External hard drive is broken and I need to recover files

Trollburger

laura16 wrote: »

No it just comes up with the properties

Ok, in the properties can you see the size of the hard drive, how much free space / used space etc? Or does it just say '0 bytes'?

laura16_2

It says the model and it says that it is a storage device but everything else has unavalible written next to it

laura16_2

esuhl wrote: »

I'd give googler and Hammyman's suggestion a go...

It's still under warrenty though and it was expensive so I don't really want to take it apart unless I have to

Stompa

laura16 wrote: »

I've downloaded the program Stompa suggested and it is scanning with that now to find any files. But I don't think it will find them as they haven't actually been deleted.

Is the drive light flickering during the scan? The fact that it appears to be scanning would sort of imply that Recuva can 'see' the drive I'd have thought.

Trollburger

laura16 wrote: »

It says the model and it says that it is a storage device but everything else has unavalible written next to it

It sounds there may be a corruption in the MBR. There is a free program that can scan and fix MBR errors called testdisk:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f16/have-you-lost-a-hard-drive-partition-or-files-in-your-computer-194492.html

Follow the steps in the guide carefully.

If the above doesn't work there's a link at the end of the guide to some further steps to try. I used those steps last week to revive a hard drive so it's still fresh in my head, hence why I'm suggesting it as a possible solution.