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External Hitachi Hard Drive Beeping

J

JeremyLangford

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 31, 2010
13
0
Today I was transferring files from my unibody Macbook Pro over to my 1TB 7200RPM SATA 3.0 Gb/s Hitachi external hard drive. The files were almost transferred when I accidently knocked the drive off of my bed and onto the carpet floor which disconnected the drive's USB cable from my laptop.

Now when I turn the drive on it continuously clicks and beeps and my macbook won't recognize it. I found this video on youtube and it shows exactly what my external drive is doing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rdV7VcNh7g

I have a ton of important data on this drive and I really don't want to lose it. What should I do? Could I take the drive to my nearby Apple Store?
 
No. Apple techs can't recover that. All I can suggest is the old trick of putting the drive inside an airtight bag in your freezer overnight. If you're really lucky, you'll be able to read some of the data on the drive before it warms up. (Cold temperatures cause metal to reduce slightly in volume, which may prevent the drive heads from making physical contact with the platter, as they are doing right now.)

Beyond that... if it matters to you, back up. It's a lesson you only have to learn once.
 
This just seems stupid that I'm going to have to lose all my data. It fell maybe a foot onto thick shag carpet so it didn't take that hard of a hit at all. I learned my lesson and I will start backing up all of my data but it seems like there should be some way to recover this current data. I understand that it's a pretty crappy drive so it's no surprise that a small fall killed it but it has to be some small mechanical problem. I guess there's absolutely no way to fix even a small problem due to not being able to open the drive due to a dust box. UUUGGGHHHH!
 
There is, if you want to spend thousands of dollars for a data recovery company to do it for you. I guess it's up to you to decide if the lost data is worth that kind of money.
 
Ok so here's another question I got. Most of the things I lost when I crashed my external hard drive were things I downloaded for free. So basically I could easily download them again if I could just remember what all I downloaded. Is there anyway to see a list of the things I downloaded onto my macbook pro? I've obviously cleared my normal safari download list many times but is there some other way to view download history?
 
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