External HDD Dead

Dario_92

New member
Hello people, my hard drive of 3 years has recently kicked the bucket. I was in college and once I had put my work onto it to take home for the weekend and plugged it into my pc it never worked, it does appear as a drive but it does not show me the capacity or even let me access the drive without asking me to format the drive which I don't want to do since I need the college work off it. I took it to the technicians in the college and they tried it on their computer and they told me its dead. Is there any way I can get the information from it without having to spend £350 which I was quoted from a company to get the data off it.

Thanks in advanced for any help given, Dario.
 
It's not cheap but it's cheaper than $350 tho it cost about $90, As long as Spinrite can see the drive it "should" be able to get the data off

What if I was to buy it and it cannot see the drive though ? Would I be able to get a refund or is there a trial version so to speak ?
 
With an external HDD it sometimes happens that the case allows for slightly more space than the hard drive takes up. If the drive slides around and doesn't make proper contact with the ports on the inside anymore, it could show up in your OS but not have any data visible.

I've had this before where OS X recognized the drive but said nothing was on it where a Windows laptop didn't even see it at all (had both an OS X and NTFS partition).

See if there's a way you can open up the enclosure and press the drive back onto the connectors. If that doesn't work try taking the drive out completely and just hooking it up inside your computer. It might be dodgy connectors or a cable. That's the only way to check if the drive itself is alright.

Good luck
 
In short, probably not. You'll have to stump up the cash for the recovery if you don't want to risk anything. You could try with dedicated Linux Distros that are built for data recovery but its a steep learning curve.

I'll spare the 'keep backups' talk.
 
With an external HDD it sometimes happens that the case allows for slightly more space than the hard drive takes up. If the drive slides around and doesn't make proper contact with the ports on the inside anymore, it could show up in your OS but not have any data visible.

I've had this before where OS X recognized the drive but said nothing was on it where a Windows laptop didn't even see it at all (had both an OS X and NTFS partition).

See if there's a way you can open up the enclosure and press the drive back onto the connectors. If that doesn't work try taking the drive out completely and just hooking it up inside your computer. It might be dodgy connectors or a cable. That's the only way to check if the drive itself is alright.

Good luck

Okay will try connecting it to the inside of my PC once i'm home and I'll report back :) Thanks for you help mate !!
 
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