Question : Problem: external hard drive wont load

External hard drive will not load. Error message about I/O error. Tried on both a XP and vista system. I got a couple different data recovery programs and they could read it either. I REALLY REALLY need the info off this drive. can i get a boot disk or anything to get the info off? at one point the vista system siad i needed to format the drive. i dont want to do that becasue i'll lose my files...right?

Answer : Problem: external hard drive wont load

First remove the disk from the external case and connect it as a 2nd drive internally to your PC. If the disk can be seen in the BIOS, boot up and run getdataback. Let it scan your disk, and if it finds the files you are looking for, register it so you can copy your data off.

http://runtime.org

You can also try running hddreg before getdataback, it'll try to repair bad sectors on the disk, but it can take very long to finish, and sometimes you need to run it more than once.

http://www.dposoft.net/

If the BIOS can't see the disk, then I'm afraid you are left with a recovery agency like gillware. You only pay for the recovery if they are successful, but usually they are!

http://www.gillware.com/