GRM HELP: DATA RECOVERY

I have a plug in hard drive that I keep all my date on with pics and a lots of other stuff and being an idiot, not having an extra drive till now. I knocked it over on the desk last week and had a friend try to get data off it and he could not. Anyone know somewhere they can recover data/ I have seen things on tv about them getting data back from burnt computers and waterlogged ones and other pretty much trashed systems. This was pretty much my photography over the years along with videos and a bunch of other saved data that would be very hard to replace. Thanks for any help. If not, its a very nasty learning curve...very much keep a couple of harddrives as back up..they are bloody cheap i see from now on....sigh

The two reputable ones that I can name are Kroll and Drivesavers.

www.krollontrack.com

www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com

You knocked it over? That potentially could be a head crash which equals physical damage. There is a potential for permanent loss there and an expensive recovery (repairing a drive never intended to be repaired)

Hope for the best. Maybe just a loosened solder....

Western Digital makes good USB hard drives, almost 20 of them were purchased for a project I worked on, and over a couple of years none of them failed, even after falling on the floor, etc. Some of those 4tb drives that need external power can break to the point it costs $10k to recover the data just from being knocked over while sitting on a desk.

I woukd open it up and see if something has come un plugged or un soldered. After that Aircooled I unforchinitly probably corect.

What I the drive doing. Can you feel or hear the drive spinning up?

Does the freezer trick still work on modern drives?

Seagate has their own data recovery service now too.

Mike wrote: Does the freezer trick still work on modern drives?

About as well as it did on older drives, yes...which is not often. It should only be tried as a hail-mary attempt, because the process will usually put a drive on its deathbed even if it works.

For something this important I'd say open the enclosure and check for a loose connector, if nothing's obviously broken then take it to the professionals.

I agree with GameboyRMH - if the drive was knocked off the desk while it was spinning, you're looking at a head crash and it's time to get the pros in. They're not going to be cheap but it's pretty amazing what they can still pull off damaged harddrives these days.

Another vote for call in the pros because of the manner of death.

The freezer trick was never for this circumstance. I've had great luck with it, but it's only for drive end of life, when you try to power up the drive and you hear that lovely bearing noise or click of the heads not getting their limit switch. If you ever do it, be sure to have that new drive ready to go, you generally only get one chance.

Thanks guys. Going to start keeping multi hard drivers and back each up lots.

If you don't have backups then stop messing with the disk now. Everytime you run something on it you may be causing more damage. Whatever you do, do not try to run cheap data recovery programs against the original hard drive...My advice is to figure out if you "want" the data or "need" the data. If you "want" it, then you should learn the basic ways to do recovery to lessen the risk if the drive is physically going bad or to be backed up by using an image you made to then attempt doing writes that may or may not fix the problem. If you "need" the data, then almost immediately it's a candidate for professional help since this gives you knowledge of costs and turnaround times and to know if it can be successful.

+1 on opening the enclosure and making sure nothing came loose. Unless its making clicking/ticking sounds. Then you need to send it off. Its not cheap, but they can usually get the data back. Seagate is cheap, but slow. If a 2 day turn around isn't needed, I'd look into them.

I think this has happened to nearly all of my clients at some point. Then we talk about cloud backups. I know its coulda/shoulda/woulda but my house could catch fire and get destroyed by a tornado and then flooded and I still have all of those pictures, videos, and tax returns.

Cloud storage dude. Sure beats having to pay to recover a bad drive, I tried to get my parents to backup online but they wouldn't listen, 500gbs of pictures down the drain later, and they finally listened. If you have Amazon Prime you already get free unlimited photo storage.