Help

[Waterworx]

Not at all bushcrafty and one for computer geniuses.

A WD elements 1TB drive, no light on, doesn't spin, within Warranty period, PC World said it'd cost £600-700 to be sent away to be striped, repaired and data recovered (400GB of it), and a WD approved repair centre came back with a tad over £500.

Now the question is, do I have any other options?

Anyone dealt with WD and warranties before?

Al

 

[Hugo]

That seems to be a lot of money.
A new one is about £120 so if you can do without the data recovery I'd go that way.
Have you tried connecting it up to a different pc, just to make sure it is the drive and not something else.

 

[Waterworx]

I'm glad I was sat down when they told me the price.

It's still under warranty but don't think WD would recover the data, things like 200 gig photos (have 90% pics backed up) 100 gig of music, around 100 gig films and various docs, some Inland Rev paperwork (would be handy as they owe me some pennies too).

Could live with loosing music, film and docs but the photos are different even just the newest 10% or so I'd hate to loose.

 

[Hammock_man]

Strip out the disk and try it in a mates desktop, as an internal drive. Just make sure that the BIOS boots to the desktop 1st and not the added one.

 

[slowworm]

Has anyone diagnosed what's wrong with it? I know some people have had external drives fail and it has just been the power supply.

As has already been said, you can get the old drive out and either use it in a PC or a hard disk enclosure (which only cost about £15). If you're not confident with what you're doing I'd expect a local computer shop to be able to help for much less than £500.

If it's the physical disk that's failed then it does run into £100s to recover data.

 

[neoaliphant]

Well I work in a computer repair shop, £500 sounds quite a good price, ive seen it go over £1500. My professional advice is listen to the disk for sounds it is making, if theers ticking or ping pong ball sounds, probably the HD, if notopen the case and slave in to another PC, this will rule out the caddy system. Any HD will fail evetually, always have a backup, its fine to use large USB HDs for temporary storage or as a backup, but you shouldnt use them as the only source of data. You wouldnt get any comeback fro WD im afraid. If the disk is accesible in the bios of the other PC, there are free data recovery programs that could be used if the file system is scrambled.

Hope this helps

Alistair

 

[Seth.Karlo]

What the others said, try slaving it in another persons PC. We were lucky when my sister's HDD went, my dad borrowed a reader from work which recovered most of it.

I wish you the best of luck.

 

[alpha_centaur]

If the light's not coming on when you turn on the power to the drive it sounds very like it could be the power supply. Either strip the drive as suggested or take it into your local computer shop (not PC world they're simply a bunch of salesmen).
If you can't find a decent shop locally drop me a PM and I'll see what I can sort out for you.

 

[Waterworx]

Cheers folks.

I striped and popped it into my desktop the other day, with no sound from the drive and what seemed like no life tbh. PC world did say that there seems to be a physical fault with the drive itself, and by physical fault I guess they mean it's broke.

Did find a company that would do a free data list so I know whats on there then choose to scrap it of not. As it's still in warranty a replacement would be covered by WD.

PC world did choose to swap it with an Iomega HD but then found out it's knackered.

Most of the important stuff that is on there is recoverable in one form or another apart from a picture which the GF wanted me to get printed and stuck on the wall for crimbo, thats me in the dog house again