Harddrive crash

[SharpShooter]

Hello

I recently had a 2nd western digital harddrive crash on me within a year. It was only 1 1/2 years old and I wont be buying from them again. Odviously I didnt back anything up cause im an idiot and I was receiving the message "Disk read error" on start up. There were no clicking sounds like on my previous harddrive so im suspecting the problem is not mechinical. So after taking it to a number of shops im told there is no hope for it but im wondering if theres any possibility I could access the files on it by booting it up as a slave drive. I have a computer which seems to recognise the drive in device manager but I dont know how to access the files on it. It doesnt appear on "my computer."

I know its a bit of a long shot but does anyone have any ideas of what I could do to try and access the drive. Im hoping some start up files might been be corrupted but the data is still on there.

Thanks

[glc]

So after taking it to a number of shops im told there is no hope for it but im wondering if theres any possibility I could access the files on it by booting it up as a slave drive.

If you have been advised this by more than one professional, your odds are slim to none. You need a data recovery company, and that's going to be hundreds of dollars.

[quartet-man]

I have heard of pros freezing them to access data, but have no idea about details or if the people you have talked to tried it or not.

[bucksfanjimj1]

You could give this a shot. It will only cost you some time.

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

Or you could try this

http://www.puppylinux.com/

Create a bootable cd of puppy and boot the computer with it. It does support USB, so if you are able to get anything, you can transfer everything to a flash drive.

If neither works, then you will need the data recovery services that glc spoke of.