Failed Samsung External Drive - Help Needed.
 

I am asking on behalf of my sister.

She as an external hard drive with loads of baby photos on. The drive is a Samsung and I believe she disconnected it incorrectly (it was trying to load something).

Anyway now it won't connect to any laptop.

What are her options?

She tried asking a friend and he said it would need to be sent away to a specialist to be opened in a dustfree environment.

The cost was exceedingly high.

I'd pop the drive out of the external chassis and try it inside a computer before I sent it away to a recovery place.

If it doesn't work in a computer then clean room recovery is the best option. There are DIY alternatives but they can make the problem worse.

take it to a local computer repair place there software that can be run to recover data that does not require the drive to be taken apart.

... and make sure you tell them DO NOT OPEN the drive inside, ie do not break the seal. Some n00b computer shops will fuck up a slightly broken drive well beyond repair.

The drive makes noises like it is trying to connect but 10 minutes later still nothing I have tried 2 pcs and different cables.

Have you tried (when connecting the hd to a pc) going to drive management and seeing if the hd shows up?

The circit board on the harddrive may be dead.

if thats blown you could see if you can order a spare.

but always back everything to dvd. i tend to do 3 dvd copies of everything.

You need to disconnect it from external chassis and insert in a PC in empty slot. try to run data recovery software

if it works yes - if it's not working either...
she needs more serious recovery...

Did she disconnect the HDD while it was writing to disk?

When my mother died we found shoe boxes full of old photos, negatives and slides. Priceless stuff in the back of a closet.

I wonder how many times that won't happen in the digital future.

Correct - this and other programs will often recover data when Windows will not. I have used
BadCopy CD Recovery and others. One came free with a Lexar memory card I purchased and worked on a portable drive and on a thumbdrive.

Check Download.com

And, if one doesn't work, try another because they used different methods.

if nothing helps ask fro professional service for recovering data from such mediums, they will help you in most situations! but you will have to pay for it!

If its a mac, you can try http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/
or drive genius. you have about a 90 percent chance of recovery, if you are on PC, I am afraid you are most likely fucked, as PC drives do not use /bash/kernel, instead, using outdated fat/ex-fat formats.

There is a good chance this is the issue. If the drive doesn't work after installing it directly inside the comp then replacing the logic board on the drive is your next step (logically and economically). If you can't find a replacement logic board directly for the drive you can try purchasing an identical drive with all of the same exact model numbers and take the logic board off the new drive and try it on the damaged drive.

Outside of that, if the drive still doesn't work, you're probably fucked unless you want to spend an exorbitant amount of money for a data recovery firm.