How to fix click of death on External Hard Drive

Question

EmmanIsaac Author

Level 1

4 points

How to fix click of death on External Hard Drive

PLEASE PLEASE READ ALL!!!!!!

My Hard drive is a:

G-Drive slim 500GB EHD

5400RPM

not sure on warranty.

Here is the story.

It all started when I was plugging in the HD in my sisters school laptop, when all of a sudden, an error popped up saying "You need to format the drive before you can use it." It was inaccessible, What showed up was just "Local Disk" and that error popped up, So I tried to plug it in my MacBook Pro, and Finder didn't recognize it. But when I plugged it in, I got a message saying that the HD was using too much power from the notebook. I tried to make it work by putting my wrecked cable to a position that it would function, Somehow, On Disk Utility, the drive was there but my only partition was greyed out and Repair Disk failed. Several days later, I headed to my nearest Apple Store and they had a look at my Hard Drive and I was told to get a new cable, because of the power danger. (The cable is a Mini-B USB cable, search on Images to know what im talking about) and SEVERAL WEEKS LATER, I got the cable. And when i plugged in the new cable to the drive. The drive started to click and I got very very ****** off. Knowing I WILL lose ALL my data. The point is that, the same things happened, Nothing on Finder but DU was successful on detecting the drive but not the Partition. Files on the HD are my Movies (60GB), My TV Show collection (mostly SpongeBob SquarePants so 25GB?) Backups of my iPod (11GB) and Important files (100GB) It's unbelievable that my large HD is gone forever. But sometimes I think to format but i worry about my movies and SpongeBob TV episodes. I NEED EVERYTHING BACK. About 250GB (half) has been used in the drive. It's ******* stupid that my drive does this.

BTW: I can't do much because i'm 13.

please please tell me to do something.

G-Drive slim 500GB-OTHER, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5), Click of death, Hard drive

Posted on Oct 19, 2013 12:53 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 19, 2013 8:32 AM in response to EmmanIsaac

Looking at the description of this drive in the Apple Store, it appears you've joined a large group (over 50%) of users who hate the drive with a passion because it did to them what it's done to you.

As a last resort (i.e., nobody else has a better idea), you might try removing the HD very carefully from its enclosure and connecting it to your Mac using something like this. If the issue is with the electronics in the enclosure or, perhaps, the power draw, that might enable the HD to mount so you can get SpongeBob, etc. off it. If the HD mechanism itself has failed, you're probably out of luck.

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Answer 2

EmmanIsaac Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 25, 2013 1:13 AM in response to FatMac-MacPro

Hi FatMac, I tried different cords earlier and they DON'T have the click of death, they won't mount, before or after Repair Disk in Disk Utility. And should I buy a new hard drive? (if I can recover anything)

I guess the HD got the click of death from too much power. from both Mac and HD.

Do you know any of the best portable hard drives consisting of more than 300GBs? Mac+PC friendly?

Since you told me about http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/U3NVSPATA/ I don't think I could do that myself... 😟

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Answer 3

Oct 25, 2013 1:25 AM in response to EmmanIsaac

EmmanIsaac,

Do you just want a new drive that can be read by Macs and PCs? I would suggest taking a look at MacMall and shopping for, at least, a 1TB drive (they're cheap these days) and, when you get it, format it as FAT32 on a PC. Then you'll be able (with some limitations) to share the drive on both platforms.

For the limitations on using FAT32, see here.

Good luck,

Clinton

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