Lost 8 years of my kiddies lives :-(

kabayiri

Mashmallow wrote: »

anyone any recommendations as to which recovery company to go with?

The first step is to realise that you don't have one problem, you have two.

The first is obviously the hard drive.

The second is that by your own admission, the technical side of PCs and hard drives is not a strong point of yours (which is understandable).

I honestly think you need to find some local help. Find someone like Percy, but in your area, but to make sure they don't go all gung ho and cavalier, get them to read comments on here and explain what they would do carefully before doing something.

One thing that is worth investigating more is understanding the report from the local shop in more detail. It's obviously not comprehensive, and in a polite way the shop is trying to point you to engineers with more specialist skills in this area.

The reason the specialist companies quote figures of £500 is because they dismantle the complete hard drive in a 'clean room' environment; reconstruct the hard drive in a temporary assembly, and then extract the data. It's a niche market; it deals with often valuable assets - namely data, and it commands a price accordingly.

Without knowing the detail, it does sound like the drive controller is working, because the firm were able to retrieve some data. Hard drives contain multiple 'platters' (disks basically); these have to remain separate and heads read the data on each platter. One of these platters could be damaged, but another possibility already pointed out, is that there is heat build up taking place when the drive is spinning, possibly due to physical damage. It may be that something like spinrite will work.

Have a cup of tea, decide how you want to progress, and perhaps suggest it on here?

Oh...and good luck

amcluesent

As the drive failed after a physical shock, my money is on a head crash where the reading arm has bounced off the spinning disk and damaged either or both of the head or disk surface. The only way to get the data back is to replace the heads = costly professional attention.

pstones578

Mashmallow wrote: »

Hello everyone.

I am posting on this forum as I do not know where to turn? I have lost all my kiddies pictures since birth as youngest sat on my laptop while it was switched on.

I put my laptop into my local computer shop, but they said the hard drive is corrupt and it will need to be sent of to a specialist company to be taken apart in a dust-free environment, at a cost of around £500!

I just thought I'd come on this board and see if anyone could give me some constructive advice on what to do/what company to use?

I feel like my world has came crashing down my ears...my kiddies are my world and losing this data has been heartbreaking.

Thank you for reading my post X

Just to add....I live in North East Scotland, so not alot of decent technical places around :-(

Just recover them from your good off-site backup. Job done!

VoucherMan

Mashmallow wrote: »

I know....back up back up!! Hard lesson to learn now :-(

pstones578 wrote: »

Just recover them from your good off-site backup. Job done!

Someone got out of wrong side of bed this morning?
Op had long since said there was no backup (as on the other thread where you made the same unhelpful comment.)
Effective used of copy and paste though!

Donnie

nearlyrich wrote: »

Accidental damage is only covered if you bought a warranty to cover it, warranty doesn't cover your data in any case so don't go down that route or you might get a new laptop but they won't attempt to recover anything.

Toshiba has a warranty that does. Just an aside.

Hammyman

gonzo127 wrote: »

hm before you go recommending potentialy expensive solutions lets try and see if we can get this problem sorted for free

Lets not. Whilst its very noble of you, it massively increases the likelihood of the data being lost to the point of being irretrievable, something which increases tenfold if the person doing it has to come on a forum and ask how.

tomsolomon

totalsolutions wrote: »

My money is on Spinrite. It does not recover "data" but better, it corrects the drive "surface" where the data sits. Looking at the surface deems the data good or bad and rewrites any corrupt/unreadable data to a good part of the drive.

If the drive is in any way faulty Spinrite will not proceed or stop if it feels unsafe to continue for any reason. Tons of testimonials on Steve's site. https://www.grc.com send him an email?

It may be very good, but anything with the name 'spinrite' to me smacks of Samsung, and that doesn't fill me with joy joy feelings of happiness when it comes to hard drives.....;)

Hammyman

tomsolomon wrote: »

ERM is it just me, or does this sound like a complete blag?

If the hard drive is corrupt why does it need sending away???

If the hard drive was physically damaged then fair enough, but this sounds a bit fishy to me. I would most definitely get a second opinion...

No, its common sense. The more attempts you make, the higher the chance of cocking it up even more.

If the hard drive is corrupt, there's still plenty of ways of recovering data however not using software which costs less than the companies charge for such a service.

Hammyman

totalsolutions wrote: »

My money is on Spinrite. It does not recover "data" but better, it corrects the drive "surface" where the data sits. Looking at the surface deems the data good or bad and rewrites any corrupt/unreadable data to a good part of the drive.

Oh. Dear. How can it correct the drive surface? Do you actually have any clue whatsoever how a hard drive works? How does it look at the surface? Does it have a built in microscope?

And it re-writes the data. NOT GOOD as it can corrupt it even more.

TO DO THE JOB PROPERLY requires the platters removing and copies of the data made from them. And then you work on the copies, not the original.

tomsolomon

Hammyman wrote: »

No, its common sense. The more attempts you make, the higher the chance of cocking it up even more.

If the hard drive is corrupt, there's still plenty of ways of recovering data however not using software which costs less than the companies charge for such a service.

All the more reason to take it to someone who knows what they are doing before the drive dies completely.....