[JamGirl]

OMG! My Maxtor external hard drive was accidentally bounced off the hardwood floor. It is a back-up to my 7 year old PC suffering from the whirr of death. I started to copy files from the ED to my laptop but was not even close to finishing the process when it fell. Years of music, photos etc are all on the drive. It gets even better -- the PC is dead.

The data port has broken off/pushed in and and is rattling around inside of the the casing. Power to the Maxtor appears to be working fine. What should I do now?

[Noyb]

See if you can get the Hard Drive out of the external case ..
and get an Enclosure to put it in.

Will need to know what kind of a Hard Drive it is ... ATA or SATA ..
to be able to choose a new enclosure.

Enclosures are not expensive .. Let's hope the Hard Drive survived the fall.
I hope it wasn't running when it fell.

And Welcome to the TSG forum

[crjdriver]

Good advise. Once you pull the drive, look at what type of data or cable connector is used. If it is the wide ribbon cable type, that is ide. If it is the 3/8" wide type cable, then it is sata. There are a few enclosures that support both types; I have one sitting on my desk.

[Noyb]

Putting crjdriver's words in a picture format ..

[crjdriver]

Yeah I should have done that however I am encoding a video at the same time and I keep going back to check on it.
That and I am too lazy

[JamGirl]

Thanks! I'll give it a try.

[JamGirl]

Thanks all! My Hard Drive is alive and well...and backed up on a new 1TB drive. You guys rock!