data recovery service for a failing hard drive

[fatnslow]

Anyone have a good resource for data recovery from a failed HD from a laptop ? Seems like prices are all over the place$200 and up. Just a simple 500GB HDD laptop drive from a old Dell. If someone has the ability for a fee from here I'm all over that as well.

[Yanos]

Years ago I had a Sony laptop with a hard drive failure and of course I hadn't backed up in awhile. After an exhaustive search for options I discovered a few things. One, some success can be had placing the drive in an external case if there is a physical problem with a small area of the actual disk(s). Two, if there is a physical alignment issue with the armature and/heads placing the drive in the freezer for a bit may alleviate this problem enough that for a limited time you can copy the drive to a new one (in my case this worked for about twenty minutes). And three, some failures relate to the HD controller. I was able to find the same model number hard drive and swap the controller board and get the drive to fire up. This last option may or may not be a simple procedure depending on the drive (in my case it was plug and play, no soldering).

Thankfully I never had to go down the "forensic" recover option of sending the drive out. Good luck.

(Caveat, I am by no means a computer expert)

[SumJongGuy]

Another fan of external hard drive case attempt. I've recovered hard drive files from dead computers several times using that method. Did have one time where it didn't work though. Only costs about $25 to try. Best Buy Geek Squad can make sure you get the correct connections and even move it from the laptop to the case, but no guarantee that the old drive is salvageable. They'll give it a try for you though. You just pay for the parts..

[MESH]

Plug it into a desktop with a SATA cable no external case needed and more reliable. If it's truly dead drivesaversdatarecovery.com and it's going to be expensive.

[RShea]

If you truly need and want the data back then there are a few options (I've used a number of them over the years). PM me and I'll get a quote based on some of the responses as to the condition and what the drive is or is not doing and give you the low down on the costs.

Is the drive being recognized when you go into the laptop system bios (F2 or Del key possibly depending on which model and series it is), is the drive recognized at all and listed?

There are possible issues if you continue to attempt recovery on your own (really depends on if there is a problem with the heads and platter(s) as to if the suggestions of trying the data recovery on your own can work or just makes it harder for the professionals to get 100% of your data back...

[zoeillin]

Hard drives can be very delicate. It can work well and then break at a moment's notice. If you see that your hard drive is dying and you want to do something about it, you can contact a technician and see if he can fix it. If that is not possible you can go and buy another and salvage data from your old one and put it in the new one. There should not be any complications when putting the data to the new hard drive if you are doing everything on a verified website. Everything should go well and your new hard drive should work without any problems.

[old goat]

Vlad rolling out his cyber offensive. Flattering that he's starting with TGR.