Storage Solutions How to recover data from undetected HDD?

sam9953

sam9953

Adept
Okay so a week back my Seagate FreeAgent Go (500 GB) HDD fell of my table and since then my laptop has not been able to open the HDD and each time I try to open it in "My Computer" , the HDD hangs my laptop. The HDD keeps making screeching loud noises which it never did before it fell of the table.

My question is that as my HDD is not even opening, how is it possible for me to recover the important data worth 300 GB which is stored on my HDD, I will send it for replacement to seagate once I am able to recover the data, how can I do that? Please I need urgent help.
 
Mechanically damaged hard disks are difficult to recover data from, has to be done at the platter level. Basically, cannot be done at home. Professional recovery agencies charge for value of data, not data size or time taken to recover it.

You could try the deep freezer trick and see if you can get the disk to spin up, but you'll have to take the disk out of the case. Not advisable. Also, external drives by their very nature and job description should never be the only location for any sort of data precisely because of what you have encountered.
 
cranky said:
Mechanically damaged hard disks are difficult to recover data from, has to be done at the platter level. Basically, cannot be done at home. Professional recovery agencies charge for value of data, not data size or time taken to recover it.

You could try the deep freezer trick and see if you can get the disk to spin up, but you'll have to take the disk out of the case. Not advisable. Also, external drives by their very nature and job description should never be the only location for any sort of data precisely because of what you have encountered.
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So what is your suggested solution keeping in mind that I cannot afford do void my warranty by opening up the HDD?
 
Go through http://www.stellarinfo.co.in/

They will charge around 1200/- for analysis, after the analysis they will let you know whether the data can be recovered. If yes, then how much data, and folder structure of it and the charges. If you confirm the charges, they will proceed else return your HDD back.

Either way, don't even try to play with the HDD anymore, that will lessen the chance of Data Recovery.
 
If its movies or anything which can be downloaded from the net, don't bother wasting time with recovery. If its really important data which you want badly, take quotes from professional data recovery companies. Be prepared to pay a lot.

For future reference, keep two copies of each data that cannot be replaced on separate disks.
 
I am thinking of keeping the professional help as the last option because it seems a costly affair, is there anything at all that I can do to recover my data which won't cost me any money, some great software or website or anything at all?
 
There are 1000's of great softwares available but your HDD is not even detecting. The same problem as of mine. So there's no option.

And if you keep trying to plug in the HDD and wish for your luck that at some point it'd get detected, believe me it won't and even damage the HDD more which will lessen the chance of recovery and charge will increase.

I was in same situation as of you. So don't do all those things and yeah I researched a lot but finally I was forced to believe that I don't have any option except Data Recovery if I want those data back.
 
krishnandu said:
There are 1000's of great softwares available but your HDD is not even detecting. The same problem as of mine. So there's no option.

And if you keep trying to plug in the HDD and wish for your luck that at some point it'd get detected, believe me it won't and even damage the HDD more which will lessen the chance of recovery and charge will increase.

I was in same situation as of you. So don't do all those things and yeah I researched a lot but finally I was forced to believe that I don't have any option except Data Recovery if I want those data back.
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Can you please brief me with your HDD trouble, I might get to learn something from it.
 
sam9953 said:
So what is your suggested solution keeping in mind that I cannot afford do void my warranty by
Click to expand...

Get the hint from all the posts. There's no free lunch, i have not suggested any solution. If you value the warranty more than the data, forget the data. And the opposite, if the opposite. That is my suggestion.

Software is not magic. It can only work once the hardware is detected. Since you are not willing to access the internal native interface, you're hosed.
 
krishnandu said:
Same as yours, suddenly stopped detecting and started making click noise, and a type of magnetic field generated. That's all, tried for few hours and came to know it's dead, nothing can happen. Searched and called steller.[DOUBLEPOST=1383461438][/DOUBLEPOST]You can go through http://www.techenclave.com/communit...-hdd-working-like-magnet.151974/#post-1875271
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I went through your thread, in your case your HDD was out of warranty. But luckily mine is still under warranty. So finally I have decided of having a talk with the data recovery people and then getting a quote from them, if they charge too much I might scrap the idea of getting the data recovered and will directly get the HDD replaced.

BTW any idea how long will it take for Seagate to replace my HDD?
 
Data recovery process is not possible over USB or any other external interface, regardless of who is doing it. It may be required, as it will be in your case, judging from your description, to go to platter level which means dismantling of entire disk.

You are free to do whatever you want, but like I said, there is no free lunch.
 
cranky said:
Data recovery process is not possible over USB or any other external interface, regardless of who is doing it. It may be required, as it will be in your case, judging from your description, to go to platter level which means dismantling of entire disk.

You are free to do whatever you want, but like I said, there is no free lunch.
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Yeah seems like seeking Expensive professional help is the only resort left.
 
Stellar gave me a quotation of 60k for 300 Gb of data recovery. Similar situation as yours though in my case the magnetic platters seem to be mechanically sound but the PCB is toast. This quotation was without analysing the drive. I still have the drive sitting in my drawer and i plan to swap the pcb with a working drive and try my luck.
 
What are the options for data recovery when the HDD is being detected but you cannot access the drive. Just yesterday my Toshiba 1 TB went bust and it asks to be formatted before i can open the drive on the PC. Can i use a software to recover my data?
 
Yes. Laptop had whole disk encryption with 1 logical partition created after encryption. . I lost Windows password. IT asked me to decrypt to run password reset. However I lost the partition in the process. I used testdisk and was able to recover files.
 
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