I have a laptop hard drive Toshiba HDD2H21 which came from a laptop where the motherboard failed. it seems to spin and when using recover software it shows drive but is very very slow in scanning and will cause most software to not respond. someone said it could be the board? or is it just corrupt? need some advise please.

I suggest you stop powering the drive and seek the assistance of forum member pcimage

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

No it is something internal especially if you see bad / slow blocks in rows.
(I have a feeling it has been shocked but it's an option.)

DIY way : clone it with free stuff or with something, as fast as you can . It can die in your hands without further advice (drive becomes unresponsive and after power off and on it is stone bricked).

Professional way : you probably don't want to consider it so I don't ever talk about it.

In any case it is not the PCB. The possibility is 5% or less.

Like on TV right now... "And now some words from our sponsor"

its been working via a usb hub for a while to recover data will talke maybe 5 6 weeks according to the software

Connect the drive directly to the port in the desktop .Then do disk imaging to another working drive. Now you can try running recovery programs to recover files from the imaged drive.

Try not to use USB for recovery or imaging procedures.
Do not try to run recovery programs on failing drives.

Search this forum for imaging utilities, and practice on some other drives to become familiar with the process, before you attempt to image the faulty drive.

DIY has risks involved, so if data is really important, seek DR help, in your case it shoudnt cost much.

ok i attempted your idea but when i attempt to boot pc with disk drive in it wont boot, when i try and use program via usb it crashes now im stuck

DIY comes with its risks, so be wise.
If your data is very important and the drive has faults, always take pro help, DIY can degrade the faulty drive further.

Dont boot you pc to check the drive.
If you want to clone the dirve, connect the faulty drive and another working empty drive of same(or larger) capacity and boot through CD and do the imaging/cloning.
Reverse Cloning, handling bad sectors are some options that you may have to control.

But Professional tools will handle this better and should get your data safely. So if you dont want to risk your data, take pro help.

sorry for sounding stupid but what software do i use? do you mean use the windows CD? or a imaging software can you suggest some please

All the professionals don't use software....

thats fine but what can i use

Don't know what to suggest. To me all these softwares are potential drive killers, but it's me. I would use anything but only AFTER the disk is known to be working properly, there is no media damage and heads are put in condition at least to work decently.

If you are in any case prepared to loose data you can use everything you want in the LINUX area. Surf the internet or this forum.
Be aware that playing with Toshiba, Fujitsu and some other drives in unstable conditions will make them sooner or later become unresponsive at all during the "clone" and then only our complex HW tools can do something. Your data = your choice.

ok can you suggest something on Linux? please

ddrescue,
you can clone in reverse, skip bad sectors, but you better practice on another drive and get used to it.

But if your data is very important ......