buslink USB external hard drive not responding/recovered file formats

I'm not sure I understand:

1. Your disk broke and you sent it to a data recovery agency?
2. This agency put the recovered data onto a USB disk?
3. You can't access this USB disk on your current PC?
4. You don't know the recovered file formats?

The formats you list are standard file formats which you should be able to open as usual. Probably you originaly had a setting set on your PC tohide the extensions for known file formats, so that is probably the reason you never saw these formats before:

.mof -> a internally used microsoft format (probably without usefull data for you)
.eps -> "Encapsulated Postscript", used for small pictures by progs like adobe fotoshop etc.
.lnk -> You can forget these, they are the shortcuts on your desktop.
.asf -> used by windows media player
.xls -> excel files
.arj -> archives (another type of "Zip" format)
.anm -> DeluxPaint Animation
.toc -> maybe "table of contents" can be from different sources: http://filext.com/detaillist.php?extdetail=TOC
.cur -> cursors
.pnf -> Windows Precompiled Setup Information

Normally all you need to do is to doubleclick on such a file, and the correct application should open it up as long as that application is installed on your PC.


When you attach the USB HD to your PC, are you also connecting it to a powersupply? this is necessary (sometimes a powered USB hub can also help).
Can you see the disk in "Device Manager"?
Can you see it in "Diskmanagement"?

Maybe you only need to assign it a drive letter!

Download a copy of knoppix and boot your PC with that. If you can mount the USB drive with that there's nothing wrong with the drive.

http://knoppix.net

You could also remove the HD from the USB case and connect it to the PC internally.

i sent my computer to a computer electronic store where they installed an internal hard drive and copied the information from my crashed drive onto that drive. I have another external hard drive (was working fine) that when i tried plugging back into my computer, it was not recognized. The light on this external drive is usually green, but now it is orange. This usb external hard drive is connected to a power supply. the disk is not in device manager, or in disk management. i will try donwloading knoppix.

Another thing, when i got my computer back from the store, they told me that for some reason, they didn't know, "the cdrom drive needs to be unplugged to get the three drives to function. unknown causes that prevents a slave device to be seen on system?"

so maybe i have to disable another drive in order to get the external drive to work???

i cant open any of the file formats I mentioned above. Where/How can i download the programs to be able to open these files. (this question is pertatining to the recovered data now installed on my new internal harddrive) The original file names were in the .veg/.bak but these file extension names are nowhere to be found. is it possible to retrieve these files in the original extension format?  

To view files with .arj, you need a program like 7-zip

http://7-zip.org

for xls files you either need m$ office, and if that isn't installed, you can download openoffice, which is an office suite that is free and probably a lot better than m$ office.

http://openoffice.org

The other filetypes you listed don't look that interresting in terms of important data to me. Maybe you could install "the Gimp", a free grafical manipulating program, with that you should be able to open the eps files.

http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/

The other formats you originaly had to me are unknown!

Sometimes through the recovery your extensions might have gotten mixed up. In some cases you can find out what the file originaly was by right clicking the file and selecting "properties", This may show you some info about the file. Otherwise you'd have to try opening each file using your applications with try and error!

External drives should not in any way be dependant on how internal drives are recognized or not, because the internal recognition is handled through another interface, usually the IDE interface. Here in some cases you can't combine certain manufacturers with each other, or need to set jumpers accordingly, but normally there should be no problem with drive recognition. It could also be a motherboard or BIOS problem, a BIOS upgrade could help, but can also risk making the mainboard unusable!

i deleted and then re-installed the usb, so my computer recognizes my other hard drives. But I have another problem. Only a small portion of the files that were on my hard drive that crashed were recovered. Is there any way to recover 100% of the files in the original file names and formats? How much would the cost of such a procedure be? And i downloaded 7-zip but when i tried openeing the file is said that "this file is not a valid .arj file. But there is a lot of information inabout 7 zipped arj files. How is it possible to extract these files?

Another question, if I uninstall my internal hard drive from my computer, and then re-install it into my friends computer, will i be able to access all the information on that drive like before? Even if it says "do you want to format" on my computer? help...

 

how do i get a knoppix cd?

http://knoppix.net and you can download an image then burn the iso file to a CD.

I'll try that...