[SOLVED] External drive - Samsung M2 Portable - nowhere to be seen

[BrownSlorg]

Hello, my problem looks rather serious. I'm somewhat keen on the software side of things, but not really knowledgeable about hardware. I would really appreciate the help, since there's lot of useful data on this drive.

The drive in question is Samsung M2 Portable, 750 GB, external obviously. An old one, bought 8 years ago.

Today it suddenly crashed and looked like suddenly-disconnected. Re-plugging it into the USB provided no results. USB ports made no difference. I connected the drive to two other PCs on all their USB ports - no difference. Windows gives no "device connected" sound. When plugged into the USB, the drive's control light glows - constant, static light.

Using the diskmgmt.msc was useless, the drive can't be seen there. Neither in Device Manager. Neither the CrystalDiskInfo.

I suppose the drive is really dead, but I would like to retrieve the data somehow...

Is anything possible?

Please help. Thanks for everybody interested!

 

[popatim]

If you really need the data then send it out for recovery.
The M2's are not generally transferable to another enclosure or internally to a PC. They do not have Sata/Power connectors.

 

[BrownSlorg]

Damn. No way to salvage data somehow personally? I'm both extremely short cut on money, and the data over there is rather important.

 

[jon96789]

It's unlikely you can recover the data from a hard drive yourself. The drive will probably be sent to a professional recovery service. They will then have to dissect the drive and try to repair the electronics or use some sort of substitute board to access the data.

Backup... Backup... Backup...

 

[BrownSlorg]

Yeah, I backup things every 3 months.

Of course, last backup was... in September, naturally Ugh.

Thank you guys! If anybody knows how to do it cheaply in Eastern Europe, I would be grateful for recommendations.

 

[fzabkar]

No need for data recovery just yet.

These old portables integrate the USB-SATA bridge electronics into the main HDD PCB. A common (?) fault which I have observed in the data recovery forums is a dry solder joint at one particular component (an inductor). The simple fix in such cases is to reflow the solder at this component.

Another common problem is an open circuit in one or more USB signals. Again that is an easy fix for a competent technician.

Can you show us detailed photos of each side of your PCB?