Diagnosing A Broken External Hard Drive   by R.J.Dunne

in Computers / Hardware    (submitted 2010-07-23)

To get to the root cause of a broken external hard drive you need to diagnose if the issue is mechanical or software based. This article takes a look at some best practices in PC repairs for establishing the cause of the broken hard disk.

Sometimes it is obvious that there is a mechanical problem. If the broken external hard drive was dropped on the ground or tea spilled onto it then your only option is to send it to data recovery experts. The brunt of their work is PC maintenance and repair, but recovering data from an external hard drive is no different from working on internal ones.

If you are unsure if there is a component fault then strange noises from the device may give the game away. A grinding noise is indicative of the bearings on the disk or the reading heads having seized up. Likewise, a rattling sound could indicate that components have come loose. Either way, you will need the experts to resolve it.

One thing you can do is check all cabling (USB, power cables) are connected properly and in a good working state. Try swapping USB cables or ports with another device. And make sure that the connector pins have not been damaged, pushed in, bent or missing.

Software problems can also be a cause of a broken external hard drive. Check the device drivers for the USB device (in the Device Manager) to make sure there are no software issues. If in doubt, reinstall the device drivers for the device.

If your computer is able to detect the device but you are unable to browse the directory then data recovery software might be able to scan the drive. These normally work with any flash based device (as it uses FAT32) and have a free scan, so at the very least you test out scanning the broken hard drive for files to recover.

About the Author

Rod is the editor at the PC Maintenance Reimage blog covering articles on how to repair computers, software reviews and other top-tips.