Recovering an external drive (FYI)

[ChrisGreaves]

FYI:

About 6 months ago a west-coast friend mailed me an external drive, 250GB, with a USB connector, with the power block. She felt that the local store had plugged in their own power block and fried the drive. Could I help?

I plugged it in and sure enough ka-tick, ka-tick, ka-tick, it said to me.
I dismantled the device, finding that it was an enclosure for a regular IDE drive, so tried slapping it about a bit (I read a web page which said you could slap or drop these things to jar loose a mechanism as a last resort), but no. Nothing except ka-tick.

Six months later came yesterday, National Housecleaning Day or, in abbreviated form, National Clear Out The Stationery Closet Day.
There is the IDE drive, and here is my old skinless Big Beige Box. can't hurt to give it one more try.
Waddyaknow? It works!
I have the IDE drive plugged into an IDE cable and as I type, I am transferring the 80GB of backup data to a spare external drive.

I guess the moral is "Never Give Up", also "Wait A While and Try Again".
I know that 6 months ago Linda and I both shrugged and said "That's life!", and she has moved on to another external drive.