Well, it would seem all things silicon-based have some sort of personal vendetta against me as of late, and, as all bad things come in 'three's', the triumvirate is complete leading me to hope and believe that this latest blow is the last to come.

My WD back-up drive is on the fritz. While I can see my folders and the properties note the appropriate size, I cannot open any of the files, be it music, photos, or anything of the MS Office-origin, etc.

That being said, I need to have this recovered before this drive becomes the donor for a new set of coasters. Whom do you recommend I send this drive out to for repair?

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the other two were a bunk Boyo VTK350 backup camera and an Arc Audio 2500-XXK amplifier.

 

Anywhere you send it is going to charge you like $1000 or more.

 

First quote is $600.

This is like being held hostage.

 

I had a hard drive fail on me, and if it wasn't for the years of work I had put in a software project I was working on, and potentially losing all my pictures of my son, I would have never shelled out the $1800 to ADR for the Recovery. Since then I had backups of all my PC's running every night. I got kind of slack in maintaining the backups these past few months, and almost got burnt again after I accidentally downloaded the AntiVirus Live virus after accidentally clicking on one of the ads on Azine. The thing is my anti Virus and Spy bot caught it and warned me but I was clicking so fast I didn't even pay attention to what was doing until it was too late. Six hours later I got it all cleaned up.

 

PROBLEM: Dying Hard drive
SOLUTION: Place in -30C freeze at work for +24hrs, pack in cooler, sprint home
RESULT: All files recovered, drive failed again 4 hours post-thaw

Awesome.

 

Well done! I was going to suggest something similar. I brought my laptop and USB enclosure over to a buddy's house not too long ago to recover his drive. We just put the drive in the freezer for a bit with the USB and power cables going to the laptop on the counter next to it. Worked like a charm.

 

The good ol freezer trick

 

so how is it that the freezer trick works?

i know people that did it with the red ring of death on their xbox 360s.

 

I believe the theory is that it causes errant mechanical components to shrink, which would cause them to operate closer to original spec...

RROD was another thing altogether, that was CPU failure due to MS's shitty heatsink, easily fixable with the 'X-Brace' before MS admitted faulty design.

I was sure to throw a secondary set of fans along with an OE upgrade when I opened mine up.

 

That's one of the things. Long ago when I worked for Seagate we had a series of hard drives that was prone to overheating issues due to a faulty bearing. The freezer trick worked quite well for recovering data on those. Unfortunately, USB wasn't in existance yet, so it was a little tougher to do.

 

That freezer shit actually works?! I tried it with another failed drive I had, but I didn't leave it in the freezer the whole time and connect it to my laptop while it was still in there. I guess it wouldn't hurt to try it again.

 

I am not shitting you, this really worked!!! I will say this - my HD was in what seemed to be the very early stages of failure...I am sure there are point of no return, but fortunately, mine did not cross said proverbial line in the sand.

GL, man...GO FOR IT!!!

 

If you can see the files though, what is the freezer trick going to accomplish? If the hard drive was having a hard time spinning, or the drive head was acting up, I can sorta see it - but what would it accomplish for data corruption?

I'd try the freezer trick as a last resort as there is a decent change you'll kill it for good.

- Frank

 

Frank

I have done the freezer trick in the office, one of the DFU's that we work with had customer data on a drive and fried it. It worked like a charm for me to get the data off the drive. I acutally ran the recovery with the drive still in the freezer in the kitchenette plugged in with the USB IDE adapter.