Classic British Flight Sim

Having had an enforced break from ‘Simming’ over the past few months due to other commitments I got the urge to have a dabble at FSX over the festive season, connected the joystick, booted up the PC and went to start FSX but had a bit of a let-down. I have FSX installed on an external drive (Freecom 250GB unit) which has given no performance issues at all.
However, on this day the icon for FSX was not as it normally looked, then I noticed that the Freecom unit light was not illuminated and yes you guessed it…it had died. This unit was well out of warranty so nothing to lose, I took the unit apart I could hear the HD spool up when turned on but no output at the USB end so it seemed that was that. This was quickly followed by big depression and the thought of getting a new installation of FSX with all the Horizon GenX scenery (3 parts) and UK Airports for Southern England back onto another HD was a tad annoying to say the least.

Then I had a brainwave… trawled the Net and found this little gadget from Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001A5SK56 so I sent off for it a few days ago and it arrived this morning. Nothing to lose so took out the HD from the now dismantled Freecom unit and connected it up with all the leads supplied and Bingo! All works a dream. This little unit is brilliant! Off to the loft where I had another HD in a caddy which had ‘died’ 4 years ago and saw that this one had a different connection being a SATA connection but no problem as this unit is able to do it. Plugged this one in and that works too…!

So, do not despair if you have a situation like I did then do try one of these little saviours, it works on IDE and SATA 3.5 or 2.5 so is very versatile and useful to pull off information and files from any HD, providing the HD is not dead itself obviously. Often a PC will ‘die’ for any number of reasons as we know but the HD is salvageable and this is an easy way to rescue your data..one happy Bunny (or Bear)

Regards

Bridon Bear

Thanks for sharing!
Pity you didn't post this earlier. Some years back, I had a HD fail, and it was consigned to a damp and dusty shed for years. One day I hooked it into a second hand computer and it ran like new! I copied everything onto a new disc and expanded on the earlier work.
That in turn died, so I tried to transplant the actual disc [containing all my home made aircraft gauges and reference photos] to another housing, but the reading heads were apparently incompatible. I'm not sure that I could identify which bits were originally together.
Anyway, that's great news that it worked for you Mr Bear, I'm off to check out the price!

My work is all digital imaging, so I am entirely reliant on a collection of hard drives. Over a number of years, many different makes, brands, sizes of drive, I find that a unit that is spun-up every day doesn't last much longer than 5 years. Therefore to avoid the agony of a failure, I mark every drive when I buy it and replace it after four years. It might sound OTT, but drives are so cheap (or were before the Taiwan floods) that it's affordable.