monkeyseemonkeydo Posted March 4, 2013 Report Share Posted March 4, 2013 Right, so the wife dropped her 1TB portable HDD onto the block paving outside our house yesterday and it's now jammed. Taken it out of the casing and tried it in a SATA USB reader and it just sounds like the motor's stalled. Opened it up briefly and the actuator arm is jammed and not in the 'home' position but the platters appear in good condition and are completely intact. So here's the question- has anyone had to get data recovered from an HDD before (hardware issues not just software recovery)? I've been in touch with a few places today and the ballpark figure is ~£200 so I'm wondering if anyone has any experience or advice they can share. She's a teacher and the drive has a bunch of school work on it from her maternity leave and also pictures of our baby that she hasn't had backed up... Dumbass, I know. Help?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevinfor Posted March 4, 2013 Report Share Posted March 4, 2013 Sorry to say this but a company that specialize in data recovery is pretty much your only option. At least the only safe option, if it wasnt important stuff on there I guess you could just move the plates to a working HDD but that would be risky. Good luck man! Kevin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted March 4, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 4, 2013 Yeah, thought as much. Just wondered if anyone had a company they'd used before or even better a mate of a mate who can offer preferential rates as £200+ seems a bit on the steep side!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danny Posted March 5, 2013 Report Share Posted March 5, 2013 Id say £200 is cheap ive seen data recovery prices run into the thousands. Opening the drive probably wasn't a good idea. But the actuator arm should 'park' away from the platters when the drive is powered off. What the data recovery people will likely do is place the platters in a new identical drive inside a clean room. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted March 5, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2013 Opening the drive probably wasn't a good idea. But the actuator arm should 'park' away from the platters when the drive is powered off. What the data recovery people will likely do is place the platters in a new identical drive inside a clean room. Hehe, yeah I know... I was careful not to sneeze while it was open! The arm is sitting part way in and doesn't move when the drive is powered up so I take it it's that which is jamming the drive and preventing it spinning up. Most places seem to offer a free diagnosis and will provide a list of the recoverable files with a price list so I think once I choose a company then I'll see what they come back with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manuel Posted March 5, 2013 Report Share Posted March 5, 2013 this isnt going to help much, but I used to own a hard drive mp3 player - it used to get stuck on crashes... another sharp shock used to unstick it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted March 5, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2013 Yeah I've tried giving it a knock (not too roughly mind you) with no success but may give it another thwack before committing hundreds of quid to recovery! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomturd Posted March 5, 2013 Report Share Posted March 5, 2013 I know of someone who may be able to help, give it a couple of hours before you smack it with a hammer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted March 5, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2013 Sweet, let me know Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomturd Posted March 5, 2013 Report Share Posted March 5, 2013 Hmmm, no respense so far. Maybe its time for the hammer... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted March 5, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2013 Lol. I can wait . If all else fails I'll send it to one of the various companies and see what's recoverable and the costs involved and go from there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomturd Posted March 6, 2013 Report Share Posted March 6, 2013 If you can decypher: hi ok the portable hard drive is this by any-chance the western digital my passport this version has a usb connector inside not a normal sata connector the fault you have is more likely possible 1)spindle is locked down motor pushing down 2) the bottom head is touching the platter which stops it from turning if the actuator arm is not in its home position then the drive must had been on at the time it was dropped normal for safety the heads should go back into its park positions if the actuator arm is untouched and there no head-stack damaged then there a possible good recovery chance as the drive has been opened then recovery goes down to around a 45% to a full recovery as some drives have alignments built into them as for recovery price if you can find out what type of quotes they have had we might be able to do it better data recovery company will tell them as the drive is open it has to go into a clean room which can cost just alone around £400 and they will charge a fee just for looking at the drive they wont get this job done cheap and other companys will charge around £1,000 to £1500 turn around for this type of work is about two weeks or longer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted March 6, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 6, 2013 Ah fair enough Tom, cheers for that. The most complete quote I've had is £400+VAT from MjM which in theory includes diagnosis, recovery, spare parts and a replacement drive to return the recovered data on. They were advised by the guys at uni so I think if we go ahead with recovery I'll probably send it to them. I'm currently using a digital image recovery program to try and recover as many photos from our camera SD cards and depending on the outcome of that will decide whether it's worth doing anything with the drive or not but thanks for enquiring! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HippY Posted March 6, 2013 Report Share Posted March 6, 2013 wow, there could be some important data on that HDD :/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danny Posted March 6, 2013 Report Share Posted March 6, 2013 Maybe something for the future? http://www.backblaze.com/ or even https://www.dropbox.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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