I have an external hardrive that just crashed how do i get the info that was inside it.?

Question

I am trying to retrieve information that was on an external hard drive that I had. A message popped up saying that windows writer delay failed (something along those lines). ANd then it froze my computer. Now when i plug the harddrive int othe USB port my computer recognizes that something was plugged in but doesnt recognize what it is. I tried all ways to open its in every way possible. To include right clicking on my computer and then clicking on Disk management. PLease help

Answer 1

Just for the heck of it, try the drive on a different computer. That will tell you if it is or isn't your computer or USB connection as the cause of the problem.

Answer 2

Screwdriver time.
Open it up and take the drive out.

If possible, try to identify the operating system the drive controller uses (windows or linux, or other). If it is windows, you should be able to plug the drive into your machine and read it.
WARN: You really need to know what you are doing.

Alternately, plug the drive into a linux pc as these will read windows and linux formatted drives.

Third possibility - get another external drive (same make an model) and swap it in. This costs money.

In case you wondered how the drive itself could be in a windows, linux or some other format.. The external drive electronics translate any differences so that it appears like any other drive to Windows (or linux for that matter).

Answer 3

Remove the drive from the USB casing and put it in the PC.
It's possibl that just the USB device part is bad.
You may need to get an adapter so that the drive will fit the cable in the PC, but you can usually get these for $5 to $35.
I always keep some handy.
Then, if the data is corrupt, you will ned a program like Ontack's Easy Recovery Pro to recover the data.