Data Recovery

purplecow1977

Does anyone have any experience with data recovery of an external HD?
What sort of costs am I looking at, and after a quick Google it looks like there are several companies that offer this service - any recommendations?
Thanks.

Atlantic Dawn

It's expensive, could be talking €100's or €1000's depending on how important the data is to you to get recovered as to how critical an approach the company will take and the cost accordingly.



If the data is nice to recover but not critical to your life there are options you can try yourself, risky options but recovery can be possible, don't attempt anything yourself unless you are happy with the risks.


Do you know if the drive itself failed or perhaps the enclosure portion, it's possible with most external hard drives to open them up and remove the hard drive itself and then connect it to another PC or hard drive caddy, this can sometimes resolve the issue and allow you retreive your data

There's videos on Youtube of how to open the drive and hopefully resolve the issue, risky to do and you need to immediately transfer the data from the drive to another source as the drive won't be stable. Here's one such video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5Y7BniaRXg

The Kurgan

First thing I would check is to see if the disk can been seen by the Bios.
Have been able to recovery files from a disk before using filescavenger (the serialised version) which I could see in the Bios
I was unable to open the drive in windows but was able to restore the files using the application mentioned.

After that it's bring it to a reputable company to try recover Evaluation for free or else go down Atlantic Dawn route.
Really all depends on how important the files are you need recovering.

purplecow1977

I still don't have a ballpark figure on what it costs though!!!
After I picked it up from computer shop, well a few days later, I put it into my laptop. Nothing. No blue screen. But not recognised by computer, or listed when I open diskmanagement. The light is on on the hard drive, and it makes a noise, but I think the light used to flash after initial connection before, which it doesn't now, so perhaps I'm safe to assume my drive is simply dead now. I'm not convinced about data recovery considering nobody can give a cost so I am probably safe to assume it's too expensive to mention! So farewell files.

The Kurgan

I'll check in the morning as I do remember getting initial quotes..

quote="purplecow1977;99677274"]I still don't have a ballpark figure on what it costs though!!!
After I picked it up from computer shop, well a few days later, I put it into my laptop. Nothing. No blue screen. But not recognised by computer, or listed when I open diskmanagement. The light is on on the hard drive, and it makes a noise, but I think the light used to flash after initial connection before, which it doesn't now, so perhaps I'm safe to assume my drive is simply dead now. I'm not convinced about data recovery considering nobody can give a cost so I am probably safe to assume it's too expensive to mention! So farewell files.[/quote]

ED E

purplecow1977 wrote: »

I still don't have a ballpark figure on what it costs though!!!
After I picked it up from computer shop, well a few days later, I put it into my laptop. Nothing. No blue screen. But not recognised by computer, or listed when I open diskmanagement. The light is on on the hard drive, and it makes a noise, but I think the light used to flash after initial connection before, which it doesn't now, so perhaps I'm safe to assume my drive is simply dead now. I'm not convinced about data recovery considering nobody can give a cost so I am probably safe to assume it's too expensive to mention! So farewell files.

It depends on what needs to be done. A PCB transplant is a lot cheaper than a platter transplant.

Last time I had one done it was circa €300 for a 250GB 2.5" IIRC(It was 4yrs ago +).

FanadMan

Why not now try an external drive case? For €10 from PC World, it might just be the thing if you think the drive is dead anyway. And if it is, you can later add a new drive to it as a secondary backup.

purplecow1977

FanadMan wrote: »

Why not now try an external drive case? For €10 from PC World, it might just be the thing if you think the drive is dead anyway. And if it is, you can later add a new drive to it as a secondary backup.

The drive i have is a WD passport ultra and the connector part that normally can be removed can't in these types as it's a space saver apparently so will an external drive case till work?

bonzodog2

If it has its USB connector directly on the drive's circuit board, then it isn't a normal SATA interface drive and an enclosure won't help you. I've seen a Passport 1TB like this before and thought it was a terrible idea, but WD et al are here to make profits, not be nice.

If you have valuable enough data, maybe a circuit board swap from an identical drive could work out. Or clean-room data guys for big bucks (hundreds probably)

Dubh Geannain

Just to add to this topic. I've been quoted € 640 for a recovery by one clean room crowd (this is a fixed price). And between € 700 - 1,000 from another. I've been recommended a crowd in the UK that are between €200 - €450 (this is an estimate).

I'd be happy to pay up to €400 and would ideally like not to have to ship the drive abroad. So if anyone can point me towards a reputable outfit I'd be much obliged.

On the same subject. Is time much of an issue with data recovery? By that I mean, would the drive deteriorate further if I had to wait a while until I had the money available (like a year). I don't see why it should, unless your talking much longer periods but then I don't know the exact issue just yet. But it's looking like it's not the PCB but the read heads.