Hi, just seeing if I could get some recommendations for services that do data recovery from damaged portable hard drives? Based in Victoria, but open to interstate if they offer postage. I know that this is quite expensive to undertake, before choosing someone I thought I would check here to see others experience with this situation. Cheers
Data Recovery from Portable Hard Drive
futuresailors on 20/03/2019 - 07:42
Comments
What type of damage, drop, water, other?
i believe it is likely damaged heads
I just had a HDD fail with a clicking sound that indicated a stuck head. It was a 250GB disk that came with the microserver and was heavily used as a download drive.
After finding this solution online, I put the HDD in a couple of sandwich bags with a couple of packets of silica to absorb any moisture and placed it in the freezer overnight. The next day I reinstalled it in the microserver and was able to copy all the data, several hours later the head was getting stuck again.
Your mileage might vary, but you can repeat the process numerous times. Just be careful because water and electricity don't mix, so watch for condensation. As your HDD is portable, this might not be as much of an issue.
Obviously as others have mentioned there are software you can use to check, but if there is damage like a clicking noise then I'd definitely get professional help if it's critical.
For my clients I've previously used Technetics Data Recovery with quite a lot of success.
yep clicking noise so think its pretty serious. Thanks for the reference
That's a common and bad issue that can normally be fixed. A lot of people will say you can watch a YouTube tutorial to fix it but you can also cause irreversible damage to the hard drive.
My advice is speak to a recovery specialist if it's irreplaceable data.
Most likely the drive is fine but the enclosure is no good. You can buy a new enclosure for about $30 and move the drive across.
If you're capable you can try recovering yourself using TestDisk. I've used it several times with success before realising it was my HD dock that was doing the corruption.