Hi guys, I'm quite a newbie to HDD-repair and googling for information brought me to your site.

So ... a few days ago my WD MyBook external HDD (500GB, NTFS) began acting strange, not being recognized by Windows anymore. After turning it off and on a few times it began to make those evil squealing noises ... When i turned it on, the motor began spinning, it squealed for ~20secs and the motor stopped spinning again ... Windows does recognize the USB-chipset, but doesn't map a driveletter, etc ... It was only 8 months old and suffered a headcrash, as far as I could judge it (correct me if I'm wrong). Since that diagnosis, I haven't turned it on, to prevent further damage.

I know the chances of bricking the whole HDD are extremely high, but the data on that disc is quite precious to me (e.g. 3k-4k holiday pics, etc) so what are the chances to get that data myself off the drive again, without sending the drive to some expensive data-recovery-company? How would you / could I do it?

greetings from Luxembourg,
Snowlord

Repair solution could be here:
solution-for-clicking-barracuda-t11414.html

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www.datarecoveryne.com

Yeah right ...

Minimal. Sounds like physical damage.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Sound like the gerbil got loose...

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

A pro can diagnose properly and there are minimal / low chances - these drives are difficult to service. Price is high - 2000$ / Eur to 4000 range.