David Lock

When I got a new laptop the chap in the shop put the old laptop hard drive into a caddy and this has been used as a back up. But it does hold a lot of iTunes music (software being on new laptop).

But now the caddy with old drive in is playing up and I cannot access the data. When I plug the caddy in there is a light which flashes red to green every now and again and after about 30 mins the PC eventually recognises the drive but freezes if I try and access data.

I have spoken to a couple of data recovery firms but costs are astronomic and not worth the effort to possibly recover £50's worth of music.

Any tips or suggestions please?

BTW the drive makes a faint noise when plugged in.

Thanks. dl

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

Does the drive make the same noise as it always did? If the drive is dead, then your only option is a professional data recovery service where they take the drive apart.

If the drive itself is working, then you just need a different caddy and possibly some software to get the data off. I've got all the kit, but you are unfortunately at the wrong end of the country.

If you are going to do this yourself, step 1 is to connect the drive by the simplest means possible so you eliminate as many points of failure as you can. So that means hooking up the drive using an IDE connection with the correct adapter.

If you get stuck and there is nobody near, and you don't want to do it yourself you can post the drive up to me. I can drop the recovered data onto DVDs.

David Lock

Many thanks for that Luminous. May be there is some light at the end of the tunnel after all

David

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

yup, there is a good chance. All depends whats gone wrong of course.