Recovering data from a damaged hard drive (I need Help) (1 Viewer)

[Carolina Hustler]

So it was time for an upgrade. I decided to debug the old hard drive and and put it in an enclosure to be used as an external drive rather than move all that data to the new unit. While in use, I bumped the external drive, knocked it off the new tower unit, and it hit the floor hard.. That was the end it seems..

Now I'm toying with the idea of opening it up myself and seeing if something was just dislodged and can be simply slid back into place. I took it up to Best buy to see what they could do, and they want my next 20 pay checks (slight exaggeration)

Has this ever happened to you?

How did you handle it?

Is there somewhere I should send it where I won't be charged an arm and a leg?

Is it a bad idea to open the unit up myself in a non-sterile environment?

Thoughts? Advice?

Lost business files (including 12 years of accounting data) and alot of family photos...

 

[captain_amazing]

Can you provide some more information? When you connect it, what's happening? Are the discs spinning? Does anything load? What kind of sounds is it making?

If you want any chance of saving the info, don't open the hard drive yourself. It needs to be done in one of those "clean" environments, where dust particulates in the air are almost nonexistent.

 

[Carolina Hustler]

Can you provide some more information? When you connect it, what's happening? Are the discs spinning? Does anything load? What kind of sounds is it making?

If you want any chance of saving the info, don't open the hard drive yourself. It needs to be done in one of those "clean" environments, where dust particulates in the air are almost nonexistent.

It does nothing, no spinning, connecting, or sounds

 

[BobbyLayne]

Can you provide some more information? When you connect it, what's happening? Are the discs spinning? Does anything load? What kind of sounds is it making?

If you want any chance of saving the info, don't open the hard drive yourself. It needs to be done in one of those "clean" environments, where dust particulates in the air are almost nonexistent.

It does nothing, no spinning, connecting, or sounds

Not an IT guy but I've dealt with a few damaged drives.

If it was spinning you could maybe buy a caddy and try to extract the data yourself. But if it has failed and they have to take it apart to try to read each disk individually, that gets expensive in a hurry as it has to be done in Clean Room. IIRC the last time I did this it actually came in lower than expected ($600?) and they were successful. Time before that, I think I was looking at something like $1.250-1,500 and said no thanks. Both times I used data recovery firms. Would be curious if IT folks think this requires a specialist.

Good luck.

 

[NCCommish]

Can you provide some more information? When you connect it, what's happening? Are the discs spinning? Does anything load? What kind of sounds is it making?

If you want any chance of saving the info, don't open the hard drive yourself. It needs to be done in one of those "clean" environments, where dust particulates in the air are almost nonexistent.

It does nothing, no spinning, connecting, or sounds

Not an IT guy but I've dealt with a few damaged drives.

If it was spinning you could maybe buy a caddy and try to extract the data yourself. But if it has failed and they have to take it apart to try to read each disk individually, that gets expensive in a hurry as it has to be done in Clean Room. IIRC the last time I did this it actually came in lower than expected ($600?) and they were successful. Time before that, I think I was looking at something like $1.250-1,500 and said no thanks. Both times I used data recovery firms. Would be curious if IT folks think this requires a specialist.

Good luck.

Yes you want to use a pro. To easy to screw it up if you don't have everything you need especially a clean room. And the prices are coming down. If it's important data, especially business data, it is likely worth the investment.

 

[The Tick]

So just to be clear, you have tried plugging the old hdd directly into the new computer, not in the external enclosure, correct?

 

[Jobber]

"Family photos". Suuuure.

 

[lod01]

"Family photos". Suuuure.

Always a good idea to either mirror your pron drives or use a stripe set with parity.

The fact that there is no sound when you connect power after dropping it could be something along the lines of a crack in the circuit board.

 

[Maelstrom]

Has this ever happened to you?How did you handle it?

Is there somewhere I should send it where I won't be charged an arm and a leg?

Is it a bad idea to open the unit up myself in a non-sterile environment?

Yes, dropped my first laptop off the top bunk of a bunk bed, killed the HD. Thankfully, I'd only had it a few weeks and I just played dumb about why the HD failed (no significant outer damage).

As for opening it yourself, only if you want to see what's inside but don't care if you ever get the data off. I would check the circuit board though and see if there is anything loose or something your could resolder.

This won't work in your case, since the drive sounds like it's toast, but if anyone has a spinning drive that doesn't want to read, I've had good success with SpinRite - the websites kinda crappy, but the software is pretty awesome in what it can do as far as recovering data or damaged drives. It's old-school, the guy programs it in assembly, but he knows his stuff.

 

[AAABatteries]

Thanks Obama!

 

[Henry Ford]

So it was time for an upgrade. I decided to debug the old hard drive and and put it in an enclosure to be used as an external drive rather than move all that data to the new unit. While in use, I bumped the external drive, knocked it off the new tower unit, and it hit the floor hard.. That was the end it seems..

Now I'm toying with the idea of opening it up myself and seeing if something was just dislodged and can be simply slid back into place. I took it up to Best buy to see what they could do, and they want my next 20 pay checks (slight exaggeration)

Has this ever happened to you?

How did you handle it?

Is there somewhere I should send it where I won't be charged an arm and a leg?

Is it a bad idea to open the unit up myself in a non-sterile environment?

Thoughts? Advice?

Lost business files (including 12 years of accounting data) and alot of family photos...

Yes.I got very angry, then drank a lot.

No.

Yes.

Good luck.

 

[captain_amazing]

Can you provide some more information? When you connect it, what's happening? Are the discs spinning? Does anything load? What kind of sounds is it making?

If you want any chance of saving the info, don't open the hard drive yourself. It needs to be done in one of those "clean" environments, where dust particulates in the air are almost nonexistent.

It does nothing, no spinning, connecting, or sounds

Do other harddrives work on the computer? Have you tried using a different power connector? Make sure it's not the PSU that's bad.If yes to both of those, then, yea, you're pretty screwed. You'd have to have a data recovery specialist retrieve the data, and I'm pretty sure they can cost a grand or more.

 

[captain_amazing]

Can you provide some more information? When you connect it, what's happening? Are the discs spinning? Does anything load? What kind of sounds is it making?

If you want any chance of saving the info, don't open the hard drive yourself. It needs to be done in one of those "clean" environments, where dust particulates in the air are almost nonexistent.

It does nothing, no spinning, connecting, or sounds

Do other harddrives work on the computer? Have you tried using a different power connector? Make sure it's not the PSU that's bad.If yes to both of those, then, yea, you're pretty screwed. You'd have to have a data recovery specialist retrieve the data, and I'm pretty sure they can cost a grand or more.

At this point, if you're not willing to spend the money to do the data recovery, I'd personally give it a whirl to go online and see if I could find the same exact model HD and swap the disc myself. It isn't an easy thing to do, and you need the right tools (you could buy them for like $10 on newegg), but I like to mess around with that kind of stuff, and, who knows, maybe it would work (pretty unlikely).

 

[MyLeftHand]

happened to me once an i lost everything on it. 6 years of biz files, family photos, email archives, etc. lesson learned, back up EVERYTHING