HDD Recovery

[Tobeman]

Chaps

I call on you in my (my girlfriend's) hour of need!

Having dropped her Samsung RV510 laptop last night, while on, she appears to have stuffed her hard drive. Naturally, she can't remember the last time she saved anything to an external source and she's got work, photos and the usual sentimental stuff on there that she'd rather have back.

The Hitachi drive itself still displays in BIOS, but won't boot, and won't be read over USB on my PC via an external SOHOUSB Magic Bridge I had lying around. It wasn't initially making a click-of-doom, but having tried again tonight it now appears to be doing so. I've recorded the noise it now makes when turning on: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gttnbuh9ex...oice%20001.3ga (recorded from my phone, it opens in Media Player Classic and probably VLC too)

Anything I can try, and, once I've exhausted them (assuming they don't work), any recommendations of any data recovery experts this can be sent to?

Thanks very much.

[Splash]

Listening to that audio: it's fooked. Do nothing more with it (certainly don't power it on, likely to make matters worse). I'd suggest you have a sit down and think about how much the data is worth, because it's almost certainly going to cost a fortune (small or otherwise) in data recovery but that sounds like a head crash to me (hence not to power it up - head in contact with the media while spinning is *very* bad). As for recommendations? You could try Disklabs, but that's not an endorsement from me: it's just the first company that sprang to mind.

Then you can teach her all about backups

[SUMMONER]

If you are not going to send it off for professional data recovery, try putting it into a freezer bag then place it into the freezer for 2hours. Take it out and immediately hook it up to the USB adapter and try to access it. You would be surprised how often that trick has worked for me in the past.

[Agent]

The freezer trick is useful for when the bearings start to go, but I've got to agree with Splash on this one - that sounds like a typical head crash.

This shouldn't really happen on any modern laptop HDD as free fall sensors have been around for a while and massively minimise the chances of this happening

If the head is in contact with the disk - it's dead without insanely expensive equipment (basically, forget it). If the mechanics are knackered, it's still expensive, but a less than the former.

There is another option. I've done this a couple of times for people, but it still costs money and you'll lose two disks:

*Open the broken HDD to see if the heads have damaged the disk surface, if not...
*Buy the same model HDD off Ebay or new (working 2nd hand is best to minimise costs)
*Open this up and swap over the platters
*Blow the entire thing out with compressed air, and seal as fast as possible
*Realise that even if the BIOS sees the disk, you can access it and read data off it, the disk is already dead due to being opened in an unclean environment.
*Get the data off ASAP you can - doing a disk image dump is best and worry about dealing with the actual files later

This really is a last attempt though if you can't afford recovery costs and I must stress again that you effectively kill the second disk, even if it works at the time. You'd never want to put data on it for sure.

The method can be cheaper than some quotes from data recovery places, so if you know it's going in the bin, consider it. I've had success with 2 drives in the past using this method.

[Fortune117]

The freezer trick is useful for when the bearings start to go, but I've got to agree with Splash on this one - that sounds like a typical head crash.

This shouldn't really happen on any modern laptop HDD as free fall sensors have been around for a while and massively minimise the chances of this happening

If the head is in contact with the disk - it's dead without insanely expensive equipment (basically, forget it). If the mechanics are knackered, it's still expensive, but a less than the former.

There is another option. I've done this a couple of times for people, but it still costs money and you'll lose two disks:

*Open the broken HDD to see if the heads have damaged the disk surface, if not...
*Buy the same model HDD off Ebay or new (working 2nd hand is best to minimise costs)
*Open this up and swap over the platters
*Blow the entire thing out with compressed air, and seal as fast as possible
*Realise that even if the BIOS sees the disk, you can access it and read data off it, the disk is already dead due to being opened in an unclean environment.
*Get the data off ASAP you can - doing a disk image dump is best and worry about dealing with the actual files later

This really is a last attempt though if you can't afford recovery costs and I must stress again that you effectively kill the second disk, even if it works at the time. You'd never want to put data on it for sure.

The method can be cheaper than some quotes from data recovery places, so if you know it's going in the bin, consider it. I've had success with 2 drives in the past using this method.

You need special screwdrivers to get the right torque on the screws too, otherwise the platter won't spin properly, right?

[Agent]

You need special screwdrivers to get the right torque on the screws too, otherwise the platter won't spin properly, right?

You could use a torque wrench if needed but I never torqued them to any measurement, just used a bit of common sense

If you're lucky, you can just swap the heads directly as they are normally easier to access. The drives I did it on had a stupidly placed ribbon cable which meant this was impossible sadly . It really depends on what you find when you crack the drive open.

[Wam7]

Yes pretty much as Agent said, in the past I've used the freezer method, Spinrite and GetBackData NTFS to repair and retrieve drives but that clicking is a sure sign of something terminal or very hard and expensive to retrieve stuff.
(That reminds me, I must do a back up...)