Hello recently my six yr old desktop had mother board issues. I was told it would probably be better to just purchase a new computer. I took out the drive and placed it in a generic ext. hd enclosure. When I plug it in via usb nothing was recognized. Nor in disk mgmt. When I listened carefully I heard very faint ticking like a watch. I know thats not good. What would be my next step to recover some important picture files?

If it's not spinning up then there is really nothing you can try (no recovery software will work unless the drive shows up in Windows). Faint ticking could be a firmware problem or a head or platter issue.

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$300 Data Recovery - Los Angeles Data Recovery

Ok if this is happening there is some sort of issues with your external enclosure not getting enough power on this one. Can happen have good working drives and try to read them by an external enclosure and all the HDD does is click. Can you try and attach this direct to another mother board to see if it will spin up without clicking. If it does that means power issues with your enclosure. If it does not and still click then this means you have other issues. Test this HDD on another MB first before giving up completely

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Iorana Haraharaini

Thanks for your quick responses. Actually I used a different power plug that had a longer connection (part that goes into the enclosure)and the drive opened right up. So as one of u stated, it was a power issue. Thanks again....