How to recover External Hard Drive data

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Leah Dowdy

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Nov 20, 2012
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Hello,
Is there any way to recover data from my WD16001032 external hard drive? I believe I may have used the wrong power cord briefly. I began smelling something like it was burning so I unplugged it. I found another power cord, and the green light comes on, but the hard drive isn't running or spinning and it isn't showing up on any of my computers when I connect it to them. Please help me! This hard drive has every picture of my daughter's life since the day she was born, and my life for the past 14 years including marriage, honeymoon, etc.
 

Hello and welcome to \Tom's Hardware Forums.

I suggest you break open or dismantle the casing and remove the hard disk then buy a USB converter to slave it directly into your PC. Hopefully, and quite likely, the burning smell came from casing components and not the circuit board of the hard disk itself but if that is damaged, identical ones are available from other disks.

It's far too soon to start mourning the loss of your data at this stage.



 
as SL stated, the first thing to do is to take the hdd out of the casing. look for where any circuit damage is located. if on the case you may be safe and you can put it in another enclosure or put it inside your pc. if on the hdd then find the same model hdd and replace the board.

if your data is not showing up but the disk works after this then see what i said here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/24565-10-recover-deleted-pictures-computer-restore
 

Nice one ssddx - my favourites freebies are Restoration 2514 and Recuva and I've had a lot of success recovering customers' data with a mixture of both. It's always adviseable to steer clear of the trial versions of pay-id-for software in my view.

 
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