recover data from a damaged external drive

Discussion in 'PC Hardware' started by Holden von Vloppen, Aug 10, 2011.

  1. Holden von Vloppen

    Holden von Vloppen MDL Junior Member

    May 16, 2010
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    #1 Holden von Vloppen, Aug 10, 2011
    I've recovered data from internal hard drives by putting them into a hard drive enclosure. Not hard at all. Now I have a friend who has dropped a Western Digital external hard drive and it no longer runs. Is it possible to take that drive out and install it into a hard drive enclosure to retrieve all the data? Or is there some other approach I should use?
     
  2. x86

    x86 MDL Addicted

    Jul 8, 2011
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    #2 x86, Aug 10, 2011
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2011
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  3. 60cent

    60cent MDL Senior Member

    May 31, 2011
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    #3 60cent, Aug 12, 2011
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2011
    Maybe this can recover your data:


    1
    Boot your computer normally with the external hard drive attached.

    2
    Download the freeware data recovery program PC Inspector and install on on your main computer drive. Do not attempt to install anything on the external drive, as it may overwrite your data.

    3
    Run PC Inspector. If you accidentally deleted files on your external hard disk, select "Recover deleted files." If you formatted your disk accidentally or a system crash damaged your data, select "Find lost data." If you cannot find the drive letter or access your drive at all, select "Find lost drive."

    4
    Select the logical or physical hard drive that contains the lost data. A logical drive means a partition or virtual drive and a physical drive means a whole hard drive. Some drives are divided in to multiple partitions.

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    Click on the green check to scan for data. Recover all data by saving on your main system drive. Depending on the health of the external hard drive, you can now reinstall the data.

    6
    Send in physically defective drives. If the drive has some sort of mechanical issue, you will not be able to do anything but send it in to a hard drive recovery service like the ones listed in Resour
     
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  4. EmmaW

    EmmaW MDL Novice

    Aug 30, 2011
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    #4 EmmaW, Aug 30, 2011
    As you said that the drive is not spinning then you can't do anything about the data until the drive is not active again. i think either visit you hardware vendor for it or go for some data recovery expert who recover data manually.
     
  5. sh00reg

    sh00reg MDL Novice

    Aug 30, 2011
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    #5 sh00reg, Aug 30, 2011
    The first thing to understand - is it possible to attach the drive to SATA, since some newer _external_ WD's don't have a SATA interface connector - they have a USB-SATA bridge soldered directly onto drive, and that makes "direct" attaching impossible.
     
  6. One Person

    One Person MDL Novice

    Nov 24, 2011
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    #6 One Person, Nov 24, 2011
    No longer runs?So it is not recognized by computer?If so, it is difficlt to recover data by yourself.You might need to bring it to a data recovery service.
    But if it can still shows up a drive letter in my computer,then you can recover your data off it with data recovery software easily.This way is the easiest and the most inexpensive way to recover your data.If you bring it to Best Buy,they will cost you $500-1000 or more.Hmm, a lot of money.By the way,for data recovery software,I used Tenorshare Data Recovery before and it worked.:smartass:Hope that helps!