Nemaniarjun

What one new invention would you say be the next step in improving WWW?

My external HDD was not working. Someone suggested that I access it from a Linux running machine. It worked for some hours then stopped again. Later on I tried recovering data using testdisk by CG security (http://www.cgsecurity.org/) It didn't work in windows but I was able to recover using testdisk for linux. I am confused why all this happened? Why did it work in Linux? It was just hit and trial which luckily worked!! Can you like give us a step by step approach to trying to recover stuff from external drives? EDIT: My HDD initially fell from my hand and the casing fell open)