External Hard Drive Data Recovery - Help!!

[2jzn54]

Very sour moment for me.. External HD was transferring some data when it was knocked over by someone who will remain unmentioned and took a small 2 foot fall onto the carpet..

I've seen much bigger falls, but somehow this one ended it for me :/

First few tries I could hear it start up, but no lights and the PC didn't recognize it.

Decided to take it apart and see if anything was out of place.. Seemed fine, hooked it up again and no go.. However now it would start up and start buzzing/beeping.. Tried a few times and just turned it off for good.

Any suggestions? There is probably 1.5-2TB of data on there so I'd really really hate to lose it.

Would appreciate a data recovery pro hookup here.. Having one of those long lasting dead on the inside feelings ya get when the car isn't runnin right :P

[bimmerfrk]

it can be done but it needs to be shipped to a data recovery center. They will take it apart, remove the platters mount them and pull the data.

I hope you did not touch the platters... they need to be opened in a dust free containment room. One spec of dust will fuck everything up. Don't open the drive again if you want to stand a chance to recover the data.


Cost: between 1 and 2k.

[davis449]

Originally Posted by Daily Three

Very sour moment for me.. External HD was transferring some data when it was knocked over by someone who will remain unmentioned and took a small 2 foot fall onto the carpet..

I've seen much bigger falls, but somehow this one ended it for me :/

First few tries I could hear it start up, but no lights and the PC didn't recognize it.

Decided to take it apart and see if anything was out of place.. Seemed fine, hooked it up again and no go.. However now it would start up and start buzzing/beeping.. Tried a few times and just turned it off for good.

Any suggestions? There is probably 1.5-2TB of data on there so I'd really really hate to lose it.

Would appreciate a data recovery pro hookup here.. Having one of those long lasting dead on the inside feelings ya get when the car isn't runnin right :P

Try taking it apart again (the casing around the actual HDD as you have already done) and hooking it into the computer itself (i.e. with power and SATA cable INSIDE the computer) and see if the BIOS finds it so you can be sure it's not just the external's USB electronics that are fucked. If the BIOS finds it, continue boot to OS, offload to another drive, and get rid of the external's HDD and other parts for good (never trust it again).

I hope you did not touch the platters... they need to be opened in a dust free containment room. One spec of dust will fuck everything up. Don't open the drive again if you want to stand a chance to recover the data.

I take it he wasn't stupid enough to open the actual HDD. I think he just means the outer shell casing because it's an external.

Cost: between 1 and 2k.

If you go this route, explore your options. Some places will at least evaluate for a small fee before you go spending this kind of money (which is realistic) to recover your data.

[mkl]

Originally Posted by davis449

Try taking it apart again (the casing around the actual HDD as you have already done) and hooking it into the computer itself (i.e. with power and SATA cable INSIDE the computer) and see if the BIOS finds it so you can be sure it's not just the external's USB electronics that are fucked. If the BIOS finds it, continue boot to OS, offload to another drive, and get rid of the external's HDD and other parts for good (never trust it again).

This above or if all that you have is a laptop, you may want to buy a kit like that:
http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-...65WRK7A228FCS3
to connect your bare drive to your laptop.
Once you plug in the drive, check your computer manager to see if the disk is at least recognized. Once you'll find a setup that works and your computer see the drive (not necessarily formatted), you would try recovery software. I was successful with recovery software that came with my flash drive, but there are other types available:
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywi...y-software.htm

Good luck!

[davis449]

Originally Posted by mkl

This above or if all that you have is a laptop, you may want to buy a kit like that:
http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-...65WRK7A228FCS3
to connect your bare drive to your laptop.
Once you plug in the drive, check your computer manager to see if the disk is at least recognized. Once you'll find a setup that works and your computer see the drive (not necessarily formatted), you would try recovery software. I was successful with recovery software that came with my flash drive, but there are other types available:
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywi...y-software.htm

Good luck!

I thought about suggesting this, but I just figured he had a desktop. You can just me.

[Martin Jacob]

Have you lost data from external hard disk? In case your answer is yes, then employ Remo Recover software to retrieve external hard drive, hard drive, flash drive, etc.

[VTT135]

Your saviour from Australia is here.
A little education first.
When the hard drive tends to spin still when plugged in, physical components are generally ok. What happens when the hard drive falls is that a small needle that reads and weites over electric impulses imbeds data (binary
Code) 0 and 1. What generally happens when the magnetic disk in side the chassis receives a strong g force shock is the data at the start of the disk (section 1) and the end sector 4927261820382) whatever the size of the disk e.g 500gb is corrupted. This is just generally speaking. It all depends on where the needle is when it's writing or whether it's just reading and other complicated scenarios.

So if It still boots up without any detection for either O/S or bios (doesn't matter) it's probably the boot sector and/or MFT that's corrupted.

All you need is a program called GetDataBack. It doesn't read the drive as a file system format, it just reads it as a physical drive and reads all sectors. From there you can recover all the data, transfer it onto another drive or your desktop(whatever your desire). After that reformat the drive. Test reading and writing data on it. There's to much to write on here. Pm me of you needier help