my EHD is dead...I think. LOL

[Ambowife]

Originally Posted by ABitDaffy

Have you tried changing out the USB cable? I had an EHD that I thought was dead that turned out to be just a bad USB connector.

I second going to a local tech guy or, if you have a Best Buy near you, they have the Geek Squad which will work on it (of course, then you'll probably pay a little more). I went to a local guy with 2 dead EHDs (I've had four die on me in the last 18 months) and he was able to pull almost all the data off of one of them (and none off the second). It cost me $15.00.

And here's something about EHDs that the tech guy told me that I found interesting. The casings for EHDs are typically very weak and oftentimes it's the connectors in the case that go bad, not necessarily the drive itself (this isn't true if you hear an awful clicking sound - that usually means the drive itself is toast). He said what he recommends doing is buying an Internal Hard Drive and a plastic case and mounting the IHD inside the case and making a defacto EHD. That way, if something goes wrong with the connector, all you have to do is pop it out and stick it in another case (and cases are cheap, under $20.00). That was the way he was able to save the data off my drive. Just broke the original case, popped it into a connector that he had and pulled the data off.

Now, you can send it to one of those data recovery places, but, like Debra said, they're very expensive. But, since you just have freebies on there, I'd try letting a local guy (or girl) take a look and see if anything's retrievable.

I had my power cord fail on my ehd about 2 months ago. Western Digital don't make it anymore so I had only the option of them giving me a new ehd, no recovery of my files!!! So I read about recasing the hard drive and gave it a go.
It worked cost me $50 Aussie dollars and worked. So I would give that a go before doing the more expensive route!!
:)