[Tombstone]

I've got a 120G WD external HD that has a problem, caused by me, I'm sure. I unplugged it from the USB port during the shut-down procedure of my laptop. The laptop is running Windows XP by the way. Now I cannot access my external HD. I've downloaded diagnostic software from WD but to no avail. The computer no longer "sees" the HD. Anyone have any ideas on how to recover the data on this hard drive or who I could send it to, reasonably I hope, to recover the data on it?

[Washington,D.C.]

Maybe this program will work.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

Was mentioned in this thread

http://glocktalk.com/forums/showthre...ighlight=drive


The other thing to try is take it out of the external case and install inside the PC. The corrupted USB boot sector won't matter then.

[srhoades]

Originally Posted by Washington,D.C.

Maybe this program will work.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

Was mentioned in this thread

http://glocktalk.com/forums/showthre...ighlight=drive


The other thing to try is take it out of the external case and install inside the PC. The corrupted USB boot sector won't matter then.

It may be as simple as the enclosure itself is malfunctioning. Either way I agree with the above advice.

[TrooperBrian]

Some laptops use bursts of power signals to shut down components, might have effectively cooked the drive. But if you think anything is wrong with it and the data is important to you, keep it off, and bring it to a professional.

They have clean rooms where they remove platters and recover the data...

[IndyGunFreak]

Originally Posted by Washington,D.C.

The other thing to try is take it out of the external case and install inside the PC. The corrupted USB boot sector won't matter then.

Thats what I would do first. Data recovery is not cheap, so I would toss "reasonably" out the window.. If neither of the above suggestions work, you might try booting a live CD of some form of Linux that will read an NTFS partition by default(Ubuntu, Mint, probably PCLOS), boot the live CD w/ the drive plugged in and ON, and see if it can get any data off the drive, if so, just move it off the USB drive, onto your main NTFS partition. I've actually had luck w/ this on a hard drive that was not working in Windows because the filesystem had been corrupted.

Finally external drives are cheap, get another one and keep a backup of the backup.

Good luck

IGF

[IndyGunFreak]

Originally Posted by TrooperBrian

They have clean rooms where they remove platters and recover the data...

I'd love to see a price tag for that..