Can the disc of a external harddrive be change to get your data recovery back

Install ReclaiMe file recovery from www.reclaime.com in your computer connect the hard drive and you will see the disc the way it was before. With a few clicks you will recover your files.

Toast I'm afraid by the sounds of it. Your only hope is a data recovery expert if you really need the data, but they are not cheap

It's likely your external drive developed a fault. You could try data recovery software yourself. But the quickest and easiest way I can suggest to recovery your files is an online data recovery service like http://FreeDataRecovery.us

They offer both remote data recovery and do-it-yourself data recovery advice.

1. Try to use a different USB Cable and test. 2. Open the external harddrive and replace the disk with a spare one or working one. Then test if it connects. a. If it does not connect then the problem is the electronic board of the external harddrive. Buy a Harddrive enclosure so as you could still use and retrieve your valuable data. Or slave the drive on your desktop computer and see if its connect. b. If it connects then you have a faulty harddrive. I hope you have a backup of what you have there.

Your harddrive is bad, the motor bearing that spins your cylinder heads is damaged, even though the harddrive hasn't been dropped, or removed, this is a result of faulty and cheap product. Theres nothing you can do to replace the motor bearing, you will need to just get a new harddrive and install into the external hd enclosure or get a new external drive. If you decide you want to recover your files, you will need to take this harddrive out and maybe take it to bestbuy/ office depot where they will have to send your harddrive out to a data recovery center. They might be able to recover some data, or all, or none. It is a pricey move to take this step.

> the HDD makes a clicking sound.

That's a very bad sign. :-(

> find a way to rescue the [files]

Search online for a professional "data recovery service". For a significant fee,
they can repair your disk-drive, just long-enough to copy your files onto a brand-new disk-drive.

looks like a drive letter conflict, go into disc management.. right click my computer (computer in vista or 7) / manage / disc management. righr click on your drive and choose change drive letter and paths

Loud clicking means the drive is on the verge of complete failure. It might be possible for a data recovery expert to retrieve your data but you should not plug it in at all until they attempt data recovery. Running the drive will only speed up it's failure and it should only be run to do the data recovery. Some techs (like myself) can do software data recovery until the drive stops spinning, usually for $200 to $300. After that, it will have to go to a clean room which can run from $500 to $2500 to retrieve data depending on the amount of data and the procedure used to access the data on the dead drive.

Well, in your case your external may corrupt. The solution is format the drive and then try some so-called data recovery software. After finishing the format option. Do it as follows.

Connect your hard drive to your personal computer. And install this software Wondershare Data Recovery on the computer in order to perform data recovery. Get the program from its site.
data recovery (for Windows OS)
Mac data recovery (for Mac OS X)

Good luck. I hope that my reply has shed some light on the problem!