[Bru2807]

smoke came from external hard drive now no power. is the data likely to be ok?

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most likely the data is okay, but whether you'll be able to access it is a different matter as it depends where specifically the smoke came from (ie from the wiring inside the external enclosure, or from the circuitry within the drive itself.

Only way to find out is to remove the drive and put it inside a different external enclosure.

[phillipcorcoran]

most likely the data is okay, but whether you'll be able to access it is a different matter as it depends where specifically the smoke came from (ie from the wiring inside the external enclosure, or from the circuitry within the drive itself.

Only way to find out is to remove the drive and put it inside a different external enclosure.

[Digerati]

most likely the data is okay

I agree because I suspect the smoke came from the enclosure and not the drive itself. That said, smoke usually means there was a short, or zero resistance to ground (Earth). Ohm's Law says, 'when resistance goes down, current goes up.' So it is likely there was high current through the associated circuits that "fried". My point is, keep your fingers crossed, and hope the drive was not damaged in the process - or the USB port too. Do not attempt to use that enclosure again. I would recommend you install that drive into another computer as a "secondary" drive - that is, NOT the boot drive, then run chkdsk /r on it to make sure it is fine.

Then, get yourself some sort of viable backup plan.