[vdv_desantnik]

I have an external hard drive with some important files on it. We lost power yesterday while the PC was booting up. The main PC works fine, but now whenever I switch on the external hard drive it freezes the computer. Any ideas what I can do I really need the stuff from my external drive!!

[Sandeep S]

I am not sure what O/S you use. But the best way to asses if your external HDD is corrupted or not is by mounting the same on a Linux HDD. Use the 'mnt' command on Linux O/S (of course load the drivers to connect to your HDD first). You can salvage the data assuming it was based on FAT32 files system. Retrieving the data in NTFS will be little more tricky via Linux. Other than that you can hit the stores where professionals charge an hefty amount to do the same.

[drarunkrsinha]

How you connect your HDD to your PC? You can't do it through any port other than mother board & make proper settings in BIOS for this HDD than you will be able not only to Retrieve the DATA but use your HDD as your another drive. Let me tell you your problem when you connect YOUR PC finds an operating system on your corrupted HDD that is why it hangs.

[stevetayl@talk21.com]

I'm afraid it may well be bad news. A friend of mine had a similar incident and the external drive was corrupted and caused the PC to crash whenever it was turned on. He managed to retieve some data by sending the drive to a data recovery specialist but lost about 40GB of it and it was quite a pricey thing to do.

[fuser86]

virus?there is plenty of those... try the EHD in a diferent computer... if its a virus try it on a mac some EHD allow for compatibility of mac and pc