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English: A USB hard drive. This is made by Wes...
English: A USB hard drive. This is made by Western Digital and uses a mini B USB connection for both power and data transfer. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

All across the world, people from highly paid corporate professionals to stay-at-home moms rely on computers and technology to run their business, manage their finances, or just preserve memories of important events. Because of this, reliable data backup is very important, and many people have turned to using external hard drives to preserve those critical or irreplaceable files. Unfortunately, technology is not always on their side, and sometimes those electronics fail.

Fortunately, when an external hard drive fails, hope is not lost. When a computer may not normally be able to view the drive, it may still be possible to recover data from an external hard drive. In some cases, if the failure is only partial, a professional repair center can remove the drive from its enclosure and recover data normally. In more extreme cases, that may not be possible. Hard drives that suffer critical failures or perhaps have been completely reformatted accidentally can still retain imprints of old data. Some professional data recovery companies are able to use specialized tools and utilities to access this information. It’s important to note that, due to the time and effort involved, the cost of invasive data recovery could prove to be too much for the average consumer.

Despite that, many external hard drive failures or external drives with inaccessible data are often the result of other damaged components, whether it’s the drive’s USB or FireWire cable or even a separate mount which may attach to the drive. For example, some company’s external hard drives involve three or more separate components not counting any internal bits and pieces. While this could potentially increase the risk of component failure, it does make replacing or recovering data from an external hard drive much easier and affordable in the long run.

It is also possible, in some cases, to recover data from an external hard drive at home with some minor tools. If you have the bearings, a hard drive that is out of warranty can often very easily be removed from its enclosure and installed into a standard desktop computer. In these cases, if the drive’s failure has to do with a damaged component or connection, you should have full access to all of your files very easily and can either transfer them to a new drive or simply keep the second hard drive installed in your computer as backup.

However, this isn’t always the case, and most people would be far more comfortable either relying on an approved warranty shop or at the very least a trained professional to handle such a delicate matter. It’s important to research, shop around, and find the most reliable and wallet-friendly data recovery option available before you risk such important files.

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