External Hard Drive Woes

[MyDisplayName]

I have 2 external hard drives that I am having trouble with.

The first is a Western Digital Passport portable external hard drive. It is a 2.5" drive with a USB connection, no power supply. I plug it in and the light on the drive comes on but it does not appear in My Computer or Disk Management, and in Safely Remove Hardware it is only labeled as "USB device"

I have tried multiple computers (all XP), USB cables, and ports. Is there anything I can do to get the files off it or is it doomed?

I don't get any warnings or errors or anything when I plug it in. I hear the noise that occurs when you plug in stuff like thumb drives and also when you remove them. It doesn't show up in disk management and I haven't changed anything on the computers that I'm using.

The second is a Seagate that was damaged in shipping. It is out of warranty so I cracked it open. From what I can tell just looking at it, it should be in working order except that the mini-USB connector has simply popped off. I can't just plug the SATA directly to my motherboard because of how the PCB is connected.

So what I'm wondering is how I should go about getting the data off of it? If I soldered the mini-USB connector back on it would work fine, correct? I don't know how to solder and I only have a handful of friends who can, and they aren't very good at it. It's a pretty small connector, I wouldn't be comfortable doing it myself even if I bought a soldering iron and learned how. Can I take it somewhere that will do it for me?

Thanks in advance.

Edited February 26, 2010 by MyDisplayName

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Western Digital Passport portable external hard drive. It is a 2.5" drive with a USB connection, no power supply.

For the first one:

Does the cord have 2 usb plugs that go into the pc? All my externals that I have had have had a total of 3 connectors on the cord. Think of it this way one for data and one for power...

You might not be getting enough power to the drive for windows to use it fully...

As for the second drive:

It might just be dead...

[VideoRipper]

All external (2.5") drives I've seen are just normal drives in

a small enclosure and can be attached directly to a computer.

With P-ATA drives you would need a simple adapter that converts

the pin-spacing from the 2.5" to a regular 3.5" connector

while a SATA drive can be connected as is.

There are also 1.8" drives around, but these will only be found

in embedded devices like MP3-players and if you want to connect

these to a PC, you'll need a special adapter with powerconvertor.

Sometimes you'll have to strip everything away to get to the actual

drive, but 999 out of 1000 times it really is just a standard drive.

Greetz,

Peter.

[jaclaz]

Of course the easiest being that of buying for a few bucks an USB adapter capable of connecting to both ATA and SATA and both 2,5" and 3,5", something like this (just an example):

http://www.amazon.com/USB-SATA-5-25-Cable-Adapter/dp/B000YJBL78

jaclaz

[puntoMX]

There are also 1.8" drives around, but these will only be found

in embedded devices like MP3-players and if you want to connect

these to a PC, you'll need a special adapter with powerconvertor.

Just to update your knowledge; You can buy 1.8" external USB drives too, check out the brands like Transcend and Samsung, they both have 1.8" USB models.

[VideoRipper]

Yes I know, but they're not as common as 2.5" and 3.5" enclosed drives.

Most of them can be found in iPods and small laptops, but you're right.

There are also special adapters available for these 1.8" drives

and they're not that expensive either, though I don't own one,since I

hardly ever come across 1.8" drives.

Maybe I should buy a couple (the 50-pin, ZIF and micro-SATA versions),

just to make my collection complete

Greetz,

Peter.

[MyDisplayName]

Western Digital Passport portable external hard drive. It is a 2.5" drive with a USB connection, no power supply.

For the first one:

Does the cord have 2 usb plugs that go into the pc? All my externals that I have had have had a total of 3 connectors on the cord. Think of it this way one for data and one for power...

You might not be getting enough power to the drive for windows to use it fully...

As for the second drive:

It might just be dead...

No, the cords don't have 2 pc-side plugs. They are just like the one that came with the HDD, but if I find one like what you describe I will give it a whirl. Any idea where I could find one?

All external (2.5") drives I've seen are just normal drives in

a small enclosure and can be attached directly to a computer.

With P-ATA drives you would need a simple adapter that converts

the pin-spacing from the 2.5" to a regular 3.5" connector

http://msfn.videoripper.org/pata25.jpg

while a SATA drive can be connected as is.

http://msfn.videoripper.org/sata25.jpg

There are also 1.8" drives around, but these will only be found

in embedded devices like MP3-players and if you want to connect

these to a PC, you'll need a special adapter with powerconvertor.

http://msfn.videoripper.org/pata18.jpg

Sometimes you'll have to strip everything away to get to the actual

drive, but 999 out of 1000 times it really is just a standard drive.

Greetz,

Peter.

Well it is a standard 3.5" SATA drive but unfortunately it has a PCB soldered directly to the SATA ports.

here is where hte mini-usb connector fell off, this is the side of the hard drive:

and here is where it is soldered onto the ports:

Edited February 27, 2010 by MyDisplayName

[jaclaz]

The black thingy in your second picture does look like a connector that cna be removed from the drive.

Can you post a picture showing the whole drive upside down?

jaclaz

[VideoRipper]

Just like jaclaz says, it looks like a normal SATA-connector and it wouldn't

surprise me when it actually is just a piggy-back PCB screwed onto the drive

I think that when you remove the screws holding the board, you can simply slide

off the PCB from the drive in the direction of the arrow in my picture

Greetz,

Peter.

[jaclaz]

Yep , basically anything that protrudes from the faces of the ideal "parallelepiped" of the hard disk is an "artifact".

Noone in his right mind would solder anything to a "normal" HD PCB, voiding the warranty an what not, so, yes, it is definitely a "piggy back" PCB applied to the drive, BTW nice visual representation VideoRipper , which you can easily remove and get the "plain" HD.

jaclaz