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This is my mother's HD, she cannot access it atm

She went to Portsmouth for a week, then comes back and finds that the HD gives her the message that she needs to format the drive before she can use it.

I just popped down to pc world to see the tech guys, the dude said that for £100 they could try and recover the data but its not likely to suceed, I didn't have 100 quid on my anyway, so I said thanks and left. (I was hoping that since we purchased the HD at Pcworld less than 6months ago it would be covered for a free recovery)

In any1's experience, can the data on the drive be saved? some of it is important to my mum professionally.

this is the drive in question

ST310005EXD101-RK Seagate® External Desktop 1-TB Hard Drive | Seagate

From my experience, when the PC is not wanting to access the HD it's because it's trying to boot from that drive and doesn't see the O/S.

Is your computer not wanting to access the HD after boot? Have you tried plugging it in on a different computer? Have you checked the drivers, and maybe tried a driver reinstall/update?

Also, which O/S was the HD originally set up to be used with, and has that O/S changed?

Is your computer not wanting to access the HD after boot? Have you tried plugging it in on a different computer? Have you checked the drivers, and maybe tried a driver reinstall/update?

Also, which O/S was the HD originally set up to be used with, and has that O/S changed?

its just a backup storage device, so its only accessed after boot like a flash drive.

Tried on 3 computers, all same result

tried latest drivers

set up on vista

I had a similar external HDD, which wouldn't connect to a computer. As such, I opened the case and took the hard drive out. I then connected this hard drive to a desktop computer as a second HDD, and it worked!

The point is that it may not be the hard drive that is broken, but rather the USB component. I suggest opening up the enclosure and popping the hard drive into a desktop to see if the data is easily recovered that way.

got some money together and let the professionals handle it, they promised money back if it didnt work.

Dr2B Rudd wrote:got some money together and let the professionals handle it, they promised money back if it didnt work.

maybe it's just the MBR or the partition table that's screwed?

I take it you have already left it with the tech guys so I'll shut up (OnTrack EZRecovery ... )