How can I recover data from an old laptop HDD?

J35T3R

J35T3R

J35T3R

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Joined
12 Feb 2019
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221
Location
Sunny Ayrshire, Scotland.
Hi, I'm not a complete dunce as I've managed this with a few older (dead) laptops but my latest death is a bad one. Most of my old family pictures are on an old Lenovo laptop that has completely died. I've backed up my pictures to a point but when I've removed the old HDD and inserted it to a caddy, I'm not getting any options to view it on my new device.

The HDD is spinning, the battery and charger went first on the old Lenovo and the HDD was still performing up till then.

Is there any options that I might be missing? The old Laptiop did have a log in password, would that stop the drive from showing when I plug the caddy in? Is there a way around this?

Help!
 
Is this a USB caddy?

Sounds like a mechanical failure. You could try putting the HD in a sealed bag and putting in freezer for an hour then see if you get anything. Do this at your own risk though.

Have you tried in a different laptop if so does it show in the bios?

I find 'dead' HD's sometimes come back to life now and again for a short period so try every couple of days. Otherwise your looking at a pro data recovery service.
 
Could it be the power supply? My 2 spares work off the USB supply (Hitachi and Samsung) but this is a WD HDD. It has a 5v power feed but I don't have a supply (yet).
 
Take it you are using a caddy plugged into another laptop?

Any chance you could try it in a desktop PC?

Maybe booting from Linux can help getting the data off the HDD, if it still works.
 
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