External/HDD recovery

[rangaa94]

Hi all, first up I'm sorry if I have posted in the wrong section of the forums, I've been in a bit of a rush this morning.

So last night I backed up all my important documents, movies, music onto my portable HDD so I could reformat my drives. Upon re installation my computer won't recognise my portable HDD properly. I tried many troubleshoots for the product with no luck. This seems to be a common problem with people experiencing the same as I have, but the posts are multiple years old and the solution often isn't solved. I have tried the device in multiple computers and cables and still no luck. So now I'm going to have to try and recover, and I just wanted to know if you had any tips and tricks for this. I'd rather not have to send it off to a company that does professional recovery due to the fact that I'm low on cash. The drive still feels like its spinning and the LEDs are on. It is an older WD 1TB portable device and I use Windows 7 64bit. My PC can see the drive but not read any of the information, the others I've used this morning have not been able to. Whether or not that will change when I get home I don't know. If more information is needed feel free to ask, I'm open to suggestions.

Thank you for your time.

[Greeni]

Hy did you try du do checkdisk?

If you press "windows +r" then type in "cmd" now there shut open a windows where you must now type in "chkdsk c:" The C you must swap with the matching letter of your hard disk.

[azeotrope]

chkdisk is a bad idea if the drive is failing since it will try and correct bad blocks by writing to the drive which could just make it worse. If it is failing, you need to get the data off of it without doing anything else to the drive. ddrescue is perfect for this, but I'm not aware of any windows equivalent.