external hard drive stopped working

[Dinosaur]

oh my god, what have i done. i just dropped my external hard on the ground by accident and now i can't get it to show up in my computer.
i have some important files in it i am a twit i didn't back up my files.
i took it to a computer place they charged me for the diagnose, and they told me we can't do anything for you. the only tthing hey offered me is to take it to a special place where they open the whole thing in a clean room and rebuild it.
he said that they might charge you for each file they recover so we are talking about $1000.00 and up.
is there anything i can do to it? any cheap way to recover my files?

any help is appreciated

[IM708]

Nope, not unless you know how to rebuild a hard drive.

[Kale]

Hook it up and right click on My Computer then click on Manage, then under Storage click on Disk Management. Can you see the drive there at all ?

[quarry206]

ok this sounds like a far strech but you could try calling one of the local community colleges that do computer security type degrees.. alot of them have specail machines they use for training to pull things off of everything from smashed cell phones to broken hard drives...

its a shot in the dark but while i was in school we had a guy randomly call from a local bussiness and ask, and our teacher said sure and used it for training .. without going into the folders of course out of respect for the man needing help..

it is a shot in the dark, but worth a shot before paying a grand

[Dinosaur]

ok this sounds like a far strech but you could try calling one of the local community colleges that do computer security type degrees.. alot of them have specail machines they use for training to pull things off of everything from smashed cell phones to broken hard drives...

its a shot in the dark but while i was in school we had a guy randomly call from a local bussiness and ask, and our teacher said sure and used it for training .. without going into the folders of course out of respect for the man needing help..

it is a shot in the dark, but worth a shot before paying a grand

thanks for the help i think i gotta make some few calls around and see.

[Dinosaur]

Hook it up and right click on My Computer then click on Manage, then under Storage click on Disk Management. Can you see the drive there at all ?

no i don't see it!

[IamtheChitt]

This may sound a little far fetched too, but stick it in the freezer for a little while and try and start it.... A geek squad member told me this once and it worked for me.

[Dinosaur]

This may sound a little far fetched too, but stick it in the freezer for a little while and try and start it.... A geek squad member told me this once and it worked for me.

i've heard of that, it's the only thing i have done yet.

[Bryan2]

I manage a geeksquad

heres the deal if it doesnt show up in disk managment like kale said then its one of two things

The drive itself is shot which means you HAVE to send it to a specialist or two just the enclosure is bad in which case you can disasemble it and remove the internal drive and hook it up to a machine with another enclosure (usually around 50 bucks buy it at bestbuy and then return it the next day).

If the drive still spins and isnt in horrible shape then there is special software out there than may be able to retreive it for you.


Torrent a program called Easy recovery, Its made by one of the biggest data recovery specialists in the U.S.

If you do go the freezer route make sure you put it in 2 ziplock bags and push all the air out as possible. you shouldnt need more than 10 minutes anything more and you risk even further damage this method again only works if the drive itself is detected by a computer

your looking at 500-1500 bucks by the way if you have tried what I mentioned and it still doesnt work..... So is it even worth it at that point?

[T_Own]

^^ if his job has anything to do with the files then it probably is..

but the big thing is if its still spinning. if its not, or if it had a head crash (so it doesn't spin on a flat axis) then you would need some expensive recovery thing.. idk if you can even recover from a head crash because when my old old computer had one, it sounded terrible.

if it is spinning, then it might just be the enclosure like said above, or the usb (w.e port) got messed up.

[Kale]

I manage a geeksquad

heres the deal if it doesnt show up in disk managment like kale said then its one of two things

The drive itself is shot which means you HAVE to send it to a specialist or two just the enclosure is bad in which case you can disasemble it and remove the internal drive and hook it up to a machine with another enclosure (usually around 50 bucks buy it at bestbuy and then return it the next day).

If the drive still spins and isnt in horrible shape then there is special software out there than may be able to retreive it for you.


Torrent a program called Easy recovery, Its made by one of the biggest data recovery specialists in the U.S.

If you do go the freezer route make sure you put it in 2 ziplock bags and push all the air out as possible. you shouldnt need more than 10 minutes anything more and you risk even further damage this method again only works if the drive itself is detected by a computer

your looking at 500-1500 bucks by the way if you have tried what I mentioned and it still doesnt work..... So is it even worth it at that point?

Yes all good ideas. I used a thing called File Scavenger to recover one of my 750 gig external drives and it was brilliant and it was free !! But you have to be able to see the drive in Disk Manager to be able to sue it