Damaged hard drives

[#1procrastinator]

One of my 1TB external hard drives dropped whilst it was running a while back and I recently managed to access it using a program called DiskGetor. A couple of weeks ago, I had to replace my Mac's hard drive so I had to reinstall everything again. I tried accessing the 1TB hard drive using the program again but I noticed that it was missing some files so I got it to scan again and the hard drive seemed to cark it. It stopped making a weird sound and just went quiet. Not the program detects it as being a 2047GB drive and doesn't detect anything.

Now with the old Mac hard drive, I got one of those enclosures so I could connect it to a USB port and I first plugged it in whilst in Windows mode on my Mac. It booted the Bootcamp side of the old HD and I got the blue screen, so I tried it in OSX mode and I managed to access it and copy a few files but then it froze. I restarted and now it would only detect Bootcamp. restarted again and now it's undetected. Tried the Diskgetor program on it and it's detected as a 3. something GB generic drive...again, the drive's gone quiet. Before, it made a whirring, kind of whistling noise when I plugged it in.

What's going on?! Is there still a chance of recovering at least some data? Really desperate to recover some important files of the old Mac HD

Thanks

[datfatcat]

Hope this help

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:ZHbbmFnyjpYJ:www.hddrecovery.com.au/PDF/200ways.pdf+&hl=en&gl=au&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgQriiV0TP2JzRq2C9vE8ESs-nlSMXAer3J2QIgV0u3yRmzJBOnisTFj5MfrJfIBowVEYFqXvZhFJAjwkNkBEC03WxBrwFIAz1m_m7M_e77anSx_FHiwGH7fc4CckmruK23Bd9E&sig=AHIEtbQx0JyiWqt41fwETP1dyWk2NVL4OQ&pli=1


Edited: This is my 123th post

[#1procrastinator]

^ I came across that the other day, thanks though

Think I'm gonna have to take it to a specialist...I'm hesitant cause I've got some nasty sh!t on there lol.

nothing illegal of course

[paulsterio]

The thing with taking it to a specialist is you're going to have to pay a shit load of money.

What I suggest you do is if it just carked it without any sort of physical damage, you could probably replace the head in a dust-free environment, I would seriously recommend against it, but I've done it before personally and it worked - because one of my drives carked it and it just had semi-important data on it, so I took it apart and bought an identical model from MSY and changed the head over, managed to get everything off. It was only a 500 GB, so I only had like $60 to lose, and it was fun to see if it worked - but you could look into that if there's nothing too important on the hard drive and you're willing to take that risk.

[slothpomba]

Think I'm gonna have to take it to a specialist...I'm hesitant cause I've got some nasty sh!t on there lol.

I'm sure its not the first time they've seen nasty shit.

When this happened to me (i fried 2 drives) there were two choices. Find the exact drive and replace the parts on my own (this was very difficult) or send it to a company like above suggested. I did a lot of looking into it and theese guys seemed the cheapest and most on the level - http://www.payam.com.au/

[#1procrastinator]

The thing with taking it to a specialist is you're going to have to pay a shit load of money.

What I suggest you do is if it just carked it without any sort of physical damage, you could probably replace the head in a dust-free environment, I would seriously recommend against it, but I've done it before personally and it worked - because one of my drives carked it and it just had semi-important data on it, so I took it apart and bought an identical model from MSY and changed the head over, managed to get everything off. It was only a 500 GB, so I only had like $60 to lose, and it was fun to see if it worked - but you could look into that if there's nothing too important on the hard drive and you're willing to take that risk.

Yeah, I realised but the data's super important to me and I'm prepared to spend all my savings if that's what it takes. There's definitely mechanical/physical damage. Did your drive just die randomly or did it suffer physical damage?

@kingpomba: Haha, I was (half) kidding with the nasty stuff. it's more like the private thoughts and stuff I wrote that I don't want anyone reading. Hey, that's the company I emailed! Haven't gotten a quote cause they haven't checked it out yet but he said it could be anywhere from $250 to $2400. Did you end up getting your drives repaired?

[paulsterio]

Yeah, I realised but the data's super important to me and I'm prepared to spend all my savings if that's what it takes. There's definitely mechanical/physical damage. Did your drive just die randomly or did it suffer physical damage?

@kingpomba: Haha, I was (half) kidding with the nasty stuff. it's more like the private thoughts and stuff I wrote that I don't want anyone reading. Hey, that's the company I emailed! Haven't gotten a quote cause they haven't checked it out yet but he said it could be anywhere from $250 to $2400. Did you end up getting your drives repaired?

Well if it's super important to you then you should look into professional data recovery - but with me, the data was only semi-important, like it was just movies and music and other random stuff - so it was just a bit of fun to try and repair it - sorta like a little project.

My drive died randomly but I know there would have been physical damage because it was a head problem, but I'm not sure what happenned to it - probably just dodgy build quality.

[slothpomba]

@kingpomba: Haha, I was (half) kidding with the nasty stuff. it's more like the private thoughts and stuff I wrote that I don't want anyone reading. Hey, that's the company I emailed! Haven't gotten a quote cause they haven't checked it out yet but he said it could be anywhere from $250 to $2400. Did you end up getting your drives repaired?

I think it was something like 250-300 per drive. Just didn't seem worth it to me. It was mostly movies and not much at all that i would actually miss.

[iamtom]

Just kick it a few times.

Honestly if it's carked it it's probably not worth replacing.

[Mao]

Lesson learnt:

Backup, before you wish you had.

[#1procrastinator]

^ Haha, I'd actually been planning to get a HD to store my data on there for a while cause I barely had any space left...kept putting it off though cause I'm so damn lazy.

By the way, they wouldn't dob you in for having a crapload of electronic textbooks and movies,would they? lol

[Mao]

That's the beauty of full blowfish encryption. They don't even know what you are backing up.

[excal]

There's a saying - you don't have a backup unless you have three of them in three different locations...

For that sort of damage, you'd be looking at a clean room and a $3000-lighter wallet.