Desperate for help - external HDD problem

Nqindi said:
In future back up your stuff to the cloud. Hard drives are known to fail without warning. If you can't afford 1TB of online storage Google/Microsoft have R29 for 100GB monthly plans that can take care of your most crucial documents. Just a thought.
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Definitely considering this option for the future - never want to go through this drama again!
 
Nqindi said:
In future back up your stuff to the cloud. Hard drives are known to fail without warning. If you can't afford 1TB of online storage Google/Microsoft have R29 for 100GB monthly plans that can take care of your most crucial documents. Just a thought.
Click to expand...

Pcloud lifetime is just $175 for 500gb. Cheap as chips. The great thing is its just another drive under My Computer.
 
Rickster said:
You could download ubuntu and make it a bootable usb then once you in ubuntu you can try it there.

Have you tried Minitool Partition wizard?

A great CD to have is Hiren's BootCD 15.2 which has parted magic on it. Very useful.
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With regards to Minitool Partition wizard - I tried it just now, and it gives me the same conundrum as any other software - it doesn't want to work and just hangs when the drive is plugged in, but works perfectly when the drive is unplugged - but then of course one can't scan, do partition or data recovery in the first place!
 
bluepoole said:
With regards to Minitool Partition wizard - I tried it just now, and it gives me the same conundrum as any other software - it doesn't want to work and just hangs when the drive is plugged in, but works perfectly when the drive is unplugged - but then of course one can't scan, do partition or data recovery in the first place!
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Try https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
 
backstreetboy said:
Pcloud lifetime is just $175 for 500gb. Cheap as chips. The great thing is its just another drive under My Computer.
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Google Drive is R1600 per year for 2TB, wouldnt that be better. Although OP can get 2x Pcloud accounts.
 
Rickster said:
Google Drive is R1600 per year for 2TB, wouldnt that be better. Although OP can get 2x Pcloud accounts.
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They always have specials around black friday. Paid around R7k for 2TB family plan with Crypto thrown in last year so just 3 more years and I'll break even and I can buy another 2TB if need be. Their apps are updated frequently as well.
 
backstreetboy said:
Pcloud lifetime is just $175 for 500gb. Cheap as chips. The great thing is its just another drive under My Computer.
Click to expand...
There are other factors that I was considering other than pure cost. Considering that OP doesn't sound like a geek, I thought Google or Microsoft were better options with regard to accessibility, familiarity, apps, support and ease of use. Personally, the max 2TB is that pCloud offers is too small for my uses.
 
Nqindi said:
There are other factors that I was considering other than pure cost. Considering that OP doesn't sound like a geek, I thought Google or Microsoft were better options with regard to accessibility, familiarity, apps, support and ease of use. Personally, the max 2TB is that pCloud offers is too small for my uses.
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M$ or Google doesn't mount your drive like pCloud does and that's already a big plus. You can also stack storage so if you want more just buy 2x2TB etc.
 
backstreetboy said:
M$ or Google doesn't mount your drive like pCloud does and that's already a big plus. You can also stack storage so if you want more just buy 2x2TB etc.
Click to expand...
What do you mean by mount? You mean so they appear as a mounted network drive? That is neat if that is the case. I use rclone to mount the google drive on to my Synology and then mirror everything to the cloud. I can also mount the google drive on my laptop like so: Capture4.PNG
 
Nqindi said:
What do you mean by mount? You mean so they appear as a mounted network drive? That is neat if that is the case. I use rclone to mount the google drive on to my Synology and then mirror everything to the cloud. I can also mount the google drive on my laptop like so: View attachment 922259
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Yes it's mounted as P drive.
 
Gtx Gaming said:
Wd drives mostly have usb inside directly soldered into the PCB.
Still worth a try
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If you are technically savvy you can solder a sata connector to the pcb pads before it gets to the usb controller... not for the op though
 
As others have said you unfortunately can't connect it via SATA because it only has USB connectivity on the PCB. USB is even less stable than SATA when a drive has a hardware issue, so there's really little you can do other than get it professionally recovered. This is the general procedure with them: https://www.southbit.co.za/western-digital-elements-external-hard-drive-data-recovery/

Or if it's one of the newer ones then: https://www.southbit.co.za/wd-elements-and-wd-passport-hard-drive-data-recovery/

I'm not that far away from you (Mowbray, Cape Town) so you're welcome to send it in for a free assessment. These often suffer from a bad read/write head, the drive then tries to reallocate the sectors on that side of the drive and can't, the FW then locks up and you end up with a 'dead' drive. I've recovered a LOT of these, my recovery rate is very high. I have a price list on the website and do offer MyBB discount - recovery is expensive though for many reasons.
 
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