External Hard Drive Data Recovery
External drives live a hard life: carried in bags, knocked off desks, unplugged without warning. They are also where many people keep the only copy of their photos.
Drives we recover
- Portable drives: Seagate Backup Plus and Expansion, WD My Passport and Elements, Toshiba Canvio, LaCie Rugged
- Desktop drives: WD My Book, Seagate Backup Plus Hub, LaCie d2, G-DRIVE
- Two-drive units: WD My Book Duo, LaCie 2big, G-RAID
- Portable SSDs: Samsung T5 and T7, SanDisk Extreme, Crucial X8
Why you cannot simply swap the case
On many portable drives the USB port is part of the drive’s own board, and many also encrypt the data. Taking the drive out and connecting it another way often shows nothing.
What to do
- Try another cable and another USB port, once.
- If it clicks, beeps or was dropped, stop there.
- Do not accept an offer to format or initialize it.
- See the storage troubleshooting guide for safe checks.
By brand
Questions
My external drive was dropped and now clicks. Can it be recovered?
Often, yes, but only if it is left switched off. Each attempt to start it risks the platters.
The drive works on a TV but not my computer. Why?
Probably the format. That is not a failure, and no recovery is needed.
Book a visit or a pickup
Call us or book online and tell us the make, the model and what is going wrong. For IT support a technician comes to your home or office. For a repair we pick the computer up from your door, fix it at our own workshop in Burbank and bring it back. We have no storefront, so there is nowhere to drop a machine off. Outside our area, you can mail it to us.