WD800 problem when trying to make it an external HDD

Hi all

I recently bought (july) a new desktop and took the HDD out of the old one with the intention of making it into an external HDD as I have done with a few others.

The old HDD is a 3.5" WD800 80Gb IDE and the old PC ran WinXP which is still installed on the HDD along with all the other files.

I bough a caddy for the HDD but it did not work and the computer only ever recognised a ‘bridge’. I returned that caddy thinking it was a problem with it, and have since (today) received a different one, but I am getting exactly the same problem and am beginning to think that it is a problem wit the HDD itself. I cannot be certain but I do not believe that it is starting up (i cannot feel or hear any vibrations or spinning).

I have gone through the disk management but I can only see a drive that is not initialised and it doesn’t show any capacity on it either (believe this is due to the ‘bridge’), and I am unable to initialise it.

Does anyone know how I can fix this? Or is the HDD dead with no chance of recovery? I would only like to retrieve one file off it if possible as there are wedding photos on it.

Thanks

Simon

Welcome to the Community.

Have you tried directly connecting the device to the motherboard? It is possible for the hard drive to be incompatible with modern enclosures due to its age, but may work as expected when used internally.

Thanks for editing our the private info. I apologise for this.

Yes, I actually tried all three distributors in UAE. Two said the model is not produced any more and they can only give me a credit note for current value of the drive. The other vendor refused to help.

Now the case is with WD Tech Support :slight_smile:

I really hope to get a replacement drive as I dont want this to be the second time where I get affected by non production model.

Hi,

Thanks for the reply, I have not tried connecting it to the motherboard yet as the new PC has a SATA connection, I did not notice with the DVD drive has a IDE connection though so will check that next. Will get back to you soon

Thanks

Simon