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Hard Drive electrical failure... trash it?

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Armando:
When I came back from my holidays, I plugged in my external drive. It briefly lit up, then stopped. I thought it was the enclosure, so I bought a SATA/IDE to USB adapter, and... It's dead. Yup. Nothing happens.

So it really seems like something burned in the hardrive external circuits... It smells, well, funny.

Now what? Should I try to bring it back to the store for "recovery"? It's only a backup drive, but I fear there might be something important on it that I forgot about and in a year I'll go : ooooooh noooooo!!!!! It'd be very very surprising though as I'm pretty well organized. It also might be very expensive to recover the data...

I could always keep it in a drawer, just in case...

Anybody with similar experience?

mouser:
I could always keep it in a drawer, just in case...
--- End quote ---

that's what i'd do.

Edvard:
 ;D ;D ;D
Guilty as charged...

i have a whole shelf full "I think it's dead, Jim" drives, thinking that one day I'm going to be in need of a backup drive and I'll plug one of them in and it will miraculously spring to life.
Guess what?It never happens
So stick it in a drawer with a dated post-it stuck on the top and if you pass a year without any regrets, chuck it.

Armando:
Thanks Edvard and mouser. I think I'll do the drawer + sticker thing. Chances are, I'll trash it in 2009 at some point.

PS : An update : the brand new SATA/IDE to USB adapter started to smell funny too... and its AC adapter became VERY VERY hot.  :mad:  Hopefully it's not when I plugged this SATA/IDE to USB adapter on my HD that I burnt it.  I plugged another adapter in the same wall socket. Everything seems fine. So have I been unlucky and bought a faulty SATA/IDE to USB adapter too???  To be followed. :(

Edvard:
uh-oh.

Hot adapter means a short. Bad.
Does it get hot when nothing's plugged in? (adapter plugged into wall, nothing plugged into adapter)
Do you have a voltmeter to check what power it's putting out?

In any case, I wouldn't plug anything into it until you get a new one.

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