I have an external hard drive which just took a on itself... so it seems.

I was using it, transferring data from it and it just crashed and burned. My laptop gave me an error, clicked OK and the drive was gone. Disconnected and reconnected and it clicks four times and the computer never recognizes it. Tried Disk Utility and no traces of it anywhere.

I sent an e-mail to Seagate to check if I can purchase a replacement circuit board. If the circuit board is not the issue, I'm afraid I'll have to shell out the $$$$ for data recovery... which leaves me here

Where's the cheapest place to send my hard drive if I need to recover ~100GB worth of data?

 

depends on the problem but it's usually very expensive. At least hundreds if not thousands of dollars and the fact that you need that much data may make it insanely expensive.....

:ibstogie:

 

http://www.salvagedata.com/

If you need it recovered, these guys are the best.
Saw some article/tour tour of what they do.
They stock thousands upon thousands of drives (take the plates out, and put them in new drive)
NASA used them!


Qestion:
When it died, did it make and grinding sound?
Sometimes its the usb enclosure as well... bad power, but sounds like the drive

Last resort if recovery is too expensive,
put it in two ziplock freezer bags, and put it in the freezer for like 12 hours
http://lifehacker.com/5515337/save-a...-freezer-redux

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• Barclays Capital
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• Avon Products, Inc.
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• Lawrence Metal Products
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• Marsh & McLennan
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• Biacore International AB
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• Claremont Printing & Copy
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• ABC
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• Peace Corps
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Fly to Arizona with it

 

 

 

Jefford's Data Recovery and Arachnid Extermination Services

In all seriousness, I would try some trial versions first to see if you can get it yourself. I like R-Studio and GetDataBackNTFS

 

Wow, that must have have taken a loooong time to type all that out.

 

I would try a few things first before forking over the big bucks for data recovery services. Have you tried a different connection interface USB to Firewire or Esata? I would even buy an identical enclosure and try putting the drive into it with a different power supply. Also ive seen the clicking sound come from a loose jumper on the drive. Its worth a shot to take the drive out of its enclosure and re-seat the circuit board connection, check the jumpers, put it back together and try using a firewire connection instead of USB or vice versa.

 

I had an external fail too, but the drive would spin but would not be recognizable to the computer, if you held it in your hands you can feel it spin. I took it to office depot and i told them about it, they tested it and said they can transfer the old date (about 150G) to a new external for $45, I believe it was. It depends what exactly failed on you external but I would look into it.

 

OP, generally on the externals if the drive sounds fine (no clicking, no grinding) and it spins, the problem is with the IC board or the USB/FW interface.

If you feel brave, google the device and how to open it up. Inside there is either a full desktop drive or a smaller laptop drive. Again, IF the drive is fine, you can just plug it into a computer as a second drive and get to all your data.

If the drive itself is bad (MFT/FAT corrupted), then you will need to use one of the programs available on the web. If there is more significant damage to the platters or the mechanics of the drive, it is going to cost you a lot of cookies to get your data.

 

Same thoughts, freezing also works sometimes


I C&P from their website.
Apparently the are the best at this...

 

Well, they sure are not going to advertise their services as "We are Second Best!"

 

^lol

 

The freezer method was a no-go

Not what I wanted to hear

Didn't hear a grinding sound, nor do I hear any when I plug it in. Just four clicks, then it stops making noise shortly thereafter.

Excuse my n00bness, but how would I recover the data if my computer won't recognize the drive to begin with?

The drive only has a mini-usb connection. The drive has no jumpers, the pins are there but no jumpers are connected.

I'll be visiting my local Office Depot tomorrow

The clicking doesn't persist, does this mean my chances of being okay are higher?

I did open the enclosure and there is a notebook drive in there... Specifically a Seagate ST9120821A Momentus 5400.2 Hard Drive

You lost me at... (*)

 

V6, is it a Pata (long flat 40 pin ribbon cable) or Sata ("L" shaped) small cable connection?

Whichever it is, connect it with the correct cable to your desktop computer w/o the enclosure (just the bare drive).

it should show up as a new data drive. Copy your shyt off to your desktop HDD and then replace it. If it doesn't show up in my computer, worry.