Portable hard drive data recovery

[Mr Sparkle]

I have a USB portable hard drive which has failed recently (This one: http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=363928). When plugged in the light still flashes and I can hear some movement (or something going on in there).

It's still covered under warranty but I'm fairly sure from looking at the leaflet that all my data will be lost.

How easy is it to recover what was on there? Cracking open the case its evident its a SATA to USB adapter and a basic laptop hard-drive, and when I swap out the hard drive for a different one I had kicking about it functions normally.

Looking on google there are data recovery services but the price ranges are a bit ominous (between £100 and £2000) and I'm sure its something I'd be able to do myself. Has anyone had any experience with data recovery before and have any advice?

Thanks for any help

[slaughteredlamb]

At work I use Restorer2000 and so far have only lost around 10MB of data. Basically if the drive still spins up this software has, so far, been able to recover it. The only time it's not been able to recover any data was when the drive had totally failed and the only way we were going to get any data off of it would have been to send it away to a data recovery company and get them to take the platters apart at great expense.

You can download a trial version for free to see if that can recover your data before forking out any cash.

HTH

[Tony]

I used to use PC Inspector - pcinspector.de

not sure if it's still about, but it will need to access your drive to recover data - might be that you get a caddy for it and see if that works in terms of getting access.

Top tip, use an external for backup only, that way if it goes down you have a copy on your main drive or another backup device.

Good luck!

[Mr Sparkle]

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I'm going to strip it out of the case an plug it straight into my computer's motherboard and see if that get's me anywhere. If i can't get to if through there then I guess it's bye bye data

[Rosco]

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I'm going to strip it out of the case an plug it straight into my computer's motherboard and see if that get's me anywhere. If i can't get to if through there then I guess it's bye bye data

not necessarily, file recovery software might still be able to see and extract the files... it might just be a problem with the filesystem's TOC