lost info on external hard drive (1 Viewer)

[jaygee]

I have an external hard drive that suddenly is not recognized on any of my computers (3).
I can hear the drive whirring (not clicking) and the blue light flashes but as it is not connecting so obviously something is wrong. I have some very precious photos on there (my son) and a few important documents.
Anyone any experience of using a company to get this info off the hard drive?
I contacted one place on the internet and they came back with a price of £300
it's a WD Elements 1TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - having searched for a fix i can now see how unreliable these units are. I now use web storage................

 

[Gromett]

£300 sounds about right for a mechanically problematic hard drive.

You should see the bill I got for recovering a 3 disk raid 5 array of 2TB hard disks And that wasn't a mechanical failure.

If you shop around you may find cheaper, however the cheaper places tend to just use software and will say the data was unrecoverable if the software don't work. The cheaper places you also run the risk of losing the data totally because they chuff the job up.

Look for a reputable firm and pay the price if the data is that valuable to you.

The company I used I couldn't recommend. They took 2 weeks even though I had paid for express. They messed me about big time.

If I was going to do this again I would go for a decent company like Kroll Ontrack. Not cheap but very very good.

 

[Allanm]

If its a WD, then the likelihood is that the disc itself is fine, its the electronics that have packed up. I had the same with a WD MyBook 500gb. I took the disc out and connected it to an external dock and got all the info off it fine.
Worth a try.
Of course, to balance it out, I had another one and it was the disc that was faulty, not the housing. I was still able to connect the bare drive to the dock and get most of the info off though.
Allan

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[Wildman]

If its a WD, then the likelihood is that the disc itself is fine, its the electronics that have packed up. I had the same with a WD MyBook 500gb. I took the disc out and connected it to an external dock and got all the info off it fine.
Worth a try.
Of course, to balance it out, I had another one and it was the disc that was faulty, not the housing. I was still able to connect the bare drive to the dock and get most of the info off though.
Allan

ditto just sorted my 500gig WD elements drive the same way. if its not a WD drive then this is recommended
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