My SimpleTech external hard drive appears to have suffered a mechanical failure. It powers up but then shuts down. I took the hard cover off, but cannot figure out how to remove the internal cover exposing the drive itself. I have a universal driver adapter and I attempted recovery since I could get it all plugged in. However, the computer will not recognize the drive after repeated attempts. There is only ONE item I'd like to try to recover from the drive. It was a backup drive and there are a number of addresses and notes that will be lost if I can't recover the data. Does anyone know if recovery is possible? The data is not important enough to pay a technician $200 or so, but if I can get a little advice from the smartest people I know I may be able to do this. I am not by any means educated enough in this field (actually I'm not educated at all) but I was hoping I could just plug in a few plugs, hook it up to a laptop and the drive would be accessible. This is not the case, so any advice will be greatly appreciated.

 

Is this a USB device? What operating system? Have you rebooted the computer?

 

Yep, I've rebooted (repeatedly). It is a USB device. Windows OS. Edit: the precursor to Windows 07 -- can't remember what that was, but know it was the system before 7. I'm running a backup on my old desktop that I do not want to interrupt. I'll update in the a.m.

 

Sounds/smells like XP. I'll check back tomorrow.

 

Valentine, my SimpleTech hard drive also bit the dust. I had all my photos on it and it had been corrupting them, deleting them and moving them around before I bought a different one and quit using the ST. I ended up paying a guy to recover what he could as mine wouldn't turn on at all, finally. Good luck with yours. I now use a Western Digital "My Passport" and it's been problem free.

 

Nice choice Patty. I use those with the 3.0 USB for our offsite corporate backups.

 

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I know of several people who have experienced catastrophic drive failure with SimpleTech hard drives. Their data was unrecoverable even with specialized recovery software.

 

Give a good whack and plug it in.... I restarted a lot of old 40meg hard drives that way. It usually worked one last time. I have no idea if that will work on your newer one but, why not? Whack it as a last resort.

fltsfshr

PS Call Abby if all else fails.

 

Valentine, I used Angie's List to find a specialist to recover my photos. The guy was an hour away but highly praised. It was worth it for me.

 

Yes, Mike, it is XP. I got a new external hd for backup purposes. After doing a search (isn't hindsight just wonderful) I discovered that STs fail quite frequently.

Patty, I thought about taking it to our local geek shop (they are super wonderful and I've used their services for repairs, etc. before) but figure if I can't retrieve the stuff myself, it isn't worth the fees. I have a $30 recovery tool that worked great on an old laptop hd, but I can't seem to get the ST drive recognizable. It really isn't a biggy, but I kind of wanted to conquer this demon. There are a few address and phone numbers on the address book I had on the ST that I'll lose, but that's the only important info.

Thanks everyone for your help. You are my "go-to" smart wise people. I count on your most excellent and worthy advice!