My daughter's hardrive on her laptop died. She didn't back up any of her files.
I am pretty sure all files are still there. I installed a new hardrive. Is there any way
to retrieve the files off the old hardrive without going to a service center?
laptop hardrive
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Wave
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laptop hardrive
{DOU}Wave
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QwazyWabbit
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Re: laptop hardrive
Reputable data recovery services can be pretty hard to find depending on where you live.
I did some online research recently to recover some data from a known good disk that I can't read (Toshiba laptop died) and most of them seem pretty shaky, usually asking $200 to $400 just to give you an "estimate" of what it would take to recover your data and usually with no guarantees and usually implying extra fees above the first to ransom your data and disk. Avoid them.
You can try getting a recommendation from your local computer dealer, depending on your confidence in their judgement but I would be reluctant to just hand the disk over to them for referral or let the kids in the back work on it but that would depend on the face to face factor too.
Contact the computer or disk manufacturer directly through their service depot, bypass the retailers. I had good luck with a Toshiba computer problem and they sent me to their repair contractor and I had the thing back in less than a week. IBM, Toshiba, Shugart and others all have recovery referrals for their corporate customers and they may even be able to fix the drive for you depending on vintage and the nature of the failure. Once you have the drive back you can hook it up to a IDE/SATA external drive adapter that you can buy for about $40 or $50 and recover your own data as long as it wasn't reformatted and you want to be sure to request that if you send it in to be repaired.
Depending on the failure mode of the drive (electronics vs bearings vs heads) the recovery people can hook new controllers up to the drive and get the data off it with very little trouble. If the heads crashed or the bearings gave up, chances are the data is gone unless you have very deep pockets and even then, only partial recovery may be possible.
I did some online research recently to recover some data from a known good disk that I can't read (Toshiba laptop died) and most of them seem pretty shaky, usually asking $200 to $400 just to give you an "estimate" of what it would take to recover your data and usually with no guarantees and usually implying extra fees above the first to ransom your data and disk. Avoid them.
You can try getting a recommendation from your local computer dealer, depending on your confidence in their judgement but I would be reluctant to just hand the disk over to them for referral or let the kids in the back work on it but that would depend on the face to face factor too.
Contact the computer or disk manufacturer directly through their service depot, bypass the retailers. I had good luck with a Toshiba computer problem and they sent me to their repair contractor and I had the thing back in less than a week. IBM, Toshiba, Shugart and others all have recovery referrals for their corporate customers and they may even be able to fix the drive for you depending on vintage and the nature of the failure. Once you have the drive back you can hook it up to a IDE/SATA external drive adapter that you can buy for about $40 or $50 and recover your own data as long as it wasn't reformatted and you want to be sure to request that if you send it in to be repaired.
Depending on the failure mode of the drive (electronics vs bearings vs heads) the recovery people can hook new controllers up to the drive and get the data off it with very little trouble. If the heads crashed or the bearings gave up, chances are the data is gone unless you have very deep pockets and even then, only partial recovery may be possible.
Re: laptop hardrive
Sorry to hear Wave,
You can try an external enclosure or adapter to see if you can get at it through USB. Does it spin up? Does it make any noise?
You can try an external enclosure or adapter to see if you can get at it through USB. Does it spin up? Does it make any noise?
{DOU}pebcak
I love the sound of "GODLIKE" in the morning.
I love the sound of "GODLIKE" in the morning.
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Wave
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Re: laptop hardrive
It makes a noise. Someone told me to put it in the freezer. I am going to try that.pebcak wrote:Sorry to hear Wave,
Does it spin up? Does it make any noise?
{DOU}Wave
Re: laptop hardrive
I've had a few drives die on me, it sucks.
The freezer trick will only work for a very specific type of problem. If you have a vacuum sealer, do that to it before putting it in the freezer.
As Pebcak asked, what are the symptoms of the drive? Are you sure it is a hardware failure? Are you sure the file system didn't just go ass-up? Sometimes if the system is too corrupted, the freebie (comes with computer type stuff) disk utilities aren't smart enough to fix the problems and you'll need something better.
As asked also, where are you putting the old drive to test it out? If you are putting it in an enclosure, then the jumpers need to be in a certain place, in a tower they need to be somewhere else. If they are wrong then the drive won't mount. I am assuming that this is a Parallel ATA drive, is this correct?
If worst comes to worst. call it a life lesson. I bet most of us have lost data before due to not properly backing up. Some of us NY pieces of shit have had to learn the lesson more than once too. It's funny, drives are so big now-a-day that backups are difficult. How thew hell are you supposed to do a monthly back up of a 320 gig drive? Burn 80 dvd's a month? The solution I am considering is raid mirroring. Anyway, that's a bit off topic. Let us know more about the symptoms of the drive.
Tommy
The freezer trick will only work for a very specific type of problem. If you have a vacuum sealer, do that to it before putting it in the freezer.
As Pebcak asked, what are the symptoms of the drive? Are you sure it is a hardware failure? Are you sure the file system didn't just go ass-up? Sometimes if the system is too corrupted, the freebie (comes with computer type stuff) disk utilities aren't smart enough to fix the problems and you'll need something better.
As asked also, where are you putting the old drive to test it out? If you are putting it in an enclosure, then the jumpers need to be in a certain place, in a tower they need to be somewhere else. If they are wrong then the drive won't mount. I am assuming that this is a Parallel ATA drive, is this correct?
If worst comes to worst. call it a life lesson. I bet most of us have lost data before due to not properly backing up. Some of us NY pieces of shit have had to learn the lesson more than once too. It's funny, drives are so big now-a-day that backups are difficult. How thew hell are you supposed to do a monthly back up of a 320 gig drive? Burn 80 dvd's a month? The solution I am considering is raid mirroring. Anyway, that's a bit off topic. Let us know more about the symptoms of the drive.
Tommy
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Wave
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Re: laptop hardrive
Wave wrote:It makes a noise.pebcak wrote:Sorry to hear Wave,
Does it spin up? Does it make any noise?
It sounds like when you throw a rod in your engine. Clank, Clank, Clank
{DOU}Wave
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QwazyWabbit
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Re: laptop hardrive
He's dead, Jim.Wave wrote: It sounds like when you throw a rod in your engine. Clank, Clank, Clank
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Wave
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Re: laptop hardrive
Thats what I thought. Was just hoping to get my porn off of it.QwazyWabbit wrote:He's dead, Jim.Wave wrote: It sounds like when you throw a rod in your engine. Clank, Clank, Clank
{DOU}Wave