external hardrive stoped working

[joeyjoe9876]

ok well i habe a 500GB external hardvrive (iomega mdhd500-UE) and it stoped working a while ago.. i was just wondering if anyone else has had this and if the same problem has happened.

[timmeh87]

Once it happened to me cause the SATA cable came loose inside. Take it apart and see what you can see.

[joeyjoe9876]

yeah i just took it apart and didn't see anything wrong
it just doesn't seem to want to power up

[bicostp]

Sounds like the drive's power supply bit the dust. How old is it?

Have you tried plugging both the power and USB cables into it? I have a 1 TB external Western Digital hard drive, and it only turns on if both are connected (it has no power switch).

Does the hard drive spin up if you plug it into your PC's PSU? If it does you can just install it internally, or get a new external enclosure for it.

[joeyjoe9876]

i haven't tried doing anything internally yet. its not really mine its my mothers but i wanna try to fix it :-\
it doesn't have a warrantee on it either so i cant send it in

[bicostp]

At leats plug it into your computer's power supply and see if it spins up. That will tell you if it's the hard drive itself or just the case electronics that went bad.

The way I see it, it's already broken and you can't send it in under warranty, so what's the harm in troubleshooting?

[joeyjoe9876]

see the way this one works is that it needs to be plugged into an outlet for it to work :/
I'll try replacing it with the one currently in the PC tommorow and see if it works still

[nevermind1534]

Often, what happens with the external drives, is that the enclosure dies, but the drive will still be functional. So you may just have an extra internal hard drive.

[joeyjoe9876]

so all i have to do is attach it to the pc?
and how would i install an OS on it without deleting all the pictures?

[tom61]

so all i have to do is attach it to the pc?
and how would i install an OS on it without deleting all the pictures?

Computers can take more than one harddisk. Have the OS be on another drive, and just install the harddisk on a different connector, then you can access the pictures off of it.

[joeyjoe9876]

Computers can take more than one harddisk. Have the OS be on another drive, and just install the harddisk on a different connector, then you can access the pictures off of it.

how would i install the other hardisk? would i need to buy extra cables?

[bicostp]

Maybe.

At the very least, just plug one of the extra power cables from your computer's power supply (there should be at least one spare, if not borrow the CD drive's) to see if the hard drive still works. If it does, you can either install it internally (best if it's used all the time) or buy a new external enclosure. If you've never messed around with a computer's innards before, or if the drive is pramarily used as a backup volume, then a new external enclosure is a better idea.