Best way to recover hard drive contents

Hello all,

I have an external mechanical hard drive (I don't know the maker or model but it should not matter) which failed a while ago. This external HDD is a 2.5'' HDD which used to be in a laptop and I put it into a case with a mini-USB port, which I use to connect to my laptop.

Recently this HDD failed. There is some stuff there that I'd like to recover. The drive has only one partition, and there is enough free space in that partition for an operating system, but there is no unpartitioned space.

I have no idea what the failure is. When connecting the drive to any USB port (I tried several different computers) the power light of the case turns on, so power is flowing. Windows does not detect the drive, and Device Manager shows no new devices if I plug the HDD in.

As far as I can see I have the following options:

1) Connect the HDD through USB and somehow find a way to access its contents. This is my preferred method, but I need help because I don't know of any program that does this. Any suggestions are appreciated.

2) Put this HDD into my laptop as a primary HDD, and boot from a CD that can check the drive for errors and either fix it or save the contents to another external drive through USB. If the drive can be fixed ideally I will reduce the size of the main partition enough to install a boot system there, to prevent future mishaps. I think this is the most realistic way, and would like suggestions for which CD-boot OS to use, and which programs to use in it.

3) Buy a modular bay caddy for my E6400, essentially a way to have a second HDD connected through SATA without removing my main HDD, and then use a disk recovery solution. Suggestions for these solutions are appreciated as well.

Sorry for the long post. Any help is much appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

 

Well I ve used testdisk which is owsome
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

 

This looks like a good piece of software. How can I setup a boot CD which contains it? Windows is preferred, but I can deal with Ubuntu or DOS as well.

EDIT -- nevermind, I found a link in the wiki. Which of the several bootable CDs would be best? Graphical interface is preferred over command line.

 

try them all. keep the one that feels best to you. they all pretty much use the same utilities under the covers so it's a matter of organization and gui preference that ONLY you can decide on.

 

I did it for an external hdd, and the command line was so easy. Well on ubuntu I ve never tried although I'm running Ubuntu laptopremix on a usb key since I ve lost 2 hDD.

 

Cloqui, which boot CD did you use?

 

Sorry if it took a lot of time, but sorry I forgot wich one I used

 

No problem. I ended up opening the case, blowing some air towards the electrical contacts and closing again. Has been working fine since then

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