I recently had the misfortune to have my PC Crash and had to replace the prgramme this being Windows XP. I have been using an external hard drive to store my files and photographs. When I tried to open this on my PC I just have a blank screen. Yet in properties it shows the total size being 232GB and total free space being 159GB. The hard drive is a Sumvision EGEM 2.5 SATA to USB. Is it possible to retrieve the files on this drive or have they been lost for ever. Ant help would be gratefully recieved.

Hello tony15170
You can retrieve your data provided they haven't been overwritten untill now .
Download a recovery tool to do the job for you :
Free Recuva works fine : http://download.cnet.com/Recuva/3000-2242_4-10753287.html
Do not try to recover all at once but each category at a time , documents , pictures , music ...etc...
If it fails , try this one . It's not free but very efficient : Tenorshare Data Recovery. It can recover data after deeply scanning your hard drive to look for lost data due to accidental erasing , system sabotage, virus corrupted partitions,drives crash, physical damage,etc.. http://www.any-data-recovery.com/product/index.htm
If you still don't have success , you will have to go to a recovery office but let's hope not because it will cost you a lot of money .
Regards ,
fanaudi .

For data recovery,you can rely on a data recovery program to recover your data from the crashed laptop.Download this one to have a try.
http://www.asoftech.com/adr/
It can recover lost data due to drives crash, system sabotage,etc.

Don't be so worried about ur data. There are some gud data recovery software available on internet. But first of all please stop using d drive anymore to increase d chances of recovering files. Then you need rely on professional data recovery tool. Download the software from the following sites http://www.recoverdeletedfile.org and follow the steps
1. Install the software on your system.
2. Connect the external drive to that system.
3. select the drive(usually G or H for External drive) , click Start. Now the scanning process will start to search the deleted files. After a while you will then get a list of recoverable files.
4. Press Recover to perform full recovery.

There can be two issues: 1. Virus (Use AVG free) 2.. Corrupt registry ( Use reginout) I am sure it will help you.
also read below article for more help.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Computer-Randomly-Restarts!-How-to-Fix-a-Computer-That-Restarts-Randomly&id=4247551

If you could see the files before the crash then they should be intact on the external drive. Try attaching the drive to another working pc and see if you can access them. Maybe you have not installed the relevant software so you can view them. Unlikely but who knows?

Have you looked in device manager and cl"ideicked on boxes next to "Human Interface Devices" IDE ATA/ATPI controllers to see if there are any warnings or if your hard drive is recognized and/or enabled? If it is recognized and enabled maybe you could use someone elses computer to try it out. If it will work on another system you could back up your files.