Anybody have experience with any companies that do data recovery on damaged hard drives? I have a laptop hard drive that crashed that I had hundreds of racing photos and videos on that I'd like to recover if possible. I also have a portable hard drive that I'd like to recover as well. Both contain photos and videos of my Dad and us at the track, and I'd love to have those again since he passed away.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you...

I have old hard drives but my newest laptop has a SSD (solid state drive) which, as I understand it, is equivalent to a USB drive. Which is to say it doesn't have any moving parts like a conventional spinning hard drive. Of course everything has an infinite life and I don't know how they are as far as recovery. Just something for you to be aware of, if you're not already, going forward. Good Luck!

First things first. Does it spin up?. Did you try to slave it up to another machine. When turning on, can you feel it spin up. A lot a variables. Any errors on boot? Making noise? Is this an older IDE/sata drive? Or an SSD?

Acronis Disk Recovery

If you have a Best Buy close to you, their Geek Squad offers data recovery services from computers.

I had to take one to a computer repair, they froze the drive and recovered the data I needed, one shot deal they said.

quote:

Originally posted by Goob:
I had to take one to a computer repair, they froze the drive and recovered the data I needed, one shot deal they said.

I was just going to suggest that as well. Has worked for me in the past. Set it as a slave, freeze it, then quickly connect and pull what you need.

quote:

Originally posted by TD3550:
First things first. Does it spin up?. Did you try to slave it up to another machine. When turning on, can you feel it spin up. A lot a variables. Any errors on boot? Making noise? Is this an older IDE/sata drive? Or an SSD?

Sorry...I ended up getting the flu lol. The drive does spin up, but it's clicking. Assuming the arm/head is damaged. I checked out Fields Data Recovery online, and they "look" reputable. They have a facility in St Louis, so it's not too far to send it to see what they can do. I've heard of the freezing trick, but I've also heard that once that is done, all bets are off on getting anything recovered if the first attempt fails. I have no clue as to the validity of that...but I'd rather not fubar it if at all possible.

quote:

Originally posted by chasracer:
Acronis Disk Recovery

Thank you...I had already tried it, and it wouldn't read anything. I think this is actually a broken part inside the hard drive mechanism itself. I think the data is still there, it's just not readable with any of the limited tools that I have at my disposal.

IMHO, Kroll Ontrack is the best at damaged drive recovery. I've tried at least a half dozen others and Kroll Ontrack has had the best success. They are not the cheapest. A recovery from a clicking drive will end up being $1500.00 - $2500.00. It all depends how valuable the data is to you. Also, the more you mess with the drive trying to recover, the less of a chance you have at recovery.

And no offense to the Geek Squad guys, but I would *NOT* take it there. Had too many customers over the years regret it.

Jeff Jewell
Jewell Computing Solutions, LLC

Spinrite 6.0 by Gibson research

https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

Boots to a Floppy or CD then recovers any bad sectors it can. I've used this on 20 or so drives in the past. A full deep sector recovery can take up to 3 days depending in the size of the drive.