Thanks to
pclab for those suggestions/questions to the OP.
xzbit wrote:I'm not very technical
No worries, I understand
- therefore perhaps your technical friend, who is working on your disk drive, could / should be answering these questions?
xzbit wrote:all I can determine is that the drive plugs in, it receives power and is recognised
Much depends on
exactly what you mean by "recognised". Do you mean that the drive letter(s) for this external drive, are seen in "My Computer"? Or do you mean that you hear the USB double-beep recognition sound, but no drive letter(s) from this external drive appear in "My Computer"? Or do you mean something else?
For example, if the drive letter(s) from this external drive correctly appear under "My Computer" then a replacement drive PCB is unlikely to help you, as that would mean Windows is able to read the partition table.
There are other checks that could be made (e.g. looking to see if the physical drive is correctly listed, with the correct capacity, in "Computer Management" even if the drive letters are not listed in "My Computer"), but let's see what you can explain to the question above first.
xzbit wrote:but you can't access any of the data on the drive.
[...]
No disc related errors from the OS.
These 2 statements appear contradictory. If you are not able to access data on the drive, then you must be getting some kind of error message when you try to do that - surely?
xzbit wrote:Not sure if it can spin-up or not (how would I determine this?)
As
pclab said, you need to listen to it, to hear whether the motor starts to spin and then spins at a constant speed. Most USB enclosures that I see will spin-up when they have input DC power
and are attached to a running PC (i.e. after USB enumeration) - in other words, at the point when you say that the drive is "recognised" (see question above), then the drive should be spinning. Does it sound like it has always sounded in the past, or does it sound different and if so, in what way?
xzbit wrote:Its in a factory WD enclosure
Depending on the exact enclosure, that might complicate some recovery options.
xzbit wrote:I don't believe the drive has been dropped or suffered any impact
[...]
Its an external drive.
[...]
The last thing I can recall doing (can't be 100% sure of the events) but it was defragmented not long before it stopped working (i.e. I couldn't access the data on the drive).
Knowing the sequence of events leading up to a problem, can be very helpful for efficient troubleshooting - however just doing defragmentation shouldn't cause any problem.
xzbit wrote:and only the supplied power cords were used.
Good - although that reduces the chances of a specific type of easy fix.
xzbit wrote:a mate of mine is looking at it for me and he said that he suspects the "chipboard" might have been fried/ or something along those lines
Is there a specific reason for that diagnosis - for example, is there an obviously burned component?
However it seems that you aren't considering anything other than sourcing a very specific drive (which you are unlikely to be successful at doing), so I'll step-back from any further participation in this thread and let you carry on.