Computer guru's needed!

[mudrinner4ever]

hey guys,
i have a slight problem! i bought an external hard drive a while back. i didnt relize that the hard drive doesnt have a fan and they over heat. so i talked to some buddies and they said that it is possible to recover all the files depending on how bad the disks are. i have all my music, over 13gigs, all pics, all documents on there(i forgot one step of backing everything up). do any of you now of a software program that can pull all the files off? one of my buddies said there is a free program around here somewere. can someone hook me up, please!!! thanks in advance!

Luke

 

[Robb]

Is the HD now dead? IE, it stopped working?


If it is dead, recovering the data is an expensive process done by pros.......not a software program.

 

[Trikster]

Check this...

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2005/12/hard-drive-recovery-utilities-when-you.html

 

[Thorsteenster]

yeah, if the drive wont spin up your looking at alot more than a program. its usb or firwire? does your pc recognize it?

 

[mudrinner4ever]

when i plug it in i here it grinding(like the disks are rubing). the PC does not recognize it. does anyone have an estimate on price for the recovery if done by someone? can i get it done at like circuitcity or bestbuy?

 

[Thorsteenster]

i doubt it, dumb geeks couldnt recover data from a working HD on a laptop my sister brought into them. data recovery probably wont be cheap, i seriously doubt your data will be worth the expense. did you buy a complete setup or your own case and drive and put em together? seems the case should have had a fan if its needed to run and definately should have if its a take-it-out-of-the-box-and-plug-it-in type.

is it a 2.5 or a 3.5 drive?

 

[Trikster]

when i plug it in i here it grinding(like the disks are rubing). the PC does not recognize it. does anyone have an estimate on price for the recovery if done by someone? can i get it done at like circuitcity or bestbuy?

You would probably do better to search the web on finding a place to do data recovery. If the drive is grinding, I don't even know how well this will work (unless one of the read heads just slipped off the disk and can be put back without damage). Last time I checked for data recovery, it was a few hundred dollars. Granted this was maybe 7 years ago, so I would imagine that the prices have gone down.

Good luck!

 

[BUBBA069]

You can try data recovery, but your best bet would be to take the drive out of the cage set the jumper to SLAVE and hook it up inside the PC to try and get the data. Your USB drive bridge (the USB hook up in the cage) could be whats dead and the drive is next.

If you can get it to work that way then last ditch effort take the drive out of the cage, set the drive jumpers to SLAVE put it in the freezer for about an hour.

While the drive is chilling you turn your pc off, open the case and get the cabling ready to hook the drive up in the case.

Take the drive out of the fridge, hook it up, boot the PC then QUICKLY yank the critical files off the drive and on to the PC's main drive. You will get one shot at this, may be two if your lucky.

 

[turbotrauma]

when i plug it in i here it grinding(like the disks are rubing). the PC does not recognize it. does anyone have an estimate on price for the recovery if done by someone? can i get it done at like circuitcity or bestbuy?

if you accidently formatted the drive then sometimes you can get software that will recover the lost data

however - if it's grinding -

if the platter and reading head have made contact you're screwed. the only option would be to send it off and pay $2,000+ for a company like drivesavers to fix it for you. they have the ability to remove the platters and extract the data that isn't damaged. i was a pc tech for hewlett-packard for several years, we sent end users to driversavers all the time.

http://www.drivesavers.com/

 

[mudrinner4ever]

lookin like the best thing to do is return it as a "defulty product." all that was on there was some word documents(not a big deal), pics(which still happen to be on the main drive) and 13+ gigs of music(thats wat i want!!!). so i may just return it and start the collection all over unfortinatly!