Retrieve data from and external hard drive

I've just lost all of my back up files, photo's etc on my external hard drive. I don't know how this happened.
I know information can be retrieved from computers after you remove everything from the computer.
Is it possible to get the data back for my external hard drive? If I can how do I go about it?

There are programs that will try to recover files that have been deleted. I don't know of any free ones. There are also vendors that specialize in this service. They are quite expensive.

Before going that route, let me ask:

- Does the hard drive show up in My Computer?
- If so, does it show up as formatted?
- If so then can you see other files on that external hard drive?
- If so, then it's a possibility that your files have simply been marked as hidden.

If you need a file recovery program, try Recuva, it's free:

http://download.cnet.com/Recuva/3000-2242_4-10753287.html

Recuva is one great program.;)

Hi Torran,
Have you ever get your data back off the drive? Dose data recovery software work?