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Regarding failing disks

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by apefist

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I read the PDF article for this week about failed/failing disks, but I didn't see anything specific to my custom made pain in the arse.

First off, I'm more of an end user than a tech guy, though as an freelancer, I'm pretty much all I can get for my tech budget as chief troubleshooter going on 5 quietly uneventful years. And then...

The problem with my failing drive is that it powers up, but not enough that my current system will recognize it, though it will act like it's trying to make a connection at first.

The drive is a
Hitachi Deskstar
HDS722580VLAT20 ATA/IDE
82.3 GB 7200 RPM

When it revs up, you can kind of tell by the sound it's not getting where it should be.

It was my D drive, slaved at one time to my C: drive of an old AMD Board with a 900MHz chip I've had since 1997 that finally overheated and crapped out. I uninstalled the drive (still functional) with the intention of pulling the data off with one of those powered IDE/USB adapters (with the power going into the power input on the disk) that let's you hook up a disk through USB 2.0 ports.

My current system is an AMD Dual Core 64 4 GHz chip in a Gigabyte board with 3 SATA drives, for what it's worth. I have about 5-6 other disks that I regularly access using that USB/IDE connector, but this one just won't get up where it needs to be.

Does it have a chance or is it toast? Or is there something I can do to get it to power up enough to salvage the data?

Much obliged for any advice anyone can offer. I'll go re-read that PDF for some of those tools that were listed, but if I can't get it to recognize, that's pretty much church for the tools, right?

(edited to include the disk info)

3 replies

by thumbsup2

A USB/IDE adapter can't possibly provide enough power to the old drive to power it up to speed. It needs the correct voltage to operate, which isn't possible through USB2 alone. It needs a power supply too.

You might try one of the USB external hard drive CASES that you plug IDE hard drives into. They're designed for this type of thing where the adapter is only a communications adapter. The case can give the drive the power that it needs from its own power supply.

by apefist

I'm sorry, I should have been more detailed. The USB adapter isn't powered by the USB port, the adapter has its own power supply which is plugged into the power input on the disk, like it would be if it were installed in the PC case.

The drive is a
Hitachi Deskstar
HDS722580VLAT20 ATA/IDE
82.3 GB 7200 RPM

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