Got a dead external USB drive? Drive may still be good!

So, I have this WD 2gb external USB drive that would not power up. I checked the power supply and it was fine. Decided to open it up and low and behold (I should have known this) an internal drive with a little circuit board attached for the USB/power connections.

Removed the drive from the enclosure, removed the circuit board, and installed the drive in an open bay in my PC, attached the cables, booted up, and I now have an internal 2GB drive working flawlessly. I going to assume, not always a good thing, that the circuit board went bad somehow.

As a Technician I have seen that many times. Due to probably some power surge the controller dies and cannot recognize the disk or not even switch on as in your case. Fortunately most of the times the protection circuit saves the disk from dying as well, so you can just disconnect the disk and install it inside a computer or inside a third-party USB enclosure, if you want an external disk. Cases are cheap, for 2.5" are about 10€, so it is a good idea to also recycle old notebook disks as external when one upgrades the notebook's disk with an SSD or larger disk.

2GB?

I suppose that you mean 2TB.

My first PC clone had a 1.6 GB drive - back in 1995.

(I used a 45MB external SCSI drive with a Mac back in 1985.)

bobkn said:

2GB?

I suppose that you mean 2TB.

Oops, yes, it's 2TB.

bobkn said:

2GB?

I suppose that you mean 2TB.

My first PC clone had a 1.6 GB drive - back in 1995.

(I used a 45MB external SCSI drive with a Mac back in 1985.)

All I had was a 420MB I remember doubling the 4MB of Ram for £125 = £170 today. Must have been nuts .

This is a must read. A walk down computer memory lane . I think I had a Cirrus Logic video card (didn't know they were still in business)
http://winsupersite.com/article/comm...er-1995-141723

I beat you! My first computer was an PC clone by Hyundai with 8088 10MHz CPU, 640KB RAM soldered to the motherboard (no SIMMs or DIMMs back then), 256KB VGA card (max resolution 320x200x256 or 640x400x256 or 640x480x16 or 800x600x2), two floppy drives (one 5.25" and one 3.5") and a 40MB hard disk running MS-DOS 3.3, not Windows yet. These numbers are ridiculous by today's standards but in 1991 is was a typical average computer, just like a Core-i3 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD of today!

I can go one better: Atari 400, 8k memory, cassette tape storage, and eventually 5 1/4 disk drive. Circa 1983.

If this kind of thing would work for 3.5" externals, it'd win my most awesome post of the year award.... -sigh-