External Hard Drive Data Recovery

External USB and Firewire hard disk drives comprise a case containing a standard IDE or SATA hard disk with a USB-to-IDE SATA or Firewire-to-IDE or SATA interface adaptor. These units are therefore prone to all the usual problems relating to hard disk drives plus some others that the external case and interface may bring.

Common problems:

Overheating due to inadequate cooling within the external case or blocked air vents. Modern external hard disk drives often contain a fan inside to disperse the heat generated by components. This fan however can become defective or the vents may become blocked resulting in operation above the recommended operating temperature.
External hard disk drives are also prone to impact, transit or vibration damage.

Symptoms:

The drive is not recognised by the BIOS, clicking or grinding noises, red or no lights on the enclosure.

Recovery possibilities:

Successful recovery is dependent upon the extent of the physical or electrical damage to the magnetic storage media or platters. Heat associated problems are often easier to remedy than those due to impact or mishandling.

Recommendations:

Do not run a repair utility on the drive (such as Scandisk / Chkdsk / Norton etc) - these utilities work the drive harder than usual and may cause further irreparable damage to the storage media and your data.

Example Manufacturers: LaCie (eg. Big Disk, Bigger Disk, Bigger Disk Extreme, Quadra etc), Iomega, Freecom, Maxtor (eg. OneTouch), Western Digital (eg. Passport, MyBook), Toshiba, Seagate (eg. FreeAgent)

Problems: External USB and Firewire hard disks basically consist of a case containing a standard IDE or SATA hard disk with a USB or Firewire interface adaptor. Thus, these units are prone to all the usual problems relating to IDE & SATA hard drives plus some others that the external case and interface may bring. Two of the most common additional problems we have noticed with these drives are:

• They get knocked over, dropped, banged etc. In almost all cases, the resulting impact they suffer will cause problems.
• They have a tendancy to overheat. This is due to inadequate ventilation on the external case. Some external hard drives don't contain any ventilation at all, a small number of devices may contain a fan inside the actual case to combat temperature build up.

Symptoms:

• If the hard drive has been dropped: The drive will probably make a ticking / musical noise when powered on. This is usually indicative of damage to the read / write heads &/or the motor. Recovery of data is often possible - click here to read more about recovering data from clicking / ticking hard disk drives
• If Knocked: The drive will make a buzzing noise - usually indicative of a seized spindle. Data is nearly always recoverable - click here to read more about data recovery from hard drives with seized spindles
• If Overheating: The drive will suddenly die and not be recognised by the BIOS, or the computer will appear to start running slowly and noises from the external hard disk may be heard.

Recovery possibilities: Entirely dependent on the nature of the problem. Heat associated problems are often easier to tackle than impact damage problems.

Do Not: Under no circumstances should you continue to use the device as you may cause further damage to the unit. Also, you should not allow the system to run a repair utility on the drive (such as Scandisk / Chkdsk / Norton etc) - this can often render recoverable data unrecoverable.

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