Anyone done HDD data recovery recently?

[Mitsu3000gt]

A good friend of the family had ALL his photos from many years of trips, etc. stored on a 2TB external drive that recently failed. We've already had the chat about cloud storage and how to guarantee this never happens again.

He brought it to memory express and they couldn't get it going, but I think all they did was try it on another Computer.

He has got some quotes and they are coming in around $1500 for "guaranteed 80% recovery". Seems really high to me, but I have never actually used one of these companies myself. By the sounds of it, they were going to buy a similar vintage HDD, and mix/match parts until it worked. I also realize it's case-by-case, and it depends on how badly the HDD has failed.

Do any beyonders do this, or has anyone used a service they were happy with recently that is less than $1500? He was willing to pay $400-500 no problem, but the $1500 was a lot higher than he had imagined and presents a much tougher decision.

TIA

[firebane]

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A good friend of the family had ALL his photos from many years of trips, etc. stored on a 2TB external drive that recently failed. We've already had the chat about cloud storage and how to guarantee this never happens again.

He brought it to memory express and they couldn't get it going, but I think all they did was try it on another Computer.

He has got some quotes and they are coming in around $1500 for "guaranteed 80% recovery". Seems really high to me, but I have never actually used one of these companies myself. By the sounds of it, they were going to buy a similar vintage HDD, and mix/match parts until it worked. I also realize it's case-by-case, and it depends on how badly the HDD has failed.

Do any beyonders do this, or has anyone used a service they were happy with recently that is less than $1500? He was willing to pay $400-500 no problem, but the $1500 was a lot higher than he had imagined and presents a much tougher decision.

TIA

Pull the drive out of the case and then try. Sometimes the controller goes bad and the hard drive is fine.

If that doesn't work.. yes you can look for costs of upwards of $1000 depending on data and etc.

Data loss recovery is NOT cheap.

[taemo]

have you tried connecting the HDD on your computer and see what you can do?

otherwise, yeah data recovery is not cheap.
last time I helped someone 4+ years ago, it was over 1000$ as well to recover some photos.

[Thaco]

i would assume memex took it out of the case and tried it, if not, then yeah thats the first crack, if that doesnt work, it usually means swapping the platters to a working drive, not for the faint of heart.

[Mitsu3000gt]

I'll see if he'll give it to me for a day or two, I can take it out of the case and put it in my PC or another enclosure. I am not 100% sure what Memory Express did - I'm guessing the bare minimum and right at the counter.

Has anyone had luck putting the drive in the freezer? Kind of silly but I've read of it working in certain cases.

Also I recently learned that the data recovery company told him this:

"Diagnostics performed on the media have confirmed a mechanical failure is present. One or more heads are not operational which has resulted in the inability for the media to access user data. In order to facilitate a recovery, the defective mechanical component must be removed and replaced with working components. Once completed; the media must be imaged and associated file system repairs must be performed."

Assuming they are correct, sounds like the head(s) have failed.

[ExtraSlow]

wasn't there a trick with freezing it (in a zipock bag) too?

[taemo]

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I'll see if he'll give it to me for a day or two, I can take it out of the case and put it in my PC or another enclosure. I am not 100% what Memory Express did.

Has anyone had luck putting the drive in the freezer?

Also I recently learned that the data recovery company told him this:

"Diagnostics performed on the media have confirmed a mechanical failure is present. One or more heads are not operational which has resulted in the inability for the media to access user data. In order to facilitate a recovery, the defective mechanical component must be removed and replaced with working components. Once completed; the media must be imaged and associated file system repairs must be performed."

Assuming they are correct, sounds like the head(s) have failed.

8+ years ago, I was able to use the freezer trick on an old Laptop HDD.
However I havent had any luck with it for the past couple of years.

This article probably explains why
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3035...k-anymore.html

[revelations]

I've been dealing with HDD failures for 20 years almost.

Here is what I've noticed:

- the external drives are usually the cheapest garbage the OEM offers, shortest lifespan (ie. use for BACKUP only)

- external USB HDD (not USB sticks) are VERY vulnerable to bumps knocks and rough handing WHILE in operation. They can fail IMMEDIATELY after 1 tipover.

- if the drive (when its outside of the enclosure) shows NO signs of life (ie no clicks or mechanical sounds of any kind) it usually becomes a clean room operation. If there IS sound, you CAN try the freezer trick among others. I've even removed the cover of the HDD to recover data from partially running drives.

- clean room operations can require an EXACT PCB replacement in cases - which can become very problematic with some drives as these are very tough to find

- clean room operations are in NO way guaranteed. I've taken apart HDDs that failed (no sound of any kind) and opened them up to find metal dust inside (bent spindle) and the platters all scored to hell. There is no way to recover data at this point as its fairy dust

[Thaco]

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I've been dealing with HDD failures for 20 years almost.

Here is what I've noticed:

- the external drives are usually the cheapest garbage the OEM offers, shortest lifespan (ie. use for BACKUP only)

- external USB HDD (not USB sticks) are VERY vulnerable to bumps knocks and rough handing WHILE in operation. They can fail IMMEDIATELY after 1 tipover.

- if the drive (when its outside of the enclosure) shows NO signs of life (ie no clicks or mechanical sounds of any kind) it usually becomes a clean room operation. If there IS sound, you CAN try the freezer trick among others. I've even removed the cover of the HDD to recover data from partially running drives.

- clean room operations can require an EXACT PCB replacement in cases - which can become very problematic with some drives as these are very tough to find

- clean room operations are in NO way guaranteed. I've taken apart HDDs that failed (no sound of any kind) and opened them up to find metal dust inside (bent spindle) and the platters all scored to hell. There is no way to recover data at this point as its fairy dust

this is why data recovery is so expensive, because probably more than half the time they fail at recovering the data...they cant really charge for a failed recovery, so they need to make up the money by charging for the successful ones.

[rage2]

Any good suggestions for local data recovery services? Have an old drive that may have some old photos that we’d like to recover for historical purposes.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Hmm, thanks guys. Looks like it might be expensive. I'll see if I can get the drive from him to Hail Mary the freezer trick, other than that it might be up to the professionals.

[roopi]

What type of external drive is it? I just went through this with a Seagate central External drive that I had used to store photos as well. I removed the drive (destroying the case in the process) and installed it into a desktop. BIOS saw the drive but nothing in Windows. I downloaded a free recovery program and after a 24 hour scan I was able to recover almost everything. I can check tomorrow what the software was called.

[revelations]

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What type of external drive is it? I just went through this with a Seagate central External drive that I had used to store photos as well. I removed the drive (destroying the case in the process) and installed it into a desktop. BIOS saw the drive but nothing in Windows. I downloaded a free recovery program and after a 24 hour scan I was able to recover almost everything. I can check tomorrow what the software was called.

In these cases you are looking at a RAW format drive in Windows (windows will usually ask you to format the drive).

Windows computer management will recognize the drive - easy to recover. I believe something to the effect of the NTFS header being erased (but this can be reindexed from the rest of the drive data).

---------------

Again for OP - if the drive shows signs of life (mechanical noise) the chances of recovery are decent.

[sabad66]

Recuva software is pretty good (at least back when i used it) if you can get it recognized as a drive somehow.

[taemo]

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Recuva software is pretty good (at least back when i used it) if you can get it recognized as a drive somehow.

yeah I've used recuva in the past, works well with flash memory drives too (I accidentally formatted SD and CF cards in the past and used recuva to restore some photos)

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Any good suggestions for local data recovery services? Have an old drive that may have some old photos that we’d like to recover for historical purposes.

I used Pro Data Recovery for a client and they were able to restore most of the data but their website seems to be down right now
http://prodatarecovery.ca/

No direct experience with them but I've heard about these 2
ReStoring Data - https://www.restoringdata.ca/calgary-data-recovery.html
WeRecover Data - https://www.werecoverdata.com/servic...berta/calgary/

[rage2]

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I used Pro Data Recovery for a client and they were able to restore most of the data but their website seems to be down right now
http://prodatarecovery.ca/

No direct experience with them but I've heard about these 2
ReStoring Data - https://www.restoringdata.ca/calgary-data-recovery.html
WeRecover Data - https://www.werecoverdata.com/servic...berta/calgary/

Thanks, I'll have a look. Wanted someone local because most of the "local" shops are fake local, and ships it out to the US.

[adam c]

I used these guys recently and would go back

https://www.icubedev.com/

[Thaco]

for software recovery i have used GetDataBack before as well, it works well and i think its free for personal use