Question External Hard Drive boots but no connection...

[Nammigan]

So I have had an old Western Digital MyBook for a while as my main back-up hard drive for years, and not really had any problems. A few formatting errors once or twice, but over a long time in between with no other signs of problems. For the last few months, I hadn't been the one using the computer the drive was connected to except to make sure backups and updates were regularly happening. Nothing seemed wrong during that time, so if there were symptoms of it failing, no one told me.

The hard drive has stopped being able to be read on computers we connect it to. Even taking it out of the case and using the SATA connection isn't working. Power goes to the drive, everything still spins, and it appears that it's trying to connect, but nothing reads. I've got ten worth years of art, music, and life on this hard drive, and I'd really like to find a way to salvage the data. Does anyone had any advice that might give me some hope of getting it all back?

 

[DSzymborski]

I'm a little confused - if this drive is for backups, why don't you backup the originals on a different hard drive? The backup drive breaking shouldn't lose your important data.

If you can't read the hard drive, then software tools won't help you. Which means that it's time to get a professional lab involved. That can easily go over $1000 with trickier problems, so it's not worth it; the best thing to do is to backup your files to a new backup hard drive, which will only cost a fraction.

I'd also recommend being a bit more aggressive than two copies of your data. Generally, the 3-2-1 rules is what should be followed, meaning that the minimum for important data should be three separate copies, in at least two different mediums, with at least one copy stored offsite (for example, in a cloud backup).

 

[Nammigan]

So unfortunately the original files from the hard drive aren't accessible. We had to move suddenly due to home water damage and the move meant a lot of things were lost. In the hustle unfortunately it meant this was the only FULL copy of everything. There are assorted backups throughout the years, but this drive was the most prevalent until I could manage to get a new one. Which means that at least some of what's on there is the only copy in existence.

 

[DSzymborski]

So unfortunately the original files from the hard drive aren't accessible. We had to move suddenly due to home water damage and the move meant a lot of things were lost. In the hustle unfortunately it meant this was the only FULL copy of everything. There are assorted backups throughout the years, but this drive was the most prevalent until I could manage to get a new one. Which means that at least some of what's on there is the only copy in existence.

Oof, that's really unfortunate! While I can advise you on good practices for the future, that sadly won't help you now.

I think that you'll need to go the professional route if this data is that important to you. I wish there were a magic solution, but when a hard drive goes, it's very difficult to recover that data once it gets to the point at which it cannot be read. There are methods like PCB swapping which may work if you have enough technical expertise and it's exactly the correct problem, but given the importance of this data to you, I think you have to look at it as a financial decision now.

 

[Nammigan]

Oof, that's really unfortunate! While I can advise you on good practices for the future, that sadly won't help you now.

I think that you'll need to go the professional route if this data is that important to you. I wish there were a magic solution, but when a hard drive goes, it's very difficult to recover that data once it gets to the point at which it cannot be read. There are methods like PCB swapping which may work if you have enough technical expertise and it's exactly the correct problem, but given the importance of this data to you, I think you have to look at it as a financial decision now.

Would PCB swapping fix the connection issue? Everything I'm seeing online talks about how the dead drives don't turn on at all, but power still seems to be coming to the drive (no off sounds, no spinning and then stopping, doesn't get very hot), I just can't establish a connection to it.

I've already gotten a replacement backup (brand new 2 TB) and I should be able to set up for cloud storage soon. It just is a real bummer that everything is going right south before I can manage to enact any of the plans we had in motion.

 

[DSzymborski]

Would PCB swapping fix the connection issue? Everything I'm seeing online talks about how the dead drives don't turn on at all, but power still seems to be coming to the drive (no off sounds, no spinning and then stopping, doesn't get very hot), I just can't establish a connection to it.

I've already gotten a replacement backup (brand new 2 TB) and I should be able to set up for cloud storage soon. It just is a real bummer that everything is going right south before I can manage to enact any of the plans we had in motion.

This has all the basics. https://www.donordrives.com/pcb-replacement-guide

It's tricky in that you also have to swap over a ROM chip in a lot of cases. And there's a risk you can make things worse.

When you do have things (hopefully) running properly again, I'd recommend Bvckup 2 for local backups - I have a cloud backup that starts every night at 4 AM and Bvckup checks the files set to back up every night for files that are new or changed and will back those up to the drives it's told to.