Hi An,

There is a place in Ferney-Voltaire. I forget the name but it's on rue de Gex, close to the tourist info office. They seem quite competent.

Adam

Contact member Zonker on here. He's good with these things.

And don't attempt lots things like free tools from the web!

Everytime you power it on and access the disk, even it throws an error, you potentially lose a bit more data.

After the crash, best leave it off and get the plan together, either give it to a specialist which can be very expensive or research yourself and get the right tool and do it once. Don't keep trying.

It could be a two minute job or dismantle in the lab job. Really depends what happened to it?

Many thanks!  Shall contact Zonker, and ask the shop at Ferney if necessary. Wrong cable used accidently when plugging it in:-(

Shall try to find a data recovery specialist first I think. Then the freeze..

Thanks.

Assuming that by "wrong cable" you mean the power cable, you've probably just blown the power supply and the disk itself should be OK.  You just need to either put it in a new enclosure or plug it into a desktop as a slave drive.

But I am just an amateur and I will defer to the good Mr Zonker

No need to go anywher for data recovery from your hard drive if it is spinning, just plug your external hard drive to any of the computer and use Kernel for Windows Data Recovery Software for the instant recovery of your data and files successfully. It is a smartly programmed application which supports FAT and NTFS file system and restore data within a short interval of time. To know more refer to http://www.freedatarecoverysoftware.org

If it's severely damaged, you might need to send it to a data recovery lab that uses a "white room", and it will cost you a lot.

If the damage is not to bad, you might check http://www.macworks.ch/macworks/ in Plainpalais. They managed to recover most of my data after my HD was quite badly scratched when my laptop fell while starting.

And, if it's only a power supply problem as Andy said, this guy might be helpful:

Informatika, 65, Bd Saint-Georges, 1205 Genève, 079-640.55.58, 022-329.95.19

http://tiina-gva.blogspot.ch/2010/07/la-caverne-dali-baba.html

It was the wrong power cable. The box was opened at Media Mart and they said it is the disk that is damaged but how badly they cannot say. Have written to Zonker and will try the shops in Ferney and Plainpalais next week. Sync Master: I am not very technical but will mention this method to a friend who has the disk right now.  

Many thanks to all, I will post the final results.... 

If everything fails and you can't get your data back, contact the NSA.  They probably have a copy of the contents of your hard drive.

Due to government spending cuts they have moved into the data recovery business, in order to make a little extra money.

Sorry for replying so late, I was completely away..  Have had the disk checked in many places, even different countries, but nothing was done. There is someone in Bellegarde - I may go back to him.

In the meantime, I hope you have managed to recover your data?

Now why did I not think of this myself...  only solution left, as so far nothing has been done.

Now why did I not think of this myself...  only solution left but hope they do not have a time limit, as so far nothing has been done.