Posted by Tim Munsey on December 11, 2006 at 5:17 AM
Hi,
I plugged my external hard disk into the wrong cable and so it died and along with it a good chunk of 2005 pics. I had decided that as a learner I would just forget it and carry on, however I have began to miss the pics. I phoned up a company and they quoted £370 for repair, so I did some further research and found that it may just need a printed circuit board swop, so in theory I could repair it for £50. The catch is I need the same disk with same firmware (apparantly, though not sure as to why), so do any of you lot have a computer outlet or know of a friendly one that will check the firmware version?
cheers
Tim
Posted by Colin Pickett on December 11, 2006 at 5:43 AM
Tim
I had the same thing happen around a year ago and your right in some cases you can switch out the circuit board but only if the serial numbers are identical with the same country of origin, I first tried it with a hard drive that was just the same model number to find it wouldn’t work because of the time difference between the drives things had moved on, one had more disks inside than the other even though they were the same capacity.
So it only works if the model, serial and place origin are the same. I did eventually find a drive that was the same and because mine went out after a storm the disks inside were fine, if the drives making any kind of spinning grinding noise then the chances are slim and much more expensive.
What sort of disk drive unit is it? Depending on what you plugged in & where, it might only be something like an internal fuse, although getting inside some of the units is a feat in itself!
If there's no blown fuse, you could also try buying a £20-£30 external disk housing (no disk). Remove the disk from the other unit and put it in the empty housing & see if it works. Even if the disk is dead, then you can buy a hard disk to put in the empty unit anyway, and use it as a 2nd backup drive!
HTH
Posted by Tim Munsey on December 11, 2006 at 6:10 AM
Hi Nick,
It's Western Digital 250GB EIDE. I've removed it from the housing and tried it in my PC no spinning or recognition I'm afraid, Freecom seem to have no protection in their external hard disk box.
Cheers now
Make sure your BIOS is trying to autodetect the drive - if it can't find it then, no point in buying another external enclosure. It does sound as though something has fried on the drive controller board...which would mean trying to find another drive of the same model and switching the controllers .
Tried your works IT Dept to see if they have anything like it...sometimes they can have store rooms full of older 'junk' - amazing what IT depts hoard
Good luck in your search!
Posted by Rob Ashton on December 12, 2006 at 8:58 AM
Tim,
I work for a IT reseller/repair centre. Drop me an email with the make, date of manufacture, serial number and model number. I will try to help.
Discussion
5 repliesI plugged my external hard disk into the wrong cable and so it died and along with it a good chunk of 2005 pics. I had decided that as a learner I would just forget it and carry on, however I have began to miss the pics. I phoned up a company and they quoted £370 for repair, so I did some further research and found that it may just need a printed circuit board swop, so in theory I could repair it for £50. The catch is I need the same disk with same firmware (apparantly, though not sure as to why), so do any of you lot have a computer outlet or know of a friendly one that will check the firmware version?
cheers
Tim
I had the same thing happen around a year ago and your right in some cases you can switch out the circuit board but only if the serial numbers are identical with the same country of origin, I first tried it with a hard drive that was just the same model number to find it wouldn’t work because of the time difference between the drives things had moved on, one had more disks inside than the other even though they were the same capacity.
So it only works if the model, serial and place origin are the same. I did eventually find a drive that was the same and because mine went out after a storm the disks inside were fine, if the drives making any kind of spinning grinding noise then the chances are slim and much more expensive.
What sort of disk drive unit is it? Depending on what you plugged in & where, it might only be something like an internal fuse, although getting inside some of the units is a feat in itself!
If there's no blown fuse, you could also try buying a £20-£30 external disk housing (no disk). Remove the disk from the other unit and put it in the empty housing & see if it works. Even if the disk is dead, then you can buy a hard disk to put in the empty unit anyway, and use it as a 2nd backup drive!
HTH
It's Western Digital 250GB EIDE. I've removed it from the housing and tried it in my PC no spinning or recognition I'm afraid, Freecom seem to have no protection in their external hard disk box.
Cheers now
Tried your works IT Dept to see if they have anything like it...sometimes they can have store rooms full of older 'junk' - amazing what IT depts hoard
Good luck in your search!
I work for a IT reseller/repair centre. Drop me an email with the make, date of manufacture, serial number and model number. I will try to help.
Rob