hard drive faiiure

[stefanpankow]

took it to local computer shop, they said they couldn't get any data off it, not sure what to do now!!!!!!

[OldBoy]

Originally Posted by stefanpankow

took it to local computer shop, they said they couldn't get any data off it, not sure what to do now!!!!!!

Try one of these Data Recovery sites, they give you a quote before doing the work.

http://www.datarecoverylondon.co.uk/pricing.html

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk...er-advantages/

[cosmicma]

when you took it to the shop did they take the drive out of the external case to try to recover the data or did they try it with the drive still in the external case ?

i would suggest "you" take the drive out of external case and pop to your local maplins with drive in hand and spend 25 quid on a usb to sata/pata interface then plug it into your pc ( after pluging the interface into the drive as instructed ) and see if it will spin up

signs to look/listen or
drive not spinning at all - a chance of recovery by buying exactly the same drive and swapping the circuit board if you or somebody you know feels confident enough

drive spins up but doesn't callibrate - when a drive bursts into life it spins up to speed and the heads do a thermal callibration ( you'll hear the heads chatter then settle down ) if tthe drive cannot spin up to speed it will chatter and clunk this is a sure sign of a broken drive would be expensive to have data recovered professionaly

if the data on that drive has a value to you it's worth 25 quid to find out if it's the drive or the box it's in or even less for another external case but i would rather use the adapter so i can hear what the drive is doing

i find people ( computer shops ) can be a bit quick in saying it's broken without trying anything more than just plugging it in thats why i asked if they left the drive in the external case

[Noel1664]

I used to work for a computer components distributor and I've seen the returns on all manufactures during my time there and yeah some brands are worse than others. I don't think that one sole individual who's only owned one drive brand can say what brand is best and if one was a bad brand then they wouldn't still be in the market now! Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, IBM and Western Digital are all still in the game and yeah they have all sent out bad batches in my experience. I hear loads of mixed stories, but it all boils down to one thing "BACK IT UP!" or learn the hard way. How much is it for a 1TB external drive now? £60-£80? Surely that's worth 1 years or more in photos and other important data?

I have used Norton ghost in the past to ghost one bad drive to a good one (make sure the new drive is same size or slightly larger)

I have used getbackdata to restore individual files from a damaged hard disk in the past.

But I think unless you are to save your companies data or something really sentimental, you really need to consider if is it worth hundreds if not thousands to recover, that's if they can retrieve it also.

I think you should leave it to someone who knows what they are doing as there are so many options. For you to take written instructions from here and carry them out yourself could make things worse, not just for the drive but your other hardware. Take my advice, try another shop. cosmicma's is right also, you need to get the shop to take it out of the caddy and plug it directly into another pc or another caddy.

Best of luck, let us know the outcome
Noel

[Lurkalot]

Originally Posted by cosmicma

when you took it to the shop did they take the drive out of the external case to try to recover the data or did they try it with the drive still in the external case ?

i would suggest "you" take the drive out of external case and pop to your local maplins with drive in hand and spend 25 quid on a usb to sata/pata interface then plug it into your pc ( after pluging the interface into the drive as instructed ) and see if it will spin up

signs to look/listen or
drive not spinning at all - a chance of recovery by buying exactly the same drive and swapping the circuit board if you or somebody you know feels confident enough

drive spins up but doesn't callibrate - when a drive bursts into life it spins up to speed and the heads do a thermal callibration ( you'll hear the heads chatter then settle down ) if tthe drive cannot spin up to speed it will chatter and clunk this is a sure sign of a broken drive would be expensive to have data recovered professionaly

if the data on that drive has a value to you it's worth 25 quid to find out if it's the drive or the box it's in or even less for another external case but i would rather use the adapter so i can hear what the drive is doing

i find people ( computer shops ) can be a bit quick in saying it's broken without trying anything more than just plugging it in thats why i asked if they left the drive in the external case

I'm a firm believer in this method. Think I spent about £20 for a drive caddy. Could be the interface circuitry in the external case at fault, and not the actual drive.

I've recovered all my files from a couple of drives in this way, and the last one sat on my desk for over ten minutes clunking away like crazy before my files suddenly popped up on the screen. Dragged them off very quickly.