A friend gave me an external that he claims fell over from a side standing position and suddenly it stopped working.

I checked it out and found the following:
All internal connections were secure.
Windows recognized the device and installed drivers and even though it showed up in the device manager it did not show up in my computer or disk management.
I ran through test disk to try to recover files. Test disk recognized the drive but didn't find a partition.
I ran partition magic to fix/create (which also recognized the drive) but was unable to create a partition, giving me some error that I need to run the OS installed error checker. (but I cannot because it won't show up in the OS)

At this point I am assuming some internal component ie platter, heads, etc. is probably broken. Is there any chance of fixing or recovering any files from it? Maybe I can try something else?

It would be a shame to junk it because its a 2TB drive.

BTW: it's all mp3 files so nothing here that's life or death and not going to spend $$$$$ to recover. Just looking for a home/cheap solution (if there is one).

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try pulling the drive out of the case and connecting strait to mobo,what model?

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Can you hear a ticking coming from the drive or can you hear it spinning up?

It might be worth having a look here... http://www.wikihow.com/Recover-a-Dead-Hard-Disk

Also, most hard disks have long warranty periods you can probably get it replaced

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It's a generic brand hard drive (no real labels or markings for me to tell what kind it might be). I think it came from costco (Was only about $200 or less I think). Warrenty/return is the last step here. He wanted to recover any of the music possible first before doing that.

Unfortunately I don't have a spare sata cable to connect it directly.


Only a electronic powering up noise coming from it. No real spinning.

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Maybe the FAT table was corrupted? Like Danimal said the best thing to do is going to be a direct connection - if you're going through a USB connection as I expect you are then it's going to recognise the device simply because of the USB connection rather than because the drive is connecting.

Don't quote me though, I'm usually wrong

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Do as has been already said try it direct if it works and you don't want to return it buy another external hard drive case they are really cheap anyway.

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