External Hdd, I Need To Recover Data

External Drive (Maxtor) was connected to a win7 (home) 64 bit machine.
gave a message that a disc error detected and recommended fixing it.
The process lasted about 5 seconds, and then gave me a message "need to format disc"

Have connected to a couple of different win7 systems, they show the drive as empty and unformatted.

I want to recover the data, i once had a piece of software that would analyse the disc, and then i could choose to copy the data to a different drive before fixing the disc.

(I think that piece of software is ON the Maxtor.)
(The Maxtor was my backup drive, I had just rebuilt the win7 box and was about to copy software back onto the box)

many thanks

 

Recuva is a decent, reliable recovery program I've used successfully on several occasions. Wise Data Recovery is also a good one. But none of those recovery programs are 100% effective. If the data is gone, its gone. So then if there is any hope of recovery, it must be done by a data recovery service that may need to disassemble the drive and attempt to recover the data directly from the platters in a time consuming process using very sophisticated (read: expensive) equipment. That is why those services can be very expensive, costing $100s or even $1000s per drive.

Kudos to you for having a backup but sadly, your dilemma illustrates another reason why any backup plan must involve multiple backups. not just one. And preferably one backup is stored off-site (either in "the cloud" or at a trusted friend's or relative's house, or both).

Good luck.

 

A couple of those are familiar, I ran 4 of them, they all give the same message. They cannot identify any type of file system.
I am going to look into removing the physical drive from the caddy and see what message I get then.

It may take a couple of days to find the time, Will try to report back.
B.

 

Sometimes the caddy connections can be faulty- try in another caddy, or, dock-https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61AWJdLVlrL._AC_SR218,200_SX200_SY200_.jpg

 

And plug it into a different pair of USB ports. USB ports can go bad too.