My external hard drive with all my music on it has decided to die on me (with no help from the Evilzone…) Can anyone recommend some freeware to get it all back? Google just seems to point to loads of sites offering demos which can find all the data but I have to pay to use the full versions to save it somewhere else.

Any help would be much appreciated as I’m facing reloading a lot of CDs!

If the motor still spins the drive then a program called ‘Active file recovery for Windows’ worked for me.
HERE

Cheers for that. Like all the others I’ve found, it’s just a demo and wants me to pay for the full program to get the files back.

Any other free ideas? (or can you email me a software key?)

Try this:
PhotoRec

I defo didn’t pay for it! Try searching around for it.

I haven’t tried it but Recuva is freeware and might be worth a try.

http://www.recuva.com/

HTH

I was going to post a similar thread, mine is the same, not too fussed about all the music on it, but have a lot of baby photos of our son id rather like to keep.
Mine spins the disc, but computer doesnt recognise it when i connect though, is this fixable?
One solution i was offered tyres, is to strip it from the case and insert it into your computer as an internal, it is quite often the power supply that goes. I havent tried this though, as i only have a laptop.

Is it a seagate freedrive or similar named thing, If so it is not the drive but the glowing light causing the problem. Mine failed, open it up (youtube video) and inserted into tower case direct. HeyPresto a working Hard drive and has been for months. Some people simply open, disconnect the light and then put back together and it works fine.

Thanks all.

The light seems fine and all the demo versions can see the contents of the disk. It’s the bit of the disk that tells the pc where everything is that’s corrupted. All I need is something that can recreate that or bypass it so I can save the files somewhere else

Snaps – spent ages Googlein but can’t find a free version

JT – recuva can’t seem to see the files but thanks

Swiftacula – there’s no powersupply – it’s USB powered

Is it a seagate model with an orange vertical glowing light?

‘fraid not. Green LED that flashes red when it’s busy (still does that)

Got it from Ebay…

It might have been on a P2P file sharing network I got mine from, its only a few meg so shouldn’t take long to download.

If you can see the drive letter in Windows (but not the contents), then try right clicking on it, choose "Properties", and then Repair. It’s something like that, anyway.

Just another data point, which may not help you much – I had a LaCie drive that failed. But it turned out it was the power supply that had failed, and it worked fine with a different power supply. Bit weird, as the drive still would turn on and sounded like the disk was spinning, bur anyway, using a different power supply did the trick. Apparently this is common with LaCie.

If all else fails and you don’t want to buy recovery software email me.

andydothowley@gamaildotcom