Dead hard drive - data recovery?

Lornholio

Lornholio

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Seems like my archive drive (1TB WD external USB model) is refusing to show up on my laptop or desktop now. There's a few more things I'm going to try, including dismantling the thing and installing the drive directly into my desktop but if worst comes to worst nothing might work. I have everything from the last 18 months on another drive, all my films and music on another but there's some old stuff on this one I'd really like back if possible.

So, anyone recommend a data recovery company and estimate of what it might cost?

Thanks.
 
Earlier this year a friend went to Data Recovery Lab but soon walked away. Erratic service, poor communications, premises like a shack with stuff scattered everywhere and staff walking around in bare feet.

Eventually settled for Ontrack. Very professional service, very communicative and successful results. £700 though, which is roughly the going rate. The Data Recovery Lab above initially quoted her £250 to £350 but eventually changed it to £850 + vat.
 
I would certainly try removing the drive from the caddy and trying it internally. From what you describe, if the 'caddied drive' is not showing up on your PC, then it may well be the IDE / SATA to USB controller inside the caddy that sits between the drive and your PC.

Or depending on what type of drive is inside, if you had another spare drive, you could try attaching that to the controller inside and see if that is detected - just to rule out the controller. Obviously make sure that your spare drive can be tested (and sacrificed!) just in case the controller causes any problems - disclaimer!

From what I understand with Data Recovery businesses, they produce an initial report of what they can recover and charge for this initial inspection ~£250. Depending on what you want back from what is contained in the report, it then costs ~£600+ I didn't miss my lost data that much...
 
I've attempted a few verification/repair processes on the external drive now, all have either stalled or given an error message right away.

So the next step would be to break out the disk from inside the enclosure (literally break it out, it's a pressed plastic WD MyBook) and try it in a cheap enclosure. The disk is sATA and Mac formatted so this would be the only way to do it unless I knew someone with a Mac Pro tower, which I don't.

If it comes down to data recovery I guess I'll need to get a proper quote first and figure out if I want to pay it. If the drive is knackered then there'll probably be an extra £100 on top of that for a new disk/external drive too. Recent stuff is all on my laptop and backed up to another small external drive but typically someone asked me for large prints of something older a few weeks ago that I only have full resolution on the archive drive :bang:.

Thought I'd be safe with just one copy of my archived files since the archive drive only gets turned on once every few weeks for half an hour to backup stuff, but not so. External RAID once I sort this out.

More recommendations for data recovery services & prices welcome.
 
It's also might also be worth trybon a Linux pc as this will read most things and is not fussy if there are problems.
 
Try someone local...

I had a few quotes from data recovery firms, and also tried someone local... The big firms (as above) wanted £250+, the local guy recovered the data for me for about £50 inc VAT.

He also lent me his external drive to recover the data back, and he rescued everything I wanted too :)
 
If you go for the data recovery option, here are are few FREE software.

CardRecovery
File Recovery
FreeUndelete
Handy Recovery
Pandora Recovery
PC INSPECTOR
Photorec
Recover Files
Recuva
Restoration 2.5.14
Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier
SoftPerfect File Recovery
TestDisk
UndeleteMyFiles
Undelete Plus
WinHex

I have used Recuva on my dad's SD card and managed to pick up all of the files when his camera did a low level format.
 
From a alternative point of view for future archives, I'm considering buying a Blu-ray writer for stuff I want to keep in addition to backups on mechanical and flash drives.
 
Or an external raid drive in a mirrored array (As in the for sale section).
 
schizophonic said:
If you go for the data recovery option, here are are few FREE software.

...
...
...
Click to expand...

Those programs are for recovering deleted files, aren't they? I need to get the disk to appear on my system to start with!

Found a few enclosures that'll work for about £10 delivered. Fingers crossed.
 
Gel said:
Or an external raid drive in a mirrored array (As in the for sale section).
Click to expand...

Yep, that's the sort of thing I'll be looking to buy. Need to sell a few bits first to afford it though. Or might go for 2 separate 1TB drives and keep one at my parents' house in case of fire/theft/other disaster. Double the time running backups but complete peace of mind.
 
I had this happen to me recently. I installed the drive as the D drive in a desktop and all the data reappeared. Strangely, when I put it back in the caddy, it worked on my laptop too.
 
Try the Easeus data recovery program.

In windows my disk showed as it needing to be initialized and if I did that I would lose everything.

Using that I pulled all the data off the drive, as in everything.

If you are storing photos the only way is some form of raid system.

I like the external drives because I can take tham away to other places of work or hide them when on holiday.

The fear of cold dread that runs through you when a drive goes down with all your photo's is undescribable.
 
your local police computer lab my well do data recovery on the side.
I know mine do. They have a great range of kit and provide the service for a fee
 
I see people aren't reading the thread properly and understanding the problem. It's not about data recovery. It's about getting the hard drive to work in the first place. Data recovery is cheap. Fixing a physically dead hard drive costs more.
 
I take it you've gone into disk management on your pc to see if it's showing there?

(Not just if it shows after clicking 'my computer')
If it need initializing it will only show in disk management.
 
The WD drives have a couple of protection diodes on the logic board that go short, usually as a result of someone trying to use a laptop AC adapter with the external drive. This is an easy fix for someone with reasonable knowledge of electronics- you won't always find this in your local PC shop however!

For anything trickier we use the following company and they are very good:

http://www.pcimage.co.uk/
 
Sometimes have a similar problem with my Mac losing my WD external drives, usually if the system thinks they have been ejected incorrectly (cat knocking the USB connection or similar!). Bit of a panic the first time. Try:

1. Switching off the external drive power and disconnecting. Reboot. Then shut down, reconnect power and connect, then reboot. Goodness knows why it works, just does sometimes.
2. Go to disk utility and repair permissions.
3. Get yourself Diskwarrior and do same.

Usually it needs me to do all three stages. Also, it seems to be a failure and then after shutting down the computer overnight, everything is right as rain the next day.

Beyond that ... :shrug:
 
Sorry, I'm an idiot. I just gave advice for an internal drive.

I'll be standing in the corner if anyone needs me.
 
Take it to a local PC Repair Shop first just in case the drive itself is fine and it's something obvious.

If the drive itself is broken in some way, take it to a data recovery specialist. Expect to pay anywhere from £250 - £1,000 though, depending on how simple it is to retrieve.
 
MisterE said:
I see people aren't reading the thread properly and understanding the problem. It's not about data recovery. It's about getting the hard drive to work in the first place. Data recovery is cheap. Fixing a physically dead hard drive costs more.
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm talking about recovering data from a physically/mechanically broken drive, which may be the case. Hopefully it doesn't come to that but I'm asking so I'm prepared.

Gel said:
I take it you've gone into disk management on your pc to see if it's showing there?

(Not just if it shows after clicking 'my computer')
If it need initializing it will only show in disk management.
Click to expand...

Yes this is the case.

Connected to my Mac - "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" with options "Initialize", "Ignore" and "Eject". Does not show up on the desktop. In Disk Utility the disk appears in the list as "931.5 GB WD My Book Media" but "disk1s2" below that (the partition/volume name?) where it would normally say the name I gave the disk "WD MyBook", just like the laptops disk above that says "232.9 GB TOSHIBA MK2553GSX Media" and "Macintosh HD" below as the partition/volume name. "Verify Disk" and "Repair Disk" both immediately give the error "Filesystem verify or repair failed". In TechTool Pro the disk appears as a removable disk in the picture on the first screen. Surface Scan: when "931.51 GB WD My Book" is hovered over, the info looks normal except "Volume: (null)". Running surface scan is estimated at 9 hours. I ran it for 10 minutes and it came back with "No bad block encountered". SMART Check: Only Macintosh HD appears. Volume Structures: "disk1s2" appears in the list in grey ("Macintosh HD" is black) and running the tool gives "Validation error encountered". File Structures: Only Macintosh HD appears. Tools > Volume rebuild: "disk1s2" appears in the list in grey ("Macintosh HD" is black) and running the tool stalls at 1 second on the clock. File Optimization/Volume Optimization/Volume Journalling/Disk Permissions (all in Tools): Only Macintosh HD appears. These are all parts of TechTool Pro if you're wondering.

Connected to my PC (Win XP) it detects the hardware is connected (bubble messages in the bottom right corner and "Safely remove hardware" becomes available) but doesn't appear in My Computer. It shows in Disk Management as an unnamed disk (no name, no letter), Capacity 931.51 GB, Free Space 931.51 GB. In the area at the bottom the rectangle is shaded with diagonal lines unlike my C:, E: & F: drives. This is via USB since the disk is sATA and the PC only accepts IDE I think (Dell desktop bought in 2002, the disk and DVD drive I put in there previously are definitely IDE).

I've found some enclosures that look like they'll work for about £12 posted which isn't as pricey as I thought they'd be, that's the next step. Really hoping it's just something fried inside the box and the disk is fine.

Thanks for the help everyone.
 
Lornholio said:
Connected to my PC (Win XP) it detects the hardware is connected (bubble messages in the bottom right corner and "Safely remove hardware" becomes available) but doesn't appear in My Computer. It shows in Disk Management as an unnamed disk (no name, no letter), Capacity 931.51 GB, Free Space 931.51 GB. In the area at the bottom the rectangle is shaded with diagonal lines unlike my C:, E: & F: drives. This is via USB since the disk is sATA and the PC only accepts IDE I think (Dell desktop bought in 2002, the disk and DVD drive I put in there previously are definitely IDE).

I've found some enclosures that look like they'll work for about £12 posted which isn't as pricey as I thought they'd be, that's the next step. Really hoping it's just something fried inside the box and the disk is fine.

Thanks for the help everyone.
Click to expand...

I had something similar happen a year or so ago. An external Buffalo Drivestation 1TB drive failed. Just didn't appear any more. The disk showed in disk management (as yours does) and said it needed initialising.

After a bit of of research I discovered there was a problem with the firmware of the USB/SATA adaptor card which in some circumstances could cause the File Allocation Table to become corrupt (causing the symptoms described).

After a bit more digging and research I bought a copy of Recover My Files. I set it to work and after what seemed like an age (more than a day) it found a shadow copy of the NTFS FAT which then enabled me to copy all my files from the drive over USB to the PC. It took some time but it worked in the end.
 
We had a dead external hard drive, and after looking into data recovery companies and what they charge, we took it to our local pc repair place, who got it working and recovered the data. Cost about £75. The recovery started with the drive spending the night in a freezer I believe (which a load of people told me to try and I was too wuss to do it)

A
 
Headless Lois said:
We had a dead external hard drive, and after looking into data recovery companies and what they charge, we took it to our local pc repair place, who got it working and recovered the data. Cost about £75. The recovery started with the drive spending the night in a freezer I believe (which a load of people told me to try and I was too wuss to do it)

A
Click to expand...

Yeah, freezing it would be the next step after the enclosure attempt (ordered now for £11 posted). I'm a bit dubious about condensation forming inside it when it comes out of the freezer though. I guess I'd be as well just freezing the whole enclosure with the disk inside, rather than freezing just the disk then installing it?

Local PC fixer will be the step after that. If not luck there then need to decide if my old work is worth the hefty pro recovery bill. :(
 
You can get a USB to sata connector and separate power source for less than £10 on ebay, very useful kit to have for problem solving situations like this.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/USB-2-0-SATA-...uting_CablesConnectors_RL&hash=item35aa669a46

Maplins will sell you the same thing for about £50 but there's tons of different versions available on eBay, just search for Sata to USB cable

I used to work in IT and the last time I had an issue like this it was with a laptop HDD that was over heating and failing to run for longer than a couple of mins and I ended up recovering the data by sticking the drive in a plastic bag with some desiccant material and running it whilst it was in the freezer :)
 
some recovery soft ware does not work with external connected drives

i have an external sata , ide connecting device , if your close enough yocu can borrow it

Cheers Steve
 
Thanks for the offers guys but am outside Glasgow and ordered the new enclosure already this morning. £11 posted for pretty much what was linked above, in an enclosure. If it works (fingers crossed) then that'll work on its own as a new external drive, or will sell that for a dual drive external RAID version.

Will update with results...
 
Lornholio said:
Thanks for the offers guys but am outside Glasgow and ordered the new enclosure already this morning. £11 posted for pretty much what was linked above, in an enclosure. If it works (fingers crossed) then that'll work on its own as a new external drive, or will sell that for a dual drive external RAID version.

Will update with results...
Click to expand...

Good luck but if the drive is still unreadable try giving Duncan a bell at Retrodata

Well, don't just try giving him a bell, that'll seem strange :lol: you'll have to phone him and arrange collection of the drive.
 
Lornholio said:
Those programs are for recovering deleted files, aren't they? I need to get the disk to appear on my system to start with!

Found a few enclosures that'll work for about £10 delivered. Fingers crossed.
Click to expand...

Thats one of the reasons why you need to use a data recovery software. They can sometimes pick up hard drives that windows cannot recognize.
 
UPDATE: The enclosure arrived this morning. Did a quick transplant of the disk and same error messages. Put the whole enclosure in the freezer until I got home now... same thing. So looks like it's the disk that's corrupted or whatever.

So that leaves data recovery programs. Disk Utility gives an error message immediately for Verify and Repair tools. I have TechTool Pro 5 which is more of a system checker but had some disk tools which stall at 1 second. schizophonic were any of the programs you listed for a Mac? The disk is Mac formatted and won't connect to my PC internally so will need to be a Mac program. I'll get Googling for options.

Failing that, it's professional data recovery. Retrodata who were mentioned here look pretty good, no-fee assessment and quote seems a good option.
 
Update: Got my replacement drive through this week which I planned to dump the recovered data onto. Ran Data Rescue 3's quick scan which showed most of my data could be recovered, some files I pulled off were corrupted though. Started a deep scan this morning and four hours in everythign froze. Now the hard drive won't even spin when it's hooked up. I think that's it completely dead. RIP :(.

No doubt professional data recovery would be even more expensive now since there must be a mechanical or electrical error. I think I'll leave it for now and think about recovery at some point if I really need some old stuff back.
 
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