If a hard drive is not working, can I still get my movies and files out of it ?

Because you plugged it into your TV, I am guessing this is an external drive that connects with a USB cable, is that correct?

If so, you can take it apart and try the bare drive without the case using a USB adapter. Something like this $13.95 one would work with about any drive you find inside:

USB to SATA/IDE 2.5in/3.5in hard drive adapter

If you don’t want to do it yourself, anyone who repairs or builds computers could do it.

I have a device like that and usually the drive spins up, but sometimes they are really dead. In that case, yes, there are places that could do the work and yes, it is very expensive.

Since it is a external USB drive in my experience the drive is normally good but the little board that goes from USB to SATA is shot.

I have one handy so here is a picture.

http://i.imgur.com/qy8LlZJ.jpg

Those little boards love to take a shit. Normally from poor venting. A HDD can get very hot.

While not 100% there is a very good chance you can get your data back if you buy something like Call_Me_Jay suggested.

I was just about to write what @johnpowell did. There’s a better than even chance that the drive is fine, and it’s the circuitry that crapped out.

At home, I have various cables and tools that let me connect to the raw hard drive, outside of the external case. But you aren’t here.

Thank you everyone for the responses…....... I am gonna try and figure this out…. I am not so techy so I will probably send it over to someone to see if they can get the movies out…. Sucks…. I had like hundreds of great movies on there!

I feel like the drive would be okay but who knows till I get it checked out

If you have more than one USB port, have you tried plugging the drive into a different one?