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Question

Help dropped a toshiba 593500-a 500g external hard drive

Jul 11, 2016 2:32PM PDT

Help I dropped a toshiba 593500-a 500g external travel hard drive and now when I plug in it in, the LED just turns on, the computer makes the sound when USB is plugged in, but it will not read. It sounds internally like it want to read it, kind of like a cd now reading. I have everything on this harddrive. Are my files lost? What would be the next course of action into retrieving my data? Thank you. Any information would be great.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
For a last hurrah
Jul 11, 2016 3:21PM PDT

Open the case and reseat the drive, try again. If the internal drive is a normal SATA then try it in some desktop.

But after that, it's off to recovery houses like drivesavers.com.

Last weekend I picked up a 2TB external for 85 bucks. As you know, backups are cheap, recovery is about 10 times the cost of a backup.

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Answer
Linux Live CD or a Data Recovery Company
Jul 12, 2016 5:01AM PDT

Hi @PoweredbyCandoitall!

I'm sorry to hear about what happened with the drive, mate - I know such a thing could be a very unpleasant experience... Sad

Since the drive is spinning and it's recognized in BIOS (there is the USB connected sound when you plug it in) then you can try to access and remove the data with Linux Live CD - just follow these steps:
1. Download/burn the ISO image to a CD or USB.
2. Change the boot order to the media you burned the Linux on.
3. Once it loads, you could try and mount the drive (or if Linux can read it, it will mount by itself) and see if it is recognized. In case it is - transfer the data.

If this doesn't help then you can check a data recovery company that might be able to help you out though. You can check some companies here:
http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=LiUIKC

Lastly, do have in mind that the more you use the drive and try to repair it, the worse the damage and the extraction of files may become.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

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Answer
Help dropped a toshiba 593500-a 500g external hard drive
Jul 12, 2016 10:38AM PDT

In the control panel, find "Administrative TOols" and open up "COmputer Management".

Inside this, open up "Storage" just underneath "System tools", then open up the only option "Disk Mangement".

Inside this panel, you will see all your drives, hard or soft. See if you can see that 1TB drive listed. It'll be listed as "Disk" followed by a number. THe number starts from "0", so the first hard drive is "Disk 0", and so on.

IF IT IS LISTED:

Your drive is working, but some thing is wrong with the drive partitioning or formating. You can try reformating it/repartitioning it right there in the disk management panel. Your drive may have been damaged (usually physical and thermal, and sometimes defects in the drives). If it is damaged, you may NOT be able to complete format or partition.