Adventures with External Hard Drives

05.21.09 - I love external hard drives. They're great for on the go storage and backups and conveniently adapt to disaster recovery plans as they can be taken off site and stored at a remote location.

Last year, I purchased a Seagate FreeAgent 500 GB external hard drive from our local OfficeMax store. At first I wasn't crazy about the software ("Why do I need more software to install on my computer?" I thought), but after using it I loved the incremental backups of my work documents - website layouts and such - and personal pictures.

My external backup drive and my backup plan ran smoothly up until a few months ago when I transported my backup hard drive from my home office to work and attempted to plug in the usb connection. That's when I noticed that the USB connector had disconnected from the internal pci card. I'm very careful with my equipment and know that it was of no fault of my own that this happened and was likely a manufacturer failure. Hey, it couldn't be something I did now could it! Not one to fret, I wasn't too concerned as I had the same documents backed up on another computer.

That very afternoon, a computer tech was visiting my office and I queried him on the broken usb port issue. He informed me that the hard drive was likely fine, I just had to remove the external casing and hook the hard drive up to my computer to access the documents. Just as I thought, piece of cake, I know how to do all of that.

Well, let's say prying a Seagate FreeAgent casing open isn't child's play. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to open. In fact, it took me well over an hour to do it and that's no exaggeration. Once you get the super tiny screws undone there's a whole set of hoops you must jump through and this continues until you finally get your golden egg out of hiding.

Now that I had my "golden hard drive" accessible, I realized that it required a SATA connection and since I didn't have a SATA cable, the hard drive ended up collecting dust in my home office for almost two months... That is until I realized I needed access to a particular website layout that was only saved on the golden hard drive. How was that possible? I am so careful backing up my documents on two separate computers and external drives. I don't know how I missed this one layout (probably one of those 3 am work sessions), but I needed it right away. Of course, this was at 1 am on a Sunday night.

That's when I decided to go back to square one and considered re-soldering the usb connector back to the pci card. Buying a SATA cable was out of the question due to availability (and my immediate need of the document).

After lots of trial and error, brainstorming, (I'm not a welder and I can't solder to save my life) and of course John's attempt at using scotch tape and wood glue (we were out of super glue) to connect the broken pieces together, I decided to check out google and see if anyone else had a similar issue with the particular brand and broken pieces I had. Of course, it wasn't an isolated case and others were in the same boat as I.

At this point I had put in hours of prying open the casing, research, and just plain wasting my time on silly ideas that I was willing to try anything to get access to my documents. The best solution I found was a simple one - purchase a hard drive enclosure. As much as it pained me, I had to wait until the next day to do this due to the weekend. So, the next morning I made a trip to Radio Shack and purchased a Gigaware 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Enclosure for $40. Dropped in my hard drive and it worked like a charm.

The saddest part of the story isn't the fact that the solution only cost $40 when I probably spent 5+ hours working on this when I charge $80 per hour when I bill clients.

The saddest part is that the layout wasn't even on the hard drive.

Oh well, technology hurts and this adventure certainly did. But I have my 500 GB hard drive back so it's still a win. Thank you Radio Shack.