getting data from a broken hdd?

[Nick Smith]

is there anyway to get data from a broken laptop hard rive inexpensively? as we have a laptop hard drive with over 400 family photos from holidays and the like. and my mum really wants them back.

we asked a company how much this would cost and they said it would cost around 2000 quid to do, so we want to find a cheaper way of doing it as we really cant dont want to fork out 200 quid.

any help is welcome

thanks

Nick

[dave87]

When you say broken, how exactly did it break?

If it's a head crash, specialist data recover may be your only option. If its a fried circuit board you'd need to get hold of a similar (if not identical) circuit board (ie another drive).

Dave

[Nick Smith]

the disc just wont spin i think...not 100% sure though as i havent actually had much to do with it...

[dave87]

Won't spin could be a busted motor or a fried controller chip. Does it recognise in the Bios?

[Nick Smith]

nope not at all, atleast it didnt 3 years ago, its been out of my laptop for 3 years

[killie99]

NOt recognised in the bios isn't necessarily bad news. There is usually a fuse on the little board on the drive, near the power connector - if you can find that it must just be blown and needs replaced (it'll be a surface mount fuse and won't look like a normal fuse!). If it's not that then you need to find the exact ame drive somewhere and swap the board to see if it that helps.

[Blitzen]

This is along shot but i know its worked for many many people.

Place the HD in a freezer bag (air tight) then place it in the freezer for a few days.

Then, connect it up (make sure you dont get any damp in there).

[Nox]

freezer trick won't help if its not being detected - Take a look at www.hexus.net and search in the archive there - they had a review/write up about a company that will do data restores from dead hd's - cost ultimately was determined by what was wrong with it rather than a 'blanket £2k' if i remember correctly.

Nox

[Koolpc]

Looks like it will cost big bucks to get your data back.

[Splash]

Hold on, the drive failed 3 years ago and you're looking to retrieve data now? Crikey...

As has been pointed out if this needs to go to data recovery it will be very expensive. Might be worth picking up a laptop hard drive adapter (you can pick them up off ebay for next to nothing) and trying to hook it up to an IDE channel in a desktop PC if you haven't already tried this - you should at least be able to tell if it's spinning up from this. Worst case scenario you waste a fiver or so...

[UniRecovery]

£2000 is a mid-day robbery.
Feel free to call us UniRecovery on 08000 439 549, we shall do our very best to assist you.

[Oakey]

£2000 is a mid-day robbery.
Feel free to call us UniRecovery on 08000 439 549, we shall do our very best to assist you.

Er, no offense but you appear to charge £70+ VAT per file.

At 400 photos that's £28,000 + £4900 VAT.

[MadduckUK]

hahaha, im in the wrong job!

[jamena]

it all depends how badly the drive has crashed. The hdd in my mothers old macbook G4 went one day holding her work files and personal files to ransom (I hope she backs stuff up now!) but after leaving it to rest (mild form of the "freezer trick" only without the freezer) it came back to life so the data was quite easily recovered. In the intervening period she did however purchase a brand new laptop because the amount quoted to get the old one up and running again was pretty damn steep. I got it going for the price of a hard drive and dinner for two

2 grand sounds pretty steep to me! ...which reminds me that I must check that my mum is backing up important files now! :S

never heard of any of these companies but try googling hard drive recovery ...
http://www.easyrecovery.co.uk/Hard_Drive_Recovery.htm £250 for example. Might be worth a try?

[UniRecovery]

Er, no offense but you appear to charge £70+ VAT per file.

At 400 photos that's £28,000 + £4900 VAT.

this is a clear misunderstanding of our price policy. The file repair cost, is for and only, if you have one file corrupt such as sage file and your drive is working; hence the cost of repairing the file is £70.
Please note that an average HDD may contain over 300,000 files including the operating system files. Does that mean that we charge £21,000,000 for one hard disk?
Surely NOT

[Blitzen]

£2000 is a mid-day robbery.
Feel free to call us UniRecovery on 08000 439 549, we shall do our very best to assist you.

What is this???
Surely this isnt a forum for drumming up business.