Has anyone had hard drive recovery?

[themanpcl]

Just hoping to find a reasonable price for recovery of my files. Sent it off to be evaluated and the plates are in tact but the price to recover was a little more than I wanted to pay. Background: I had the hard drive fail. Got a new solid state. Thought my (won't name the cloud backup solution used) backed up my videos but that was not the case so I have many hunts lost. If anyone has ever had this issue and knows of a reputable and reasonably priced recovery company, please let me know. Thanks!

 

[BSK]

Reasonably priced? No!

 

[DaveTN]

Due to what's involved I'm not aware of any that are low cost, but I haven't checked in years.

Depending on why it's failing, sometimes putting a mechanical hard drive in the freezer overnight will allow it to run long enough to retrieve data.

I've seen so many people lose all their pictures, documents, data etc. over the decades. I'm crazy about back-ups. I use multiple external drives in addition to redundant internal drives.

 

[themanpcl]

Due to what's involved I'm not aware of any that are low cost, but I haven't checked in years.

Depending on why it's failing, sometimes putting a mechanical hard drive in the freezer overnight will allow it to run long enough to retrieve data.

I've seen so many people lose all their pictures, documents, data etc. over the decades. I'm crazy about back-ups. I use multiple external drives in addition to redundant internal drives.

At this point the only recovery is remove the plates and place in another hard drive. All requiring cleanroom etc.

 

[backyardtndeer]

I have not had any luck, but then I haven't sent any off either. Good luck.

 

[Planking]

I bought one of those hard drive recovery adapters and plugged it into my new computer and got all my stuff back.

 

[themanpcl]

I bought one of those hard drive recovery adapters and plugged it into my new computer and got all my stuff back.

I did that for a couple of older drives. The failure is in the drive itself so the plates won't spin. Basically they have to take a working drive, remove the plates, replace them with mine and extract the files.

 

[BigAl]

Cost is relative. What kind of range are we talking about? I'm in the same situation and need a recovery on WD hard drive. Not deer pics, but 40 years of pics.

 

[DaveTN]

Cost is relative. What kind of range are we talking about? I'm in the same situation and need a recovery on WD hard drive. Not deer pics, but 40 years of pics.

Years ago, it was in the thousands. It appears now it's possibly in the hundreds. Everywhere I see doesn't list prices and requires a quote. That makes sense based on the type of drive. Obviously if the platters on a mechanical hard drive won't spin, or the read heads don't work, software isn't going to fix that. As stated above the drive has to be disassembled in a clean room and fixed to recover the data. If the hard disk platters are damaged, there may be no recovery.

 

[BigAl]

Years ago, it was in the thousands. It appears now it's possibly in the hundreds. Everywhere I see doesn't list prices and requires a quote. That makes sense based on the type of drive. Obviously if the platters on a mechanical hard drive won't spin, or the read heads don't work, software isn't going to fix that. As stated above the drive has to be disassembled in a clean room and fixed to recover the data. If the hard disk platters are damaged, there may be no recovery.

Thanks for the info. I could stomach hundreds. Especially if the data can be recovered.

 

[DaveTN]

Thanks for the info. I could stomach hundreds. Especially if the data can be recovered.

Here are places that Western Digital recommends, I would start with them.... good luck.

Data Recovery | Western Digital

Western Digital provides data storage solutions, including systems, HDD, Flash SSD, memory and personal data solutions to help customers capture and preserve their most valued data.

www.westerndigital.com

 

[Gav-n-Tn]

I know 7 or 8 years ago it was around $1500 for starters. I just accepted the loss. I've used an external solid state drive to backup anything I deem critical ever since.

 

[jlanecr500]

I've had drives fail in the past too. A couple I repaired by swapping the motor and driver board from an exact drive.
For the last 10 or 15 years, I've been running raid stripe arrays that are 2 identical drives with duplicate data. If one fails, just replace the bad one and rebuild the array. No data lost.

 

[BSK]

I know 7 or 8 years ago it was around $1500 for starters. I just accepted the loss. I've used an external solid state drive to backup anything I deem critical ever since.

When my drive failed about 5 years ago, I was told thousands. The drive is still sitting next to my desk. I would love to be able to recover the family pictures on it. I could live with hundreds, but thousands is too rich for my blood. Since the drive failure I've been backing everything up on external solid-state drives.

 

[spur necklace 3]

Can't offer any advice on cost. Mine failed a few months back and the guy fixing it discussed sending off to California to recover but didn't quite get into the full cost of it. I mentioned I had carbonite and that solved the problem. Had over 600,000 trail camera pics saved and a few hundred videos from video camera I take on hunts so it took a while to get them all downloaded but eventually got them all back.

 

[themanpcl]

Cost is relative. What kind of range are we talking about? I'm in the same situation and need a recovery on WD hard drive. Not deer pics, but 40 years of pics.

$1000

Thanks for the info. I could stomach hundreds. Especially if the data can be recovered.

The issue I have is it's not a guaranteed complete recovery (and I know they can't) so I could pay the $1000 and if they recover anything from the drive, they keep the $1000 and it's pay up front so....

 

[themanpcl]

Can't offer any advice on cost. Mine failed a few months back and the guy fixing it discussed sending off to California to recover but didn't quite get into the full cost of it. I mentioned I had carbonite and that solved the problem. Had over 600,000 trail camera pics saved and a few hundred videos from video camera I take on hunts so it took a while to get them all downloaded but eventually got them all back.

I had carbonite as well and thought video's were backed up but apparently there is a process you have to go through to have them backed up and I was unaware. I got all the other data back but the videos.

 

[DaveTN]

I've seen so many people lose stuff like pictures that can't be replaced. I have all my family using backup software and external or portable drives. I even have Splashtop Business software so I can set-up their backups and deal with issues remotely. It's cheap compared to loss or recovery.

 

[BSK]

I've seen so many people lose stuff like pictures that can't be replaced. I have all my family using backup software and external or portable drives. I even have Splashtop Business software so I can set-up their backups and deal with issues remotely. It's cheap compared to loss or recovery.

Lost 4 years of family photos and ALL OF MY WORK. To say it was devastating would be a severe understatement. The stress of that, as well as a few other stressors, caused one of the oddest medical conditions I've ever experienced, but that's a story for another time.

 

[BigAl]

Lost 4 years of family photos and ALL OF MY WORK. To say it was devastating would be a severe understatement. The stress of that, as well as a few other stressors, caused one of the oddest medical conditions I've ever experienced, but that's a story for another time.

We lost many years of photos. All photos since digital cameras, and also many scanned photos from earlier years. We're going to have to try.