Hardware issue?

If the drive itself is not damaged and you really do need the information on it one easy solution (easy being a relative term here) is for you to open the unit, remove the drive, and install it in your computer as a secondary drive.

When you boot up as long as the hard drive is not damaged you should be able to access it via windows explorer.

If the drive is actually what is damaged the only option you have is to contact a disaster recovery service. They will take the drive into a clean room, open it, and transfer the media to a working drive, then copy it to a new drive for you. This is a very ex$pensive process with an average cost of around $1,000.

Chances are though that simply mounting the drive on your computer will work, and that is likely your best first step.

These external drives have 2 components, the hard drive itself and the enclosure.

1. Listen to the drive as it turns on, do you hear any clicking or other abnormal sounds from the drive?

Clicking is a sign of a mechanically defective hard drive. If the data is super valuable a data recovery service can get it back, but they are very expensive. (Price depends on the level damage to the drive) Ontrack is generally considered one of the best data recovery services out there. Another is Drive Savers. I have personally met a few of the Drive Savers staff and have used them in the past.

There are a few 'home brewed' data recovery tricks from failed hard drives that are out there, but I don't recommend trying any of them if you are going to be sending the drive to one of these services. Sometimes they do work but in the end usually end up inflicting more damage to the drive making recovery more difficult.

2. If you don't hear anything, or anything abnormal the enclosure may have been damaged and your hard drive might be ok. The drive can be removed from the maxtor enclosure and put into a replacement one. The larger maxtor hard drives require the 'star' style screw drivers to bust into, I'm not sure what the portable ones need to get into. Be sure you use the right tools to take it apart to avoid damaging the hard drive.

Let me know and we'll go from here

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