My hard drive died. What's the best data recovery option?

I want to recover not only my emails, documents, and videos. I also want to recover my browser bookmarks, extensions, tabs, and history, and my programs, particularly some shareware I have.

I have had DriveSavers of Novato, California recommended to me. Do you second that or advocate something different?

I have found recommendations online for Secure Data Recovery and Salvage Data Recovery.

 

This post is in a different context than the last one, which was in part a Google Drive problem. On top of that, OP is looking for advice on specific programs that weren't mentioned in the previous thread. Anyway, PSCO2007, who are you to run around and tell posters what's wrong with their posts. Somebody mod you?

 

Well, it depends why the drive died. It could be the motor, IC chip, or the PCB itself.

Hard to tell you the best course of action, without the drive in hand.

All in all, it may not be worth the price.

 

PSCO2007, your nastiness is on display also at http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=283385. Quite obviously I took my computer to a computer repair shop before I ever posted this thread. I have in fact spent plenty of time implementing suggestions I have received on MajorGeeks and other forums. The fact that I have been busy with lots of things relating to my computer and lots of things relating to the rest of life and therefore haven't implemented all good suggestions I received does not prove your point. And as AtlBo suggested, the issues here and on the other thread you referenced are very, very different.

It seems to me that Major Geeks has a gentlemanly tone on a fairly broad basis. Why you feel the need to inject spite is baffling. I request that you ignore my threads from now on.

 

I did not ask the question over and over. I asked for substance rather than "don't get it 'cause I say don't." Saying don't use a program because it has a registry cleaner is rather lame. Plenty of renowned programs, like CCleaner, have registry cleaners. But one can always opt not to use the registry cleaners as I opt not to.

The post was not exactly the same. In the first instance it was the loss of at most a few dozen files. In the second case the hard drive completely failed. And in the first case I did have Google Drive turned on to back it up, so you erred there again.

 

Alright, simmer down you two.

Conceptualclarity, please take advice when you can. People are trying to help you. Stubbornness just hurts you and annoys others. I have seen it more than once. Help provided here is for free and out of the kindness others.

PSCO2007, he isn't happy with you and bickering about it won't change his mind. Arguing just makes things worse and makes majorgeeks look bad. We need to be kinder, please. If someone ignores your advice, just move on.

Everyone back on track please.

 

Hi Adrynalyne.

I don't need to kill time. I wouldn't bother to come here if I didn't value the advice. As one of many examples, the people on Major Geeks and other websites dissuaded me from my intention of buying an external hard drive and steered me toward getting an internal hard drive for putting in an enclosure. Digerati is especially persuasive.

 

conceptualclarity, I may be wrong, but isn't putting an internal HD into an enclosure the same thing as an external HD?

 

There are portable external hard drives that are external hard drives. I think OP is just pointing out that he went with the standard hard drive with an enclosure external over the portable external...

 

External hard drives are a category of computer hardware unto themselves. Within this category you have desktop and portable makes. I was advised by the people on Major Geeks and elsewhere that ready-made external hard drives are not as durable and therefore reliable as internal hard drives kept in enclosures or something similar. I heeded their advice.




Back to the original subject, anybody with experience with DriveSavers or other companies is welcome to comment

 

Sorry, slight derail for a moment. Whoever told you internals with enclosures are more durable than externals was being silly.

External hard drives are as reliable as internal ones with an additional enclosure, because they are simply internal drives with built-in enclosures. The only reliability concern over internal should be the additional enclosure electronics.

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Disassembling+External+Storage+Hard+drive/11969

http://carltonbale.com/western-digital-my-book-opening-the-case-removing-the-drive/

Back on topic, I have not tried DriveSavers, but unless your data is invaluable, you will likely pay as much or more for data recovery than a new drive costs. Drive repair is even more expensive with these services.

 

Just for clarification, these are the portable ones I think cc is referring to and that I was referring to:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/810ApdRnK1L._SL1500_.jpg

I've had one of these for over 3 years now. It's the one of the slickest things around being only like 1/2" thick and like 2 1/2" x 4. Really nice but not necessary if you don't have a notebook/laptop I suppose. It rocks to be able to so easily move it from one PC to another at home though. Great thing to have around if you got a little extra cash you can part with...

 

Thank you for the advice. My data is invaluable to me.

I am curious as to what you have in mind. Tell me more about your experience at any rate. My hard drive was too dead for a non-professional like me to be able to utilize software with it.

 

It is current.

I have a very good computer repair shop here in town.. I believe if it were possible to do that they would have.

I have acquired a refurbished hard drive as a short term replacement.

 

Sorry, I am late to the game here.
Back to basics, when you power up the drive - does it spin up?
When plugged in as a slave does it show in Windows?
When it died, could you hear scraping sounds or clicking?
What is the make and model of the drive?

 

No.

Probably not, bit I'd have to ask the repair shops. (I took it to two to be sure.) When I tried to reboot all I saw was one sentence on the upper left.

No, totally quiet. It was very stunning. It happened when I shut down with Task Manager. I t appeared to be about 80% done when I got a serious error message.

Maxtor 120GB IDE Model # N0682

 

I'm going to have to go with severely advanced age on this one.

Like I said below, it could be the drive motor, the IC chip, or a component on the PCB. You would need to find a working drive, and refurbish the one you have OR send it out to be disassembled and recovered which can be expensive.

Programs like HD Sentinel have a free version, and will keep you aware of your drive's condition. In addition, you should always follow the three rules of DLP:

1. Backup
2. Backup
3. Backup

 

Hello everyone,
I really appreciate the advice to maintain proper backup of essential data from hard drive before facing data loss. But, sometimes you fail to do so!! In such situations, the best data recovery option is Remo Recover software to recover data from dead hard drive within few mouse clicks.

 

Hi Ronald Simson. Welcome to Major Geeks. Thanks for the suggestion.

The software many people here use though, to recover data from a hard drive is Piriform's Recuva because of it's effectiveness and the fact that it's free. Even the basic version of Remo is $39.95.

Many people that post here are looking for solutions to their problems at no cost and we volunteers try to provide those solutions.

But, once again, thanks for the suggestion.

 

I don't think a software would be able to recover files from a "dead hard drive" by itself without using any specialized tools that those professional data recovery facilities have.