I have a dead external harddrive. I am talking completely dead. There are clicking noises and the casing won’t even begin to read the files. It turns on so I know the casing is ok but the harddrive won’t even try to read itself. If there is any way that anyone knows how to extract the information in this harddrive short of giving it to jack bauer over at ctu please respond this is of dire importance to me.
Jae
Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do 
Without paying thousands for a professional data retrieving service, there are two possible ways of getting your data back. They are risky and will render your drive useless afterwards. The first of the two is gently knocking the side of your drive which can unstick the read/write heads motor assembly. The second is freezing it overnight, and then very quickly hooking the drive up and retrieving as much data as possible as quickly as possible. This method will definatley render the drive useless, so do it at your own risk.
These methods sound very ‘Ghetto’ style, but can and have worked for me in the past.
[QUOTE=pelvis_3]
The second is freezing it overnight, and then very quickly hooking the drive up and retrieving as much data as possible as quickly as possible. This method will definatley render the drive useless, so do it at your own risk.
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Haha, are you serious! I must know the science behind this! Why would freezing a hard drive overnight bring it back to life?
[link=Welcome to the lair of Oli Warner - Oli Warner] Your Hard Drive Is Failing [/link]
Check it out! It will give you some more ideas for recovering data from a dead hard drive.
Well, i’m really not sure how it works but i think the platters contract, increasing the distance between the paltters and the read/write heads. Generally, this method may work, and may work well, but not all the time. If it makes clicking noises, like Jaedaddy mentioned, it’s probably best to knock the drive first.
[QUOTE=megamaced]
Haha, are you serious! I must know the science behind this! Why would freezing a hard drive overnight bring it back to life?
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if you think thats mad mega
it only work for about 10 mins, but it has to do with expantion and contraction rate of different metals
basically, if it doesn’t work freezing the drive then put it in the oven for a couple of hours on about 100