Re: Dead Disk?

William R. Walsh

Hi!

> The drive has worked fine for several years, and then it just was not
> there. Is there any way to test the drive to see if is really dead.

The first thing to do is to check and see if the drive still turns on and
runs normally when you power it up. (There should be no repetitive loud
clicking or squealing sounds.)

If you can get the drive out of its enclosure and hook it up directly to
your computer's internal hard disk connectors that will give you another
data point as to where the failure lies. I have seen enclosures, bridge
chips (these "convert" SATA/PATA to USB and/or Firewire) and power supplies
all fail.

It's worth a shot and may be all the fix you need if you find the drive
works. Once you are sure of that, you could just buy an empty enclosure and
put the drive in it.

William