just switched on my external hardrive,and nothing happened, the wee blue light comes on, but absolutely nothing is happening, cant get anything at all.
help!!!
please !

Disconnect/reconnect it to your computer?

Stand on your head.

on further examination, theres a kind of ticking sound when i switch it on,

That's bad. Typically that means the drive is done for. This will sound crazy, but put it in the freezer, get it very cold, then take it out and try to access it to get your data off of it. Since it's an external drive, make sure there is no condensation near the electrical and cable connections when you hook it back up.

I did the freezerburn method once. Worked, but you only have about 10 minutes to get that data off of there.

theres 300 gb of stuff on there, how would i get it off?

Ticking?

THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW, GERRY! GET TO COVER!

[ducking under desk]

put it in the freezer and throw it all out, or just the hard drive?

i dont think this is going to work somehow

[still under desk]

Transfer the most important porn first. Then go for the amateur stuff. Next, the personal files - pictures of family, tax documents, etc.

problem is my pc is full too, no room to put anything on

I only have an 80g hard drive, and it's only 25% full. Just what are all you people sav....


Um....never mind.

Gerry has every piece of comic book artwork ever created scanned and saved on his hard drives.

not to mention family pictures and home movies, pictures of my grandad that are irreplacable,sigh hope this freezer thing works

Even Richie Rich?

Gerry, worst case scenario, you may have to take it somewhere to see if they can restore the drive, or transfer the data onto DVD.

Hmmmm.... I'd have thought that the worst-case scenario would be him losing everything....

... but maybe that's just me...

If the data on the drive is REALLY vital to you, there are data recovery companies who will ATTEMPT to extract data from a dead drive. A mechanical failure doesn't mean that the platters have been erased. The last time I checked, it was a VERY costly process and, making matters worse, the companies can never guarante that they can get any data from the drive.

I sued to work with a guy who would replace the controller board on a bad hard drive (which is not something many techs will even try to do) and he occasionally had luck reviving a drive for long enough to get the data off of it.

Sure. Focus on the bad...

The worst case scenario is that Gerry could be electrocuted while trying to freeze the hard drive.