1 TB Adata external drive will not power on
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Thread: 1 TB Adata external drive will not power on

  1. #1
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    1 TB Adata external drive will not power on

    I've tried different power supplies and USB cables but nothing gets it to light up. I suspect the disk itself is fine.

    It's got valuable data on it.

    What if I broke it out of the case and used one of those dongly things that lets you access any type of drive?

    What if I bought an identical one and tried to use the controller part from the good one?

    Is there anything that can be done?

    Thanks - rev

    OS is Win 10 22H2

  2. #2
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    What's the model no of the drive? Some of their external drives contain hard drives that can be removed and plugged into a computer via adapters and some of them have modified PCIe drives that can't be.

    eg: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/a...sd-1-tb/2.html

    https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review....114309.0.html

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  3. #3
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    If anyone can get your data off that drive, it's Ontrack.com. <thumbsup> (Note that this route can get expen$ive)

    How Ontrack Recovered the Data from Space Shuttle Columbia

  4. #4
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    Model: Nobility NH03

    It's an HDD and I was wrong about the capacity, looks like it's 3TB as shown here:

    https://www.amazon.com.mx/ADATA-NH03.../dp/B00F1UYLSQ

    Curiously, it worked just fine, I ejected correctly and it sat around doing nothing for a while. Next time I tried it, it wouldn't light up. How can it go bad just standing around?

  5. #5
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    It was manufactured at least ten years ago. Electronics and mechanical drives especially can just stop working at that age.
    What if I bought an identical one and tried to use the controller part from the good one?

    Hard to imagine where you could buy one now unless it was used and very old and probably ready to die itself. The adapters to hook the drive itself up are still readily available and not expensive though so it wouldn't be an expensive experiment to get one in the (probable) chance it's the drive that's dead and not the electronics in the box.

    But all things considered.. it's age especially.. Doc's suggestion above might be your best bet.




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  6. #6
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    You could also try shucking the drive and connecting it to a powered USB SATA adapter or internal SATA port.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1hPY_ALwTE

  7. #7
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    Internal hookup would be faster but, if you don't want to open the PC case, try one of these USB 3.0-to-SATA adapters: https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Cable-...ps%2C77&sr=1-1

  8. #8
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    I've done a lot of data recovery over the years and it's been an interesting adventure. Since your drive is an old one there's better chance a SATA adapter may work. If the actual motor in the drive died, however, it's not going to spin up. Swapping controller boards is extremely "iffy" because you'll need one from the same exact make and model of your dead drive plus the firmware has to be the same. Getting a SATA to USB adapter is a good idea because they can be quite handy to have around.

    Be aware that chances are very slim of doing a recovery though. If the drive has a lot of corrupted and reallocated sectors there will be spaces on the platters that are inaccessible for the average user. I have a pile of dead hard drives I've been experimenting with for years. Professional data recovery is very expensive (in the thousands of dollars) for a reason: It's very difficult to do and highly specialized equipment is necessary. Always make redundant backups of data that's important.

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