external hard drive mistake

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Welsh-lady

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Hi
I accidentally plugged my laptop power cable into my external hard drive
and now the laptop wont recognise the external drive.
Is there any way to retrieve any files on the external hard drive?
There are lots of my work on this drive - any help much appreciated.

Thanks
 
It sounds like you've probably broken it quite badly - as you may have fried the onboard circuitry. I think your best bet is a data recovery place, but that is going to be expensive.
 
oh dear thats a shame

try it on another pc/laptop


i hope it aint fried! :(
 
Thanks
Tried it on another laptop and a PC but neither recognised it.
So guess it may be "fried" .........

Is it possible to replace the power supply (hoping the main board and files would be Ok???)

All help / advice appreciated
 
Its very unlikely - the power supply will probably be fine, its the main board that will have the problem :(
 
Its possible that the external hard drive is fine but the power supply to it got zapped.

You could try removing the hard drive from its external case and you should find its just a plain old pata drive. Attach it to a pc as you would if it was just an extra hard drive you were installing and see if its found ok and if it is then try and read from it, if you can then grab the data off it and then test the drive to see if its got any damage at all.

An alternative to this is to buy a cheap external hard drive casing (lots of places do them) and fit the drive into the new case. These cases come with power supplies and usb conversion electronics built in and just need you to supply the hard drive.

Of course if either of these methods corrupts the boot drive in the pc you connect it to because of some querk in the drive your trying to recover I take no responsibility for your actions ;)

Always back up esential data before playing :thumb:
 
Thanks again
Will try to find someone to look at the inside and test it (hopefully on his machine).
Fingers are tightly crossed!!!
We all know - it pays to back up everything !!!
Such a simple & silly mistake to make.
 
Welsh-lady said:
Thanks again
Will try to find someone to look at the inside and test it (hopefully on his machine).
Fingers are tightly crossed!!!
We all know - it pays to back up everything !!!
Such a simple & silly mistake to make.
Click to expand...


good luck

i beleive that one can learn a lot from their mistakes!
but one should be careful not to repeat the same mistake again!
 
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