Hi all - So awhile back I loaned my portable HDD for a friend, he ended up dropping it. When I plug it in it makes an awful tick tick tick noise, and of course nothing loads and I have not messed with it since then lest I damage it more. Sadly at the time I had the data backed up on 3 HDs. When I was moving I left my old desktop with my roommate - and as such did a fresh intall and wiped the HD, during the move my backup HD was lost, and in the first week upon getting to my new home (and before I got a new computer to put the files onto) my main HDD was dropped. 3 back ups, 1 week :tear: On the HDD I have photos and videos from the 6 years I lived in Washington State, 4 in the military and almost 2 in Iraq. The photos are virtually priceless to me. That said I have been told (rumored might be more accurate) that getting data recovered can cost literally thousands of dollars as the process needs to be done in a sealed "clean room". Even if it does cost thousands I suppose I will eventually have to do it, the pictures have too much sentimental value - but that doesn't mean there arn't a million other things that money would be better spent on. That said has anyone had to get data recovered from a damaged HDD, if so who did you use, what were you quoted and how was the service. Thanks in advance, Nov
Ive never done real data recovery before. Normally I just run those software programs to recover data if I need to, but that isnt really for your case of things I dont think. The clicking is a mechanical problem with the drive. Do you hear any very high pitches scratching noises coming from the drive? That normally means the read/write head is touching the disk and that is a very bad thing. If you just hear clicks then you are probably safe enough to buy a new drive, plug them both in and select the whole drive and copy the data to the new one. It should last long enough to complete the transfer with minimal loss of data. If data is lost, most likely it is already gone at this point. For that you may be able to run a software program to try and reconstruct the damaged clusters, it may or may not work. Do this after you copy all other data though to be safer. If the software does not work then you would need to look into a professional solution if you really want the lost data, and you are right about that costing thousands of Dollars. Hopefully only a minimal amount is actually lost and you can be happy with what you salvaged for free. I dont drop my drives or handle them rough, but there are times I can stretch another 3 months of a clicking drive. It happens to me about every year because I use my drives so much. But that is from excessive use, not actually dropping it.
Admittedly it has been months since I last tried to power the drive, but no as I remember it was just a repeated scratch/tick every 1 second or so. Now to clarify what do you mean by "buy a new drive, plug them both in and select the whole drive and copy the data to the new one" ? How would that be any different from trying to copy data from my dropped portable to my regular computer HD - (which that does nothing - computer does not even pick up the HD was plugged in). Thanks,
There is no difference, it would just be copying the data from the damaged drive to a new portable drive as the replacement. If nothing even shows up on the drive then that wont work though and I think your only option is the expensive professional solution.
ugh - I just know that as soon I pay for it that little red hd that got lost in the move (and I have been begging everyone to keep their eyes open for) is going to show up. Thanks alot mate,
I've used this in the past: http://www.restorer2000.com/ (i don't remember if the drive was recognized at all or not). For this to work, you will have to connect the drive directly to your mainboard. Also there's a program called spinrite (http://www.grc.com/default.htm) which was able to recover a pretty badly damaged HDD for me.