Broken LaCie Hard Drive

I have an issue with a hard drive and computer in my school's television studio. We have 4 main video editing computers and 6 hard drives that we frequently remove and move from one computer to another. Alll the hard drives are 500 gb Lacie. Yesterday one of the other students was about to plug the hard drive in and when the firewire plug was close to the port both the computer and the hard drive powered down. The computer won't turn on but I think it's a power supply issue. However, neither will the hard drive that he was trying to plug in. What could have caused this type of issue to occur. Also, is there any way that I can salvage the data off of the hard drive? Thanks

The now down system may be seeing other problems besides the supply. The constant swapping of drives around will also play a role in seeing drives quit as well. You don't bump those around only so long before read/write heads are damaged or worn.

Setting the drive up as slave to another depending on type there; ide=yes sata=no on the slaving on ide cable; or simply installed on another system will see if the drive is still readable. Otherwise you are looking at consulting a data recovery specialist or service for a good fee to see what can be recovered by them.