I have a hard drive that broke down. It's a Western Digital My Book 500 GB Hard drive. I start the drive up. it runs. It makes a weird click sound ( a technology geek friend I have tell me the "head" on the drive isn't catching). then it dies. Then it tries to start up again, but never fully boots. The data is likely intact. But we can't get it to start up. My buddy and I actually did try loading it in as a secondary device but that didn't work. I want to transfer data to another drive without paying the earth. If I can find someone to do it for me for cheap I'll consider it. If I could do it myself, that'd be great. Please advice. Thanks so much!!!
Try freezing the hard drive. Sometimes the drive will work for a short time after its been frozen. Just put it in a airtight bag first.
Some people have swapped out the logic board from an IDENTICAL hard drive and recovered their data.
Otherwise there is little your can do yourself. The drive MUST be opened in a "clean room" by a well trained tech. They take the disk out of the drive and put it in an identical working drive. Cost - upwards of $1000.
