Please Help! It's My Hard Drive!

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Hi, didn't know where to post this but i didn't have my usual 12v 3a power cable for my hard drive and i found a 20v 3.25a power cable and tried it but didnt work then used another 12v 3a cable on it and all that happened is the light flashed and it didn't come on my computer! I'm extremely worried, Does anyone know anything about these incidents? Have I blown my hard drive? It has all my work on, If i leave it for a bit will it come back to life
Please Help!
 

Raz0rEdge

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Thread moved to the right forum..

If your external HD requires just 3a at 12v and you gave it 3.25a at 20v, that too much current and you'd most likely blow some capacitors or resisters on your way to the HD. There should be some protection circuitry around the HD for these kinds of situations and the HD itself is most likely OK and the enclosure might have taken the brunt of the damage.

Waiting for some time will not magically fix this, you will need to take the HD out of the enclosure and find another enclosure or computer to plug it into to see if your data is still there..
 

Raz0rEdge

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Assuming this is an external HD we are talking about, the box is the enclosure which houses the hard drive inside it. Now before you crack anything open, if this is still under warranty, opening the case usually voids it.

So how about you provide us more information on the device itself before you do anything that cannot be reversed..
 
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yes it a external hard drive, it's a maxtor one touch III hd, maxtor changed it's name to seagate if thats helpful, if i were to try it again with the same laptop with a different power cable just to see if it would recognise a different 12v cable would that make a difference, thank you for help
 

Raz0rEdge

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What kind of cable are you using between the Maxtor One Touch and your computer? USB/Firewire? Either way, if the wrong power cable fried something in the One Touch, it wouldn't do anything a second time, but you can certainly try it in the off chance it does somehow recover..

You might want to check to see if the HD even spins when you plug the power cable in and turn the device on. If not, search on Youtube for videos of taking other One Touch drives apart and use that to take yours apart if it applies..
 
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Hi i've attached a file which shows what import i use from my hd to usb on my macbook. The cable i want to try is just another 12v 3a so i wouldn't be trying the 20v 3.25a which is the one that fried my hd. To be clear 12v is the one i usually use that works.
 

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Raz0rEdge

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OK, that's a USB type B connector that goes to your PC. That plug can be used to provide power as well, but the HD needs more power than the USB port can provide, thus the additional power cable.

Depending on your warranty status, you can try to take the HD out of the One Touch and then use an external docking station to access the HD and confirm that it's working OK and grab the data. Then you can put this HD into another enclosure or figure out what your next step is..
 

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