20 pts.
 Hard drive down
how can i retrieve information from a portable hard drive if the power source in the drive is no longer working. it shorted out. i tried to plug it into my desktop and when i do it will not let my hard drive startup.

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ASKED: April 29, 2008  12:10 PM
UPDATED: April 29, 2008  12:46 PM

Answer Wiki:
You may need to take your portable drive apart and purchase another drive bay. first remove the drive from inside your portable bay and decide if it is an IDE or SATA drive by looking at the tag. then go out and look for a portable hard drive bay for your drive. you can propably get away for $20 for a cheap one. Put your drive in the new bay and viola! Odds are good that the actual hard drive itself is still OK.
Last Wiki Answer Submitted:  April 29, 2008  12:18 pm  by  Bhennon   55 pts.
All Answer Wiki Contributors:  Bhennon   55 pts.
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Hi,

You could also try putting the hard drive in a desktop machine (depends if you have one with the correct interface – IDE or SATA). Don’t forget to make sure the drive has a different slave or master setting to the existing drive in your machine if it’s ide.

Regards,

Martin Gilbert.

 23,625 pts.

 

Moved – From Mpbabbitt
i hope you are correct rhennon. I have tried to take the drive out of the box and had pluggen it into my desktop. The power short seems to be in the drive itself.

 6,580 pts.

 

When you said you plugged it into your desktop, i assumed that you still had it attached in the bay. If it is IDE make sure you have the slave/master jumper settings set correctly like Gilly400 said. You could try it as the only drive in the machine and set it to master. then boot using something like Barts WINPE disk to recover the data.

if you are certian it is the drive. you could use a service like On-track. they have helped me in simliar situations but it is salty. anwhere from $400 to $2400. just depends on how important the data is to you. They take the drive into a clean room and put the platter into another drive then extract the data for you and deliver it on dvd.

do you hear the drive spin up when you apply power?

 55 pts.