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My laptop HDD got corrupted and I replaced that with a new HDD. Now I wanna retrieve the data in the old HDD. I tried using external HDD casing and connected it my laptop cable thru USB. But it is not getting detected. Is there any way to retrieve the data from my old HDD. Please help.


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i just had a similar issue: old laptop drive that still worked, took it out and tried using a USB-to-IDE adapter to connect it to a desktop, adapter didn't work. put it back in the laptop. two days later the drive was completely dead (complete hardware failure), so it's unreadable (short of expensive professional services). i hope you have better luck. –  quack quixote May 4 '10 at 7:19
But I am not using USB-to_IDE adapter but just an USB cable having male plug both ways... –  Mayur May 4 '10 at 7:22
can you send an image of the USB cable? –  Dave M May 4 '10 at 12:36
I dont think we can photos here. Anyway it has 1 USB port at one and 2 at other end. As mike said below, I need to connect the 2 port side of the cable to my external HDD and 1 USB port of computer. The other side of the cable to any other USB port of the laptop. –  Mayur May 4 '10 at 13:32
my USB-to-IDE adapter does the same thing as your external case. (but without the case.) –  quack quixote May 5 '10 at 1:42

1 Answer 1

Sometimes USB ports on laptops don't have sufficient power to drive an external USB HDD. Try connecting it to a PC instead of the laptop or get a dual input USB power cable which plugs in to two USB ports on your laptop (data/power + power only).

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Hey I have a USb cable where there are 3 male plugs... one side one plug is there and other side 2 plugs are there. I was not sure why theu have given 2 plug at one end. Now i tried and able to see one of my Drive. But I am not seeing my 2nd drive where I had all my data. Is there any way to make that visible? –  Mayur May 4 '10 at 11:28
Thanks Mike. Now I can see both the drives after I connected my HDD as you said. But now the other drive is showing this error when try to access "G:\ is not accessible, File or directory got corrupted and unreadable". Is there any way to retrieve data from that drive? –  Mayur May 4 '10 at 13:14
Mayur, the HDD might be faulty and the file system on the HDD might be damaged. Worst case is both of these. You could try using some recovery software - some vendors provide trial versions to allow you to find out how much might be recoverable before you purchase the full version. If the HDD itself is faulty, this might not be possible and you would need do consider contacting a professional data recovery service. I would suggest you decide a dollar value for your data before you contact them - professional recovery does not come cheap. Good luck :) –  Mike Fitzpatrick May 4 '10 at 23:20
Mike, now I am trying Recover My Files software to find out whether it is possible to retrieve the data. It is taking hell lot of time. And since the memory size is big(180 GB) I am waiting it to be finished. –  Mayur May 5 '10 at 12:45

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