Please help.. USB Hard Drive .. need to recover data

[Chris2222]

I'm new to knoppix and I need some help.

My USB hard drive has been conecting to windows on and off lately after my daughter dropped it. Unfortunately now,I cannot connect it to backup my data. I snoozed and I think I lost. But if anyone can help me I would really appreciate it.

With windowsXP all it does is power up but does not get recognized. It's a 160GB comstar ultraslim fujitsu hard drive I believe(dont think the model really matters). Both green and red lights come on then just the green. It spins up, and there is a bit of clicking at the start but it seems to run all except for windows recognizing it. Not sure if it's damaged but it has worked quite a bit after it was dropped. At one point I thought it might be the connection cable as when I moved it a little bit windows would recognize it however no matter how I move the cable now in the connection it does not get recognized. I did accidentally bump the drive and windows recognized it, which makes me think there's a mechanical problem but I don't want to have to take it apart (that'll be my last option). I'll try knoppix first.

I have 60GB's of data I would love to get back.

I've only had a look at knoppix to see what it is but haven't really used it. I have the knoppix 5.1 live cd.


Coule someone PLEASE tell me how to (if possible) read the data off the drive and copy it back onto my internal drives. And will windows be able to read the copied data?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Chris2222]

Okay, might be the cable or the hard drive is almost on the fritz however I've fiddled with the cable and Windows recognized the drive so I quickly transfered all the data for backup.

Luckily and hopefully it is just the cable. But thankfully I have been able to grab all of the data.