I bought a 250GB Buffalo external hard drive three years ago and it just died. The model number: HD-H25OU2 Here is a picture:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Buffalo_HD-H250U2.jpg/449px-Buffalo_HD-H250U2.jpg
When I plug in my Buffalo HD the power supply works as well as the fan, but the hard drive inside is broken apparently (although a computer detects that it has been plugged into vie the usb, the data does not initialize and no icon appears on the desktop. Furthermore the data on the disk drive can't be accessed in any other round about way that I've tried). I took it to a store here in town to have it checked and they switched cases and tried getting it to load and it didn't work, thereby confirming the fact the problem is the disk itself). I am using a Mac, but have tried loading the hard drive on three other windows computers as well, all with the same result (its turns on but the hard drive does not initialize, therefore no icon appears and the data cannot be accessed).
Although I am no expert, my plan is to take the hard drive out of the buffalo, then take the data out of the dead hard drive (the chip itself?) and put it inside another hard drive, put that hard drive in another case then reconnect it to the computer.
But I was just told from a Buffalo staff that " the data recovery of this does not depend on the buffalo, just the drive, if you can get the hard drive hooked from ide to usb, you'll be able to mount it with no problems. I would recommend this, it works for me flawlessly. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812156101
From what you can gather from my the details of my post, combined with your experience in this field, would the above ide to usb device still help me out in this situation? If I took out the hard drive from the buffalo and connected it to the device even though the problem seems to be with the hard drive itself, would I be able to retrieve the data? If not, is the other way I mentioned about buying another model of the same hard drive and moving the data to it, feasible?
The data on this broken drive is extremely valuable.
I appreciate anyone's comment/thoughts/or insights on this.
Thank you and sincerely,
Jamie.
Hi Jamie,
Just wondering if the computer shop you brought the Buffalo drive to, did they remove the har drive from the Buffalo casing and connect the harddrive directly to the ide port on a computer. Meaning to use the harddrive as a local drive.
What you need to do basically is to do a direct connection by IDE. If it can be detected then good, chances of recovery is high but if the bios on the computer cannot see the drive, then you definitely need to send it to a professional data recovery centre.