We got an external hard drive which we kept all our music video and pictures on. Last week when I switched it on it whirred up, click, whirr down. Whirr up, click, whirr down. Then nothing, windows won't recognise it, recovery software won't recognise it, nothing. Any ideas how to recover it? Most of it I can get back it's just the pictures

You could always try this and let us know if it really works.

Duncan

most of the time when it does that it means it doesn't have enough power. Is it powered by usb only or with a adapter?

If powered by usb only, have you plugged something else in recently?

If with adapter, check if the adapter is still working.

Other possibility is that the electronics gave up, then you could always rip it open and put the HD in another housing.

Last but worst possibility, HD failure, no way to recover that.

If its not hard drive failure you could fit the drive into another compo and if neccesary use something like , RecoverMyFiles.

That program worked wonders for me recently .

not quite the same situation, but i've got an external HDD (usb powered, and USB 2.0) and it won't work with my laptop. the pc says something like 'power surge on usb port' or something. the hdd makes the same noises as you describe.

now, it has worked fine on your comp before, but don't rule out something wrong with the PC? have you tried on another computer yet?

Tried it on the laptop too, and unplugged from any pc, it's externally powered so that's not a problem. I'll suggest freezing it, that may be what the professionals do!

Internally it will just be a standard hard disk. Take it out and either put it in another caddy, or directly inside the PC.