Is this good for backing up data from a dead hard drive?

[sagah]

http://www.amazon.com/Anker®-Conver...iewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

I was going to get the hard drive out of my case and plug it into here and transfer the data to my new drive. Is this possible?

Or maybe ths one is better because it is a dock? http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Exter...&qid=1421364693&sr=1-1&keywords=sata+usb+dock

Or this one because it's pluggable? http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Supe...&qid=1421364693&sr=1-4&keywords=sata+usb+dock

 

[Weaselboy]

Assuming data can be read from the drive, any of those three would work. If you intend to just use this for the one time transfer, just get whichever is cheapest.

 

[tills24]

I have one similar to the second link (the dock) for work, and I like it a lot. I had just the cables (like the first link), and sometimes a drive would be so damaged that I couldn't recover data for clients. The dock is powered, so I find that it is a little more reliable if a drive is really badly damaged.

 

[dwig]

I've used a similar device ( http://www.amazon.com/SABRENT-5-25-...d_sim_e_9?ie=UTF8&refRID=05Y6TKD0HE31ZF1H2Z0X ) to recover data from a good drive that was removed from a dying notebook.

If your "dead hard drive" has died from a fault in the case's power and/or interface card then these will work. If the drive died due to a fault in it's own controller or due to a mechanical fault then they won't help at all.

 

[sagah]

It died by being dropped from a height of about 2 meters. Is there any chance?

 

[Honza1]

Depends and cannot be predicted. We had drive which was dropped (with the notebook) from less than 2m height (more like 1m). It did not boot the notebook. After mounting to external case it spin up, mounted onto the system, listed folder structure, looked OK ... and worked for a bit - and then hang.
My conclusion was, that as it fell, heads damaged part of the surface. When we were reading from the undamaged area, it was OK, when the data were in the damaged area, it hang.
After recovering (painfully... after each hang needed to be remounted onto the system) some of the most important data (not all) I gave up.
There are services, which _may_ (or may not!!!) at significant cost recover your data. Specialized software may help, but I never had to use it so do not know.

Having up-to-date backup (TimeMachine or other) is at the end much much cheaper. Even if never used, it allows you to sleep much better. However, this may be too late, I know...