support/

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/

 

Recommend posting your dilemma in tenforums with the above question.     Many experienced, knowledgeable 'nerds including msn techs.    Bleeping Computer also has a good rep,  though I am not familiar.

Edited April 24, 2020 by torre

[Flg8rfan 201]

One of the websites mentioned here did work as I can see some (not all) of the missing files.  To recover those, it would cost $70 is looks like which is way cheaper than what some of the data recovery businesses in Houston/Austin are offering. 
The problem is if I pay, am I going to recover everything or just what I can see versus paying out the ass for a data recovery business to get all of the files, if they can even do that. 

There’s no guarantee with recovery software and you’ll risk further damage to your data if you keep on doinking with the drive. If the data is that important, take it to the data recovery guys. Sometimes they just need to use their software recovery tools (which is better than the $70 software you might buy). Sometimes the just have to replace the board on the drive.

If they need to do a tear down and reassemble, you’ll realize you don’t need the data that badly ;-)

Then start looking into cloud storage for backup instead of external drives.

I’ve recovered data from some drives with the freezer method though and one drive I recovered by giving it a hard knock against the counter (last resort).

[DCA_HORN 725]

This must be some damn nice porn.