Windows 7: Ext HD power surge, CPU can't find it please help to backup data!

Hi all of those willing to help a Gen X non CPU literate chap in need ,
I lent my ext HD to my brother and he told me that he had a power surge. I plugged my ext HD into my CPU and now it doesn't show up in drives list or anywhere that I have tried to locate it. I tried in device manager under scan for hardware changes for disk drives but I have had no such luck. I tried putting it in a zip lock bag in the freezer for a few hours and then plugged it back in but I have no budump sound and no hardware is found! I downloaded Migo Digital rescue 4 premium and the advertisement stated that i should be able to recognise an unrecognisable HD but it cannot unfortunately! please help. I have over 1.2 TB of data on a WD external 2TB HD that i need to recover. I am running windows 7 on a GE620 MSI laptop and the power surge happened on a Dell inspiron old school pentium 2.

Hi mattyj000 and welcome to Windows 7 Forums

It is possible that the power surge has blown the power adapter for the external HD. Without connecting it to your computer, does the drive spin up when the power is applied? If not, then it might be possible to source a replacement power adapter or to simply remove the drive from the enclosure and place it in a new one.

External drives have two components: 1) the hard drive itself and 2) the external controller.

You need to isolate which component is defective but that means taking the drive out of the external case and inserting it as a second internal drive into a system. If the external drive is still under warranty, this will VOID the warranty!

If you want to continue, remove the drive from the external case, install the drive into another system as a second drive then check if the system BIOS finds the drive. If it finds it you have a fighting chance to recover your files - in fact, the drive is likely 100% good. If the BIOS doesn't see it, the drive is likely to be toast (not usable).

If you have never set up drives in a computer, have an experienced person do this. If the drive is dead, you might recover the data but it will be expensive.

Regards,
GEWB

Thankyou for the prompt reply and the warm welcome to the site.

I did what both of you said. My BIOS wont recognise the drive. It spins for about 2 minutes then it stops dead and I can't hear it spin anymore, also the sounds it makes are pretty clunky.
Do you know of any good programs or equipment I could buy to recover the drive? probably might cost me more than getting a pro to back it up.

Thanks for your help. Much appreciated :-)

I don't think any software will help - sounds like a hardware problem. Any recovery attempts would likely mean replacing a) the controller board with a board from an identical unit and/or b) the drive motor. As the BIOS doesn't see the drive, I would start with the controller.

As you can see, this will not be easy nor inexpensive.

Good luck.

Regards,
GEWB