External Storage Device Failure:
Essentially an external hard drive is the same as the drive you would find if you opened up your PC or Mac but self-contained within its own caddy making it easy to take from one place to another and connect to a variety of different computers. The technology and the components are fundamentally the same which makes for external HDD problems that are similar to those of an internal hard drive.
External Hard Drive Degradation:
Many external HDD owners find the notion of a portable drive an exciting and useful prospect and indeed it is. However one has to consider that because such technology is portable and can be taken from place to place then there is scope for problems occurring because of its ability to be moved. As one might damage inadvertently a USB stick so to might one damage an external HDD. And even without damaging the drive it will over time degrade just as any hard drive will, especially if it is subject to a lot of heavy duty usage. Noticeable signs that your drive is degrading include slower than normal load and write times as well as occasional drop outs which render the drive invisible to the operating system’s directory tree.
External Hard Drive Board Failure:
On every external hard drive there is a small amount of printed circuitry that carries information from the connections (jumpers etc) to the components within the drive allowing it to spin at a specific speed and also determining how often the drive spins down as well as up. This is called a printed circuit board and also contained on this board is the disk’s operating system called Firmware. A problem with this board can result in the sudden loss of storage and access to the drive itself. If you find that you cannot access your drive then you might have experienced a problem caused by faulty printed circuitry and we here at Leeds Data Recovery are well versed in such problems and can help you recover your data.
External Hard Drive & NAS Firmware Failures:
As you might have already seen on this website we have talked briefly about firmware. Firmware is the most important non physical aspect of an external hard drive and can be found either on the glass platters of the hard drive or on the PCB that connects the drive to the ribbon cable. The same firmware can be found in Network Assisted Storage, into which category external hard drives can also fall. Firmware that has been corrupted or indeed has been rendered obsolete by a newer update can cause your external HDD to malfunction or become totally unrecognisable to your operating system. If you are unsure as to how to upgrade your firmware or have done so and it has not been successful then please contact us here at Leeds Data Recovery and our experts will happily help you through what you need to do to repair the drive or recover your data for backup elsewhere.