Advark

If your drive still spins, I suggest you go to this site: https://www.grc.com/cs/prepurch.htm

SpinRite is a phenomenal program for repairing hard drives. It can keep them healthy as
well as repairing. Read up on it all you can.

ChrisKet Loc: Orange, CA

Like others have stated, if the drive can be seen by your computer, you can try EaseUS to recover your files yourself. Their software is free to download that will do a deep search and let you know which files it can recover. If you like the results, you can pay $69.95 to get a key to unlock and restore. My 1T Silicon Power A60 quit working on my iMac which could see it, but not mount it. My hubby’s Windows PC saw it and I was able to recover my files there. The only thing I didn’t get back were my video files. I did have a secondary backup process in place using Amazon Photos, but the upload/download speeds are extremely slow. The EaseUS solution was such a relief for me. Good luck!

tcthome Loc: NJ

I have had a quote from a small Computer store of $100.. I ended buying a power pack & cable from them for $25.00. I haven't tried yet. My brother had done it this way before & is suposed to be no big deal but, he builds his own copmuters.

Keven Loc: Grandview, WA

I have a failed 1TB hard drive and contacted DrivesSavers in CA. They told me it was a minimum of $700 and depending on how much work they had to do could go up to $3,500. Needless to say I still have my HD waiting to find a cheaper price. I will be sending an email to Tech2u.com to see what their costs will be.

flferg Loc: Driftwood, TX

http://www.esaitech.com/coolmax-usb-2.0-to-sata-ide-converter-cable-adapter-ada-2020-otb.html?pk_campaign=ga-pla&gclid=EAIaIQobChMItuSU2L-m3AIVlY-zCh0bmwFvEAQYASABEgIMqPD_BwE

I have used a Coolmax device similar to the one shown in the link above to recover data off drives with corrupted boot sections, a common problem with pc's running windows. The computer won't boot but if there is no mechanical damage it can probably be recognized by a device like the one shown in the link. Just hook it to a usb port on a working computer, plug in your hd and turn on the power. If the subject hd only has a damaged boot sector it will be recognized as a drive by your working computer. Navigate to the drive and copy or transfer any of the info you desire to recover. After you recover your data you may be able to format the drive and reuse it. If you have valuable stuff on the drive and are minimally computer literate it is probably worth $35.

You will notice the device listed also has a button you can use to backup the drive. If you decide to use this function I would not backup the boot sector on the drive. I have had 5 hd's fail due to boot sector corruption over the last 15 years and have always recovered my data using the method described.

Send me an email if you have any questions and good luck.

Joe 88

This web site has a lot of downloads that will help you. I use a lot of them its the best $20. you ever spend. https://www.ashampoo.com/en/usd/pin/0173/tools-and-utilities/Ashampoo-Photo-Recovery

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Drive Savers. $1200, but that was a few years ago.

You can try some of the various data recovery utilities (Google 'data recovery utilities for [your operating system/platform]). If the drive is mechanically okay, but the directory structure is corrupt, a decent utility can REBUILD the directory. It can take several hours or days, depending on the size of the drive, but you might just get most of your files back.

If you plug in a drive and it makes a clicking or scraping noise, though, STOP. Turn it off and decide whether it's worth the cost of recovery by a third party, and whether there is a security risk in doing so.

Drives tend to last about three years. After that, you're in the risky zone for drive failure. I tend to replace my drives at five years, and keep backups of everything.

cambriaman Loc: Central CA Coast

If the failure mode of the drive can be determined, the recovery may not be as much as some have mentioned in this thread. I had a drive go bad, the failure being its internal power supply. The tech poered the drive from a bench power supply and recovered my image files. It is $65 a couple of years ago. And, yes, recovery from a truly "crashed" drive may be very expensive or even not possible.

DanielB Loc: San Diego, Ca

For all intensive purposed it Crashed. It's spinning up but the computer no longer sees it and you can see from the read light that something isn't quite right. That's the best I can tell you. MY main question is has anyone sent their drive in for recovery regardless of what whet wrong - quite/crash/explode...

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

Yes. I did, and I have had about ten Clients who did.
When the data is important, cost usually is not an object.
Of course, my income stream is pretty nice, and the income stream of my Clients
is pretty nice, which is why they hire me.

Recovering 2TB several years ago cost me a little over $700. Well worth it because the data was my life from 1955 to 1993 when I got my first digital camera.

Base_fiddle

I had a red Buffalo exterior drive that crocked on me about 10 years ago. I don't remember the capacity of the drive, but it had a lot of my pics on it. I got an estimate of at least $500 from an East coast shop and an estimate from a California-based shop for about $200. I went with the lower price because the salesman sounds honest and sincere. Hindsight says that I made a mistake because after roughly $700 and only about 50% complete, I stopped the California shop from doing any more work. Now I have two or three backups.

preacherman Loc: Milton/Pensacola, FL

Take it to a local small computer business, get estimate to see if they can transfer the data to an external hard drive. Usually low price if it can be done.

OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

Have you tried putting the drive into a new case, many times the circuit board in the unit goes bad, it's happened to me, I bought an external case , put the drive in and it worked fine....You could swap it out with an older drive to see if it's actually the drive itself

Hamltnblue Loc: Springfield PA

The process is actually very simple to someone who knows how to work on computers. I've done it for several people over the years.
If you don't have the know how, don't try it.
You use a tower style computer that has the same type of interface as the drive.
The bad drive is connected to a spare port on the motherboard, and power supply while the power is off.
You then boot the computer as normal. Most times if the drive is still spinning and not physically damaged, it will show up in windows explorer as a drive.
From there you access the file structure like any other storage drive. Just drag the files over to a usb drive or similar.
If the drive isn't recognized, there are a few further steps that will require some more knowledge.
Good Luck.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Or, you can use this. I do. It works on every bare drive I have:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/U3NV2SPATA/