Have I fried my hard drive? 1

[Julianne]

Yesterday I plugged in my second hard drive while the PC still on (I'd previously unplugged it to see if doing so would affect my PC's start-up time). I assumed "plug & play" meant the drive would automatically be recognised when I plugged it back in, but it wasn't.

I re-started the PC thinking this would get a letter assigned to the drive again but nothing happened. I then thought that if I deleted the drive from Device Manager and restarted the PC the drive would be picked up that way, but no such luck.

The drive is visible in the BIOS but not in Windows, either in Device Manager or My Computer. I downloaded 3 different data recovery programs last night but none of them could see the drive or the data on it either.

The drive was working perfectly OK before I plugged it back in when the PC was on and I can't think of anything else to try. I really don't want to lose all the data - please help!

ENIHL ice hockey at

http://www.leevalleylions.co.uk

 

[paparazi]

Short of expensive professional recovery, it sounds like you damaged the drive or the controller.
Have you tried this hard drive on another system?

Plug and play does not mean "hot swapable" there are very few interface (connections) that are capable of being disconnected/connected whilst the PC is turned on.

USB and SATA2 are exceptions, PS2/parallel port/IDE etc do not take kindly to this sort of handling.

Disconnecting/connecting this sort of connection can cause permanent damage.

Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[vacunita]

If your using WindowsXP, you could try and see if it is visible from disk Management.

Right Click on My Computer -> Manage then select Storage -> Disk Management.

You should be able to see the drive there. If you do, then you can download, any data recovery software that is going to be cheapoer than a professional, and run it to recover your data. once you get the data out, you could most likely be able to format the drive, and put the data back.

Never ever handle, or unplug or plug in, any device conected directly to the PC (that is not external, USB firewire) While the PC on, you could very well damage the PC by doing that.



----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[johnbullas]

If it is a data only disk you could try to see if another PC you have access to will see it in windows assuming it is formatted for that flavour of windows (ie. a Windows 98 or below machine won't see drives formatted using the latest format that came with XP and 2000 - NTFS???)

Make sure you have not been fiddling with the little doodads (jumpers) that assign the drive to be slave or master or cable select

on one IDE (ribbon) cable you can have ONE master and ONE Slave.. if a computer has only one drive in it then you can be pretty sure the one you add on the cable will need to be SLAVE (if not cable select)

If you have a computer with two IDE ribbon cables ther same applies for both cables

ARGH!!! Unplugging anything that is INSIDE the computer while it is running is BAD khama.... assumje if it isn't on the outside it isn't designed to be disconnected wit hthe power on

Might be good to buy a book on PC maintenance as data is too precious to lose

Good luck

 

[paparazi]

johnbullas Hi
I'm a bit worried about your last statement, you might give novice users the impression that it's OK to pull out a mouse/keyboard or even a parallel printer cable whilst turned on.
Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[johnbullas]

I knew about plugging a Mouse IN for the first time after booting could fry laptops MBs but not the latter, I stand corrected!

 

[Julianne]

Thanks everyone, I've learned a very valuable lesson :-(

I have an external hard drive too and this experience has made me paranoid about connecting it when the PC is running but the drive's manual leads me to believe external USB2 devices are OK to do this?

I checked the external hard drive last night and *luckily* I seem to have backed up everything that I could remember as being on the fried drive, so at least all is not lost.

ENIHL ice hockey at

http://www.leevalleylions.co.uk

 

[G0AOZ]

External USB hard drive procedure:-

(1) First get computer up and running in Windows or whatever OS you're using.
(2) Plug in and switch on mains adaptor unit for the USB external drive unit, and makes sure drive is running.
(3) Only now should you connect the USB data cable between the external drive and the PC.
(4) Copy data, read, write, whatever, etc.
(5) When you have finished, click on Unplug or Eject/Safe Removal of USB device. Stop relevant device.
(6) When "safe to remove" message received, disconnect USB cable.
(7) Now switch off power to USB external drive.

This should be followed at all times.

Hope that helps...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[vacunita]

USB devices as we have all pointed out are another ballpark alltogether.

They were designed to be plugged and un plugged while the PC is on, provided you follow G0AOZ procedure.




----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Julianne]

My external drive (Lacie) actually has an on/off switch and up to now I've just used that instead of the Eject procedure. Are you saying it's dodgy to be doing that? Luckily I've been doing everything else in the list, in the right order.

ENIHL ice hockey at

http://www.leevalleylions.co.uk

 

[G0AOZ]

Are you saying it's dodgy to be doing that?". The way you've telling us you're doing it, yes!

The whole point of using the Unplug or Eject/Safe Removal procedure is that sometimes data is not written to the external device immediately - it may be using "write behind" because other system resources are maybe being used at that moment. The Unplug or Eject/Safe Removal facility will check out the status of the drive to ensure that there is no outstanding data or instructions for that device before it's safe to unplug the USB cable.

Treat your ON/OFF switch as Nbr.7 on my list.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[vacunita]

It's not dodgy, but the above procedure allows Windows to finish whatever its doing on the drive, thus making sure everything gets saved properly. if you just flick it off, windows might not finish what it is doing on the drive and may cause problems but it is very rare.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Julianne]

OK, I'll start doing that. To be honest I tend to copy stuff over then forget I've even left the drive on, so it's usually ages after when I switch it off. Maybe that's why I've been lucky so far ;-)

Cheers.

ENIHL ice hockey at

http://www.leevalleylions.co.uk

 

[Stella740pl]

Hi everyone,
I got interested in this thread.

I also have an external hard drive, which I keep connected to the PC (with USB) and plugged on at all times.
When I need to use it (for occasional backups), I just use ON/OFF button on it to turn it on. PC usually is up and running at this point.

The manual says that I can use ON/OFF button instead of Safe Removal function, as it follows the procedure. I do this also while the PC is on (although once I fogot about it, and turned the PC off first).

Do I do it in the correct order?
Have I done anything wrong?
Do I really have to disconnect it and plug it off every single time?

Thanks.

 

[Grenage]

Hi Stella,

It's not really going to do it any damage, no. I've been pulling usb drives, keyrings etc out without a care for years and only once out of (hundreds and hundres of times) has it not written to a keyring. If it's an important document, I'll use the 'eject media' feature when on XP and using a keyring.

With hard drives I've never heard of it not writing pretty much instantly before. I'd say you're fine.


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[Stella740pl]

Thanks! Happy to know that my procedure is OK.

Because the safety of the backup is very important to me.

(I've got a feeling something may be going wrong with the PC itself - or Windows, possibly. The blue screens got somewhat more frequent. But this is a different topic.)