Urgent!! Help needed to recover lost data

Any tips or hints on attempting recovery by putting drive from its enclosure into laptop would be much appreciated!

gregrocker said:

Well it should have the same connection that will plug a 2.5" laptop HD cable, I believe.

So it only needs to be carefully removed, and put into the laptop's HD bay exactly replacing the existing HD.

Apparently a 4 pin power connector used in external is not needed in laptop: External enclosure compatibility to laptop HD - Hard-Disks - Storage

thanks for that:)

^^Edited above post with Acer HD replacement diagram links^^

This is an update on my attempts to recover data from my external HDD.
The casing has been opened and there are no signs of any damage inside. A whirring and sort of scratching noise is heard from the drive on start up - if that has any significance. When plugged into the Laptop with USB lead - still nothing is recognised.
The manufacturer’s say they don’t do data recovery and have not really been very helpful at all (Fujitsu/Toshiba) so I may well have to pay someone for this service. Of course the reality is that it would appear I need hardware recovery before I can do anymore about data recovery.

I did actually back up a considerable amount of the data onto the D drives of my two laptops but I keep remembering files that I didn’t get round to backing up!
Two files which I am devastated to have lost are recordings done, using the Chrystal eye webcam on the laptop in September, of conversations with relatives. One of these relatives has since passed away, and so this has really upset me.
I don’t know if the original files still exist somewhere in my laptop as I had restored the Acer back to factory settings just prior to clean installation of Windows 7, but, with the help of data recovery software, I am attempting to find them. It is difficult though since it has such a large hard drive and I am not really sure where to look.
(Any suggestions?)
The moral of the story is of course:-

Always keep your work fully backed up - you just don’t know what’s around the corner!


SUSAN

I don't think this is a matter of lost data I think it is just a matter of Windows not seeing the drive. Connect the external drive to another computer and see if your data is still on the drive.

If it is see the instructions below:

There may be a simple fix for this plug your external drive in and once Windows recognizes that it is connected Right click on My Computer.
Then click Manage.
Thsn Disk Management.
It might take a minute to show all of the drives that are attached to your computer USB, SATA, IDE, Optical, etc.
If you see it there it may have the same drive letter as something else right click on the 500GB drive.
aThen click on Change drive letter and change it to something that you don't have all ready lik "Z" for instance.
Then click OK and close out of Computer management and My computer. Reopen My computer and see if the drive shows up with all of your data again.

If none of that worked and you verified that the files are still on the external drive reinstall windows on your machine without the any extra drives connected to it, external or card readers just the hard drive and optical DVD, CD roms.

gregrocker said:

Susan you say 'when plugged into laptop with USB lead" still not recognized, how about plugging into the laptop using the connector in the hard drive bay?

The problem seems to be the drive is not recognized via USB controllers. The HD has different controllers and a much more direct connection.

If external HD cannot be placed into HD bay, then there is an adapter cable that can plug it into the motherboard of any computer, which I would bet most repair shops have - ready to plug from their test machine into your external's HD>

Thanks I'll try that!

SomeITGuy said:

I don't think this is a matter of lost data I think it is just a matter of Windows not seeing the drive. Connect the external drive to another computer and see if your data is still on the drive.

If it is see the instructions below:

There may be a simple fix for this plug your external drive in and once Windows recognizes that it is connected Right click on My Computer.
Then click Manage.
Thsn Disk Management.
It might take a minute to show all of the drives that are attached to your computer USB, SATA, IDE, Optical, etc.
If you see it there it may have the same drive letter as something else right click on the 500GB drive.
aThen click on Change drive letter and change it to something that you don't have all ready lik "Z" for instance.
Then click OK and close out of Computer management and My computer. Reopen My computer and see if the drive shows up with all of your data again.

If none of that worked and you verified that the files are still on the external drive reinstall windows on your machine without the any extra drives connected to it, external or card readers just the hard drive and optical DVD, CD roms.

Thanks for reply. unfortunately the external drive does not show on three other computers we have tried - with Vista, XP or Windows 7. I tried your suggestion of
disk management but it is not showing there either. Device Manager shows it as unknown device.