Recovering Files from a fried computer

[Underwood]

One of my friends lost their computer in an electrical storm but they had some pictures on their hard drive that they wanted to try to recover. What is the best way to go about trying to recover any of the data on the hard drive. I've already taken the hard drive out of the case and everything I was going to hook it up to my PC, but I figured there's probably a program out there that is designed for this kind of stuff....

Anyone have any experience with this?

 

[Alo Flito]

Well there are a couple of ways of doing this, but the way you are planning is the fastest and easiest way to do it, if what you are taking out are only pictures and documents.

 

[Cheetah8799]

ya, do it like you are planning and it should go fine. Assuming the hard drive isn't fried as well...

 

[Jeff7]

The platters are probably fine, as well as the data on them. The supporting systems though may be dead - the control circuit board and the motors that move the platters and the R/W heads.
Software solutions are only for cases of data corruption or loss from accidental formats, viruses, or maybe faulty IDE controllers - all are errors concerning the placement of bits on the platters. Software won't solve any physical damage.
So try the drive in another system - if you can see the drive, good. If it won't show up at all, then your data may be trapped in it, unless you take it to a data recovery center.