I own one of those early external HD where you buy a regular HDD and put in a casing (IDE to USB). Now, I plugged it in one fateful day and my PC recognised the HD but clicking on the icon brought up an error saying 'disk is unreadable'. I repeated the sequence many times while cursing under my breath and the drive just wouldn't budge.

I removed the casing because I thought the IDE/USB connector was bad and connected the HDD to the PC as a slave. The PC also recognised it but still gave the same error. checking the properties of the disk shows something like the drive hasn't been formatted.

I am quite aware deleted data can be read off a HDD but how do I retrieve data from a disk that is refusing to be read? Responses would be appreciated! Thanks in advance

download either of these:

recover my files
getdataback

u need keygens -

as long as your system sees the drive they will work

you also need a second drive o transfer your files to

if its got a clicking sound, try wrapping it in a water tight nylon bag and put in a freezer.
the aim of this is to reduce the motion of the disk which in turn reduces the temperaure of the HDD when in use.

and yes, this has worked for me. although only ones.

@oyb and omo ibo

thanks for your answers, I used both methods and had about 70% success in retreiving my files. At least thats better than nothing