Hi I'm new to the forum and would be obliged if anyone can help me. I have a Medion Drive 'n' Go 250GB external HD (Purchased from Aldi a while back) Until recently it was working fine - that is until my better half stepped on it. Now when the HD is connected to my laptop nothing is detected, all it does is make a beeping noise (with no power light showing on the HD). However, when I connect the HD through a USB hub the HD stops beeping and the power light comes on! Although the beeping noise is not evident and the power light comes on when connected through the USB hub, the PC is still not detecting the HD. After going through the above 'fault finding' attempt I decided to remove the USB connector (right word?) from the body of the HD, as this was the point of impact and could therefore be damaged thus being the root of the problem. Picture below: Upon inspection it seems okay, however, it could be damaged and not be noticeable to the naked eye. Has anyone heard of these USB connectors failing on HD's? The thing is, I have about 30GB worth of family photos and video on the HD, I do not have any backups of the photos and video so I really need to be able to recover them. Any help with this dilemma would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
It looks like a standard USB to IDE controller. Buy an empty USB/IDE enclosure and install the hard drive into it. If the hard drive isn't dead you should be back up and running.
Further to the above, I have been looking up on my particular hard drive (Medion 'Drive n Go (seagate)) and there seems to be endless problems with the usb adapter failing due to poor solder. What it seems that most people are doing who have encountered this problem is connecting a cable directly to the HD that converts to a USB - eSATA to SATA? Basically I haven't got a clue what cable I need for my particular HD to convert it to USB. Here's hoping that there is a techy out there who can possibly point me in the right direction. I really need to access the information stored on the external HD, as mentioned earlier, there are family photos and camcorder footage that could never be replaced. Below are a few photographs of my HD in the hope that someone out there can lend a hand, thanks in advance for any help whatsoever. Fingers crossed and thanks for the advice so far.
You can't do it with a cable. You need an adapter. As I said in my earlier post, you should go buy an empty enclosure. If you have an eSATA plug on your computer you can use an SATA to eSATA cable, but then you still have the problem of powering the drive. The answer? Get an external enclosure or Install the drive internally. There is no other answer. Go get the enclosure. BTW, I have 4 SATA drives and 3 ATAPI drives in external enclosures. Some are eSATA, some are USB, some are Firewire, and some are combo. No problems with any of them. Normal precautions against damage are all that's required.
Thank you for your quick reply, I've just been looking on ebay at 2.5 enclosures. It doesn't look like all 2.5 enclosures are made to be compatable (interchangable) with all 2.5 HD's? My 2.5 HD (Photo above) looks different to a lot of the 2.5 HD's that I've seen on the Internet. I've got a spare external 2.5 HD that's surplus to requirements so I thought that I'd use the enclosure from that, however, the USB connector on that enclosure is totally different (although the same make) from the damaged one and therefore will not fit the HD that I need to extract the photos etc from. I hope the above makes sense. Based on the photo of my HD above, does anyone know what enclosure will be compatable with it? Thanks again.
The USB port physical connector may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and that's why each enclosure manufacturer provides a cable that will work with THEIR enclosure. However, notice that they all have a standard "USB A" connector on the PC. That's all that counts on the PC side. I have 10 2.5" USB enclosures and 4 different cable types because I buy whatever is the "sale du jour" As far as the SATA (HDD side), it should be a standard 2.5" SATA connector. If you have a spare enclosure, you can put the old hard drive in it (provided that it is an enclosure designed for a SATA drive). Then you just need to use the cable appropriate for that enclosure. Any enclosure for 2.5" SATA will work for your drive.
