Fried Enclosure, Need help testing to see if HDD is still good.

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by LufianGuy, Nov 9, 2009.

  1. LufianGuy

    LufianGuy Regular member

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    My friend had a 750GB WD Mybook External Hard Drive, it is a SATA drive.

    I had a similar model and we tried my AC adapter in his external (he forgot his at the time), the blue light blinked instead of being steady and we unplugged it. We could smell something burning in the external later.

    We took apart the external and we think the usb power and reader (not sure) is fried, but we are hoping the drive is still good.

    We are looking for the simplest way to hook it up to a computer to check if the HDD is still good. We can either hook it up interally or externally to a computer for testing.

    My CPUZ computer specs can be found here:
    http://forums.afterdawn.com/t.cfm/f-111/need_help_upgrading_graphics_card_to_program_xna-804846/

    This is what I got so far:
    IDE to 2 Serial ATA/SATA Hard Drive Splitter Power Adapter Cable:
    http://www.meritline.com/showproduc...e=ata-hard-drive-sata-power-adapter-cable-122

    Serial SATA ATA RAID DATA HDD Hard Drive Cable:
    http://www.meritline.com/showproduct.aspx?ProductID=33898&SEName=serial-hard-drive-cable-121

    I need to buy a PCI card that adds SATA connections because my computer has none. Any reccommendations and how much should they cost?

    We could also try these USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA external things, but most people say they don't work correctly (do they work?). Something like this:
    http://www.cooldrives.com/mimiandstsah.html

    Same as before, any reccommendations and how much should they cost?

    Do you guys think we should check the HDD internally or externally?
    The less work the better for us.

    Also if it is still good, we plan to put it into a new enclosure. Any reccommendations and how much should it cost?

    Thanks guys!
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2009
  2. jony218

    jony218 Guest

    all you need is a usb sata adapter like below
    http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=2020&cat=HDD
    I have my mediaPC running with 2 hard drives internally using these type of adapters (just route the usb cables to the back of the computer) There reliable if the drives are only used as a data/storage drive. Basically they make your drive act like an external USB drive, but they are installed inside your computer.

    The usb adapters and also the PCI sata cards, I wouldn't recommend those for boot drives. They usually don't show up in the BIOS during bootup.
     
  3. LufianGuy

    LufianGuy Regular member

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    I bought that one you showed because of the 1 year warranty, was a bit pricey >.<.

    Will try it when it comes, thanks.
     
  4. LufianGuy

    LufianGuy Regular member

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    I bought that thing and it arrived today. I tried it out, but I don't think it was successful.

    I hooked everything up properly and tried it in my PCI card USB 2.0 ports and mobo onboard usb 1.1 ports.

    Both times the drive (has no jumper on it) did not show up in disk management or my computer.

    In Device Manager -> Disk drives, it showed up as "USB Device", in properties it said it was working correctly.

    The Safely Remove Hardware icon appeared and lets me remove it as "USB Mass Storage Device".

    I plan to try this out on another 2 computers running Windows XP later today.

    Is there anything I can do to try to fix this drive?
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2009
  5. KillerBug

    KillerBug Active member

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    I would check on the label of the drive to see if there are any jumper specifications...some USB-to-SATA adapters only support SATA150. I know that the mybook 750 has had a lot of complaints even without power overloads...this may be because of incorrect jumper settings from the factory, or it might just be the case itself.
     

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