External Hard drive disappears

[Dirtman]

Do mac's still come with Oregon Trail?

 

[fastpakr]

The earlier suggestion of shucking the drive and accessing it directly may be your last remaining decent option. Short of packing it off to a data restoration facility if the contents are worth that much to you.

 

[Ranger850]

So I opened it up. First thing I noticed was the silver square, marked with purple, had some burnt areas, marked in red. I assume this is my problem. Getting too hot and failing after a few minutes of use.

Any suggestions or is it toast?

 

[fastpakr]

I'm having trouble orienting myself in that picture - is the photo of a board from the enclosure or the actual controller on the back of the drive?

 

[Ranger850]

That small board is the one pictured earlier. It's the first thing you see after cover is removed.

Remove that plate and there is another board under that one. I was able to clean it up. There was carbon build up lol on some places. I know the black stuff is "smoke trails" and it's probably toast, but I'm going to out it all back together and hope for the best.

 

[Ranger850]

From my RED arrow and up, all those black dots should be copper colored. Hopefully my little cleaning will help.

 

[fastpakr]

Okay cool - that board is not part of the hard drive itself. You can pick up an adapter to connect to the drive over USB, or if you have a desktop PC you can attach the drive directly using SATA and power connectors inside it.

 

[fastpakr]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076WQHK2G/?tag=959media-20

$19 for a test if you don't have a desktop available to do this for free.

 

[fastpakr]

Wait - hang on! I made a mistake. Hold everything...

 

[Ranger850]

Okay cool - that board is not part of the hard drive itself. You can pick up an adapter to connect to the drive over USB, or if you have a desktop PC you can attach the drive directly using SATA and power connectors inside it.

New Egg?
Could I possibly rob parts from a different hard drive. I have tones of random computer hardware.
It seems like just it's the "Power IN" module.

I just made that up so don't kill me.

 

[fastpakr]

Clarification. In one of the previous pictures that I scrolled through too quickly, you were pointing at a separate board and I jumped to that being the one with the issues. Realized a minute ago that the burned bits were in fact on the drive controller itself. That's a problem...


Is the failing drive identical to the working one?

 

[Ranger850]

Is the failing drive identical to the working one?

the failing one is 2TB and the good (older) one is 500G. That is the only difference.

 

[fastpakr]

That blows my next plan...

I'm honestly not sure what to suggest. If you had an identical drive (control board being identical primarily) and you were willing to take some risk on that one, you could remove the known good controller and attach it to the finicky drive. But that's out the window.

 

[Ranger850]

That blows my next plan...

I'm honestly not sure what to suggest. If you had an identical drive (control board being identical primarily) and you were willing to take some risk on that one, you could remove the known good controller and attach it to the finicky drive. But that's out the window.

OK, so it has to be identical? I have a few that are close but not exactly the same.

 

[fastpakr]

We're in a (very) gray area for me. You could look for part numbers on the controllers. I suppose it's possible that a similar drive would use a compatible controller?