Ext. power USB hub causes Because a USB device was drawing too much power

[mozaik]

hello,

last night was the worst night in my life.

after cleaning up my place and unplugging all connectors from my workstation, i accidently plugged a wrong power supply into the powered usb hub. the hub started to blink and i knew that something is wrong. after unplugging the wrong plug, the 2 ext hd(WD 500 and 750GB) wouldnt start. instead i get the message: Because a USB device was drawing too much power....

however a 3rd powered HD was also coneected on the hub, but this one runs fine after the accident.
then i tried to connect the 2 WD drives directly to my MBP but still the same message: Because a USB device was drawing too much power...
i have an old selfpowered usd drive which i tried to connect to see if the usb ports are damaged or so, but that drive worked fine.

so i think the usb hub damaged somehow my 2 ext WD passports.

i am in big need of help because i lost all of my lifes music work

please help me!

 

[ljonesj]

If you have another mac try them on it if not you can buy 2 external enclosures and take the wds apart and put the drives in there. if they are the small portable wd drives they have a usb port instead the normal adapter card it wont work

 

[ScoobyMcDoo]

If what ljonesj doesn't work, there are services which can recover data from a damaged drive. They are not cheap, but might be worth it to you.

 

[fhall1]

Hopefully it only knocked out the circuitry in the case and not the hard drive....buy an empty external USB HD case (2.5" or 3.5" depending on the size of the drives in your WD cases - generic cases are fairly inexpensive), take the drives out of the WD cases and insert into the new case one by one. See if the drive(s) will work in the new case.

 

[speacock]

It may not be as bad as you think.

I would try plugging them in one at a time to a powered USB port on your computer, not via the powered hub. If the disk is recognised by the OS but there is no data on it or it reports it as being unreadable, then you may have damaged the filesystem (thought this is fairly unlikely).

If it doesn't work, you have two courses of action available to you and which one you take will depend on how important the data is to you.

1. Try to fix things yourself, this is possible if the error is a logical one rather than a physical one, but requires you to know what you're doing

2. Send it to a professional data recovery company. Good data recovery companies can work wonders. If it's simply a controller failure (which is most likely if you've had some kind of power problem) they should be able to replace the controller and recover 100% of the data. Even if the disk has failed at the physical platten level, they can often get some if not most of the data off. However, these services aren't cheap, recovering data from a controller failure costs about £300 here in the UK and the prices go up depending on how complex the recovery operation is. Stuff that involves opening the disk in a clean environment obviously gets very expensive, but it depends how important the data is to you. Most reputable companies will do a free estimate, but don't be tempted to skimp, use a reliable, professional data recovery company, the low cost ones are as likely to render your data irrecoverable as they are to recover it.

One important lesson - if the data matters to you, back it up. That's probably preaching to the converted (now), but it's as true as it ever was. The cost of backup is trivial compared to the cost of recovering lost data or the trauma of losing it altogether if it's not recoverable.

 

[mozaik]

thank you guys for all the tips....
i mostly tried everything i could do myself but nothing went well.


so i took it to a data recovery company here in miami. it was ta company with the most positive reviews and they are a certified apple care center.
lets hope for good... the owner seems to know his field well...

if that will not work, i will try a different company called http://www.krollontrack.com/

they seem to be one of the best in the US.

so today will be a day full with prayers and hope.
guys, cross your fingers and wish me luck!

thank you all!



one thing i know:
no more self-powered usb hard drives!! only powered ones!v even if they are bigger and dont fit in the pocket....
as well as backing up on TWO drives from now on.
plus, online backup for 70 dollars per year of unlimited data.