Help! Ruined my external HD!

I hope it's okay to post about this here - I've searched the 'net for the past two days and even registered on an HDD forum to try to find information but I'm still not sure what I'm doing!

On Friday, I stupidly tripped over a wire and sent my Iomega Prestige external hard drive flying off my desk. When I picked it up and tried to reinsert the USB cable, I noticed that the connector port had become loose. I unscrewed the casing to get a better look at it, and unfortunately it came off altogether. I have absolutely no idea about circuit boards, etc, but as far as I can see the only damage is to the USB connector port, which as I said has come off completely. From my Google searching I see that it's possible to buy an enclosure and fit the disk itself into that so that I can access my data again. However I've absolutely no technical experience with this sort of thing whatsoever. Is it just a case of unscrewing the disk from its existing casing and putting it into a new enclosure?

I've seen some for sale on Amazon which seem reasonably priced. Can anyone help me with the kind of enclosure I should be buying? I have read that there are two types of hard drive. I'm not sure whether mine is SATA or IDE. It's an Iomega Prestige 1TB. I've noticed that some of the cheaper enclosures (there are some on Amazon UK for as little as £4.99) only support drives up to 350 or 500GB. I haven't been able to find any that are specifically described as supporting 1TB drives, but this one supports 'high capacity drives':

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00350GSPI/

Would this sort of thing be suitable? If anyone could recommend what sort of size enclosure I should be looking at purchasing to fit the drive from the Iomega Prestige 1TB, I'd really appreciate it.

Since you have looked in the case of the external drive. Is there a label on the drive describing it. because in most cases there are several drive sizes, as in 2.5in and 3.5in drives. Also hopefully you will see what type of drive, you have.

rman said:

Since you have looked in the case of the external drive. Is there a label on the drive describing it. because in most cases there are several drive sizes, as in 2.5in and 3.5in drives. Also hopefully you will see what type of drive, you have.

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Thanks for your reply.

I opened the casing again and had a look - it doesn't seem to say what size it is. It just says 'Barracuda 7200. 12 1TB'.

Is there some other way I can find out the type/size of the drive?

Check the label on your drive. Probably near where you saw the numbers 7200.12 and Barracuda you should see a model number. The name Barracuda suggests that is a Seagate drive and those serial numbers begin with STB if I remember correctly. Enter that number into a search engine and you should be able to find the specs.

Slydude said:

Check the label on your drive. Probably near where you saw the numbers 7200.12 and Barracuda you should see a model number. The name Barracuda suggests that is a Seagate drive and those serial numbers begin with STB if I remember correctly. Enter that number into a search engine and you should be able to find the specs.

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Thanks for replying. The model number of the drive I have is ST31000528AS, which according to this Seagate page is a SATA drive - however I'm not sure whether I need a 2.5" or a 3.5" enclosure. Also, does it really matter about the capacity when choosing an enclosure? I just assumed that as long as the disk physically fits into the enclosure, it would work. Do I need to find one that specifically supports 1TB drives? As yet, I haven't seen any.

I am pretty sure the Prestige drives by iOmega are 3.5". I will check and get back to you.


Just checked, it's got to be a 3.5".

Check the dimensions in the Seagate specs.

This should clear it up for you. I just measured a 3.5" drive. It's 4" Wide by 5 3/4" long. A 2.5" drive is TINY!

dtravis7 said:

This should clear it up for you. I just measured a 3.5" drive. It's 4" Wide by 5 3/4" long. A 2.5" drive is TINY!

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Thank you so much for your help!