Things You'll Need:
- Hard drive enclosure
- data recovery software
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Step 1
Remove the hard drive from the computer. Place the hard drive in a hard drive enclosure and place the entire thing in the freezer overnight.
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Step 2
Remove from freezer and connect the hard drive enclosure to a working computer via the USB cable. The computer should recognize the drive, giving it a name such as "Local Disk (H:)". In Windows XP, look under My Computer/Hard Disk Drives.
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Step 3
Double click on the (H:) icon. If the drive is not physically damaged you should be able to start transferring data from the corrupted drive to your working computer. Choose the files you want to recover and copy them another working drive.
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Step 4
If the corrupted drive is unable to be accessed in this way, there are data recovery programs available. These can be pricey but may well be worth the cost to recover your lost data. My program of choice is EasyRecovery Professional.
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Step 5
If using EasyRecovery Pro, first install it on your computer. The program will search the computer and then present you with a list of all hard drives connected to the computer.
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Step 6
Select the drive that you want to recover the data from. The program will scan the drive and present you with a list of files that can be recovered.
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Step 7
Select the files that you want to recover and then select where you want to save them.
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Step 8
The software should be able to recover your data, depending of course on the lack of physical damage to your drive and also the amount of "bad sectors" of data on the corrupted drive.
