Retrieve data from damaged portable harddrive

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Smokey - Jan 6, 2009 at 06:38 PM
 Smokey - Jan 7, 2009 at 12:46 PM
Hello,
I have a SimpleTech portable harddrive that quit working. When my laptop or desktop are off and I connect the harddrive to either, they will not start up. If I turn them on and then plug in the harddrive, the PC nor laptop will shut down. While on, and the harddrive is connected, if I click the computer icon nothing comes up in the window, except "not responding." Is there a way to retrieve the thousands of documents on the harddrive? I have backup by Norton 360, but copies of very few of the letters, documents, and embroidery designs on the harddrive.
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1 response

xpcman Posts 19530 Registration date Wednesday October 8, 2008 Status Contributor Last seen June 15, 2019 1,825
Jan 6, 2009 at 09:53 PM
One option is to remove the hard drive from the SimpleTech case. Buy a new generic USB drive enclosure and see if the drive itself is still good. I suspect it MIGHT. A simple hard drive failure should not crash your PC. But, a failure in the USB/Hard drive interface in the SimpleTech case might. You must first determine the type of hard drive in the SimpleTech case. A SATA drive will have a small 3/4 inch cable where an PATA (IDE) drive will have a 1 1/2 wide cable/plug interface.
If your not good with PC internals you could take the drive to a computer shop and have them do the transfer of the drive to the new case or better still test the drive first to see if the case transfer will work.

Good Luck
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Thank you for your help. I will take it to the local Geek Squad and see what they can do with it. I don't know that much about the mechanics of computers to dig into something like that and mess up all my wife's work. Thanks again, and may God bless you and yours. Smokey
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