External Hard Drive FRIED!!!

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fxit_man

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Hi Guys

Friend of mine accidentally plugged in a 20v instead of 12v into their external hard drive and it obviously fried the thing.

Was wondering, could you unscrew the enclosure and put it in a PC (like a normal 3.5" drive) ? Would they be able to recover their data?

Has it fried the whole drive, or just the power component of the enclosure?

Thanks
 
Your friend's best option would be to take it back to where he bought it from, so they can check it out.
 
Chances are they might have fried the enclosure's IC, and not the hard drive's IC.

Try another enclosure and see if the HDD will still work.

If not, then you can get another hard drive of the same spec, swop the controller circuit boards and copy the data off.

But chances for success are very slim.
 
If it's still under guarantee, I wouldn't recommend opening it up yourself.
 
Been there done that!! In all probability the hdd is fried.

However, if your friend has a very decent enclosure, you might be able to salvage the hdd. (Cheapie = forget).

But nothing stops you from taking the hdd out of the enclosure and testing it elsewhere - in PC case or another enclosure...
 
Nafisa said:
Your friend's best option would be to take it back to where he bought it from, so they can check it out.
Click to expand...

He did that, they said they will be happy to replace it, but in order to recover the data, they would have to send it away to a 'professional' data recovery place which would cost +-R4k

Was wondering what these 'professional' places could be doing that we couldnt do? Last time i went to one of these places, the guy just had an external enclosure and plugged it into there (when our laptop 2.5" was giving us problems)

Nafisa said:
Your friend's best option would be to take it back to where he bought it from, so they can check it out.
Click to expand...

Warranty voided :(

Thx for replies
 
The_Librarian said:
Chances are they might have fried the enclosure's IC, and not the hard drive's IC.

Try another enclosure and see if the HDD will still work.

If not, then you can get another hard drive of the same spec, swop the controller circuit boards and copy the data off.

But chances for success are very slim.
Click to expand...

Thanks man some good advice!

& thx to all other replies. Will let my mate know!
 
You won't know if it's recoverable untill you take it to somebody to inspect the thing. I think... I'm not familiar with HDD's and power surges.
Good luck!
 
If the warranty is void remove it and see if it works without the case.
 
fxit_man said:
Was wondering what these 'professional' places could be doing that we couldnt do? Last time i went to one of these places, the guy just had an external enclosure and plugged it into there (when our laptop 2.5" was giving us problems)
Click to expand...

The way we do it, is... we clone the HDD. Then try to copy all files to a pc from the clone. It takes a day or two, depending on the HDD
 
My bet is the HDD still works fine but the enclosure is fried. I'll bet R50 that the HDD works 100%. Take it out let me know then pay me.
 
Just found out it was a "Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 500 Gb"
100972_seagate_freeagent_desktop_500_gb_external_usb_hard_drive_pbilimage1.jpg


Think it's salvageable?
 
Just plug it into a PC - I am 99% sure the harddrive is fine.
Even if it is dead it will not harm your PC in any way.
 
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