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I have an external hard drive with stuff on it that I need. When I plug it in the computer recognizes it, but I can’t open it up. It shows up in device manager. I tried different USB cords and that didn’t work. What are my options to get the data off? Is there software I can get? Or should I sent it in somewhere?

If so, where should I send it?

5 Spice ups
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Showing up in device manager just confirms that the controller is communicating with the computer, but is it showing up in disk management? That will give you a better idea of Windows is even detecting a volume to mount. If the volume has corruption, there are tools that can try to address that, but if it’s a physical problem with the enclosure, there’s no fix other than attempting to rip out the drive and circumventing it with a dongle to the computer.

2 Spice ups
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Pull the hard drive out of whatever external bay it’s in and either plug it directly into your computer or into a USB dock. See if it works through either of those. If not, boot into a bootable version of Linux and try. Apart from that, send it somewhere.

2 Spice ups
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How much is the data worth to you? Its very pricey to do hdd data recovery. Try Kroll Ontrack EasyRecovery, then if it does not work, then send the drive to http://www.krollontrack.com/

1 Spice up
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I’ve used Kroll for 25 years or so. They will recover your data, period. Keep in mind, the more you jack with it the more likely you may lose some of it.

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There are places you can send it such as Drive Savers

Gillware

Kroll Ontrack

http://www.krollontrack.com/data-recovery/data-recovery-services/hard-drive-recovery/

Just bear in mind it’s not going to be cheap. Anywhere from hundreds to over a thousand dollars depending on the size.

If you google

hard drive data recovery

You will find a wealth of info about this.

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Hey,

There are multiple types of software you can try. A lot of times, if there is a complex issue going on, software might not get the job done. If software doesn’t work or you would rather send it in, we can help. We offer free evaluations and pricing quotes. (Meaning you can find out exactly what the problem is and how much a full recovery would cost without committing to anything.) We’ll work with you regarding how the recovery is done, and we offer expedited/emergency service if you need your data back quick. You can give us a call, contact me here on Spiceworks, or look at our services and request help via our website .

Also, if you can give a little more information about what’s happening with your external hard drive, I might be able to help you further from here. :slight_smile:

1 Spice up
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It is not always possible to recover data.

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Never rely on external drive alone for your data needs, is what I always tell my friends. Always have the data in two or more places.

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Can you tell us anything about this drive? What model/manufacturer? Did you hear any unusual sounds? (If so I suggest to not try anything further.) Does it sound like the drive spins up when you power it on? Did anything happen you know of that might have caused it or did it just not work one day?

This can really be a lot of different problems at this point. It could be a combination of bad sectors and firmware, or a slow responding error possibly. It’s impossible to know for sure without seeing it though.

I can also suggest to try removing the bare drive from the external enclosure as a first try, as long as it’s not making strange sounds. However some external hard drives do not allow you to easily pull out the drive and plug into a SATA port on your desktop computer. Western Digital’s portable drives come to mind (My Passport, Elements Portable). Drives like that may require switching the board with its SATA counterpart and exchanging the ROM chip.

We also offer data recovery service and are very good at what we do. We have free evaluations, and no data, no charge policy to minimize your risk. Good luck!

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What you meant by broken hard drive? Is it physically damaged? If it is then you need to visit hard drive vendor or some data recovery expert who recovers data manually.

But as you said the drive is visible in Device Manager and data is not accessible then try Kernel for Windows Data Recovery Software to recover data from the external hard drive by yourself.

Visit Windows Data Recovery Software to Recover Data from Windows 11/10/8/7 to know how to recover data from storage device having FAT and NTFS file system, check the salient features and support for recovery from storage media.

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The software won’t help you in this situation. It requires proprietary equipment, there is a high possibility that your service area may be corrupted internally located in the programming code on the platters.

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Local recovery shop (Google for that). They would most probably act as an aggregator and re-send them to a bigger factory.

Before doing that you may open the case and mount drive as internal one. You still have chances USB bridge / inside connection is flaky.

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I have an external hard drive with stuff on it that I need. When I plug it in the computer recognizes it, but I can’t open it up. It shows up in device manager. I tried different USB cords and that didn’t work. What are my options to get the data off? Is there software I can get? Or should I sent it in somewhere?

If so, where should I send it?

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@jordanashby, I’m going to go in a different route than others here, as what you’re dealing with sounds exactly like an issue I had recently with an external WD 2TB USB 3.0 drive. All your descriptions match everything that I was dealing with, and I was almost heading on the route of drive recovery services and whatnot. But as I don’t like to go to those extreme (and very expensive) routes until I exhaust everything I can try, I pulled out my handy copy of Hiren’s Boot CD and used some of the tools there to check & verify what Windows was already telling me (present and accounted for, just not accessible). For some reason I kept looking at the Partition/Boot/MBR tools section as something kept nagging me to try one last tool from there. I used the Disk Genius tool, and come to find out, the whole issue with the drive was a bad partition table (once the tool scanned my drive and started to list all my “missing” files). So lo and behold, all that was wrong was a bad partition table and not the physical hardware. Yay for me!! So using Disk Genius I went ahead and regenerated the partition table, as well as creating a backup just in case. From there I checked all files for consistency and damage, and so far there has been very little issues with the drive or the stored data since the partition table rebuild. I’d say if you haven’t tried this already, I’d give it a check and see if this might be the solution to your issue. Hope all goes well with whatever resolution you end up going with!

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I am attempting this right now. Although I’m not using I looked into the Disk Genius and found out it is now called Partition Guru. Right now I’m running a scan on the external hard drive. Then I will attempt a repair. I will post back later with my results.

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Good to hear jordanashby! Hope the fix I found for myself helps to fix the issue for you without involving the more extreme recovery measures. Will check back to see how the scan and repair process went for you. Good luck!