Sons Hitachi hard drive fell off draw and not makes clicking sound and seems broken

Jaxt

Got this for my son at xmas and hes backed his uni coursework on to it .Its awash with 5 years of stuff, films hes made for his showreel for uni etc and he's just phoned me panicking cos it seems to be now dead an y ideas for recovery of his data?Hes just informed me some of it is only on there now as he's been backing up and clearing his backlog on his pc. I can't believe its only stored on this and is nowhere else , just said to him what happens if it was lost at uni for example and its never entered his head.Any advice greatly received

Myser

Some of the Hitachi external drives are really fragile.

Try leaving it off for a while to cool down. If the drive head has stuck, a light tap may release it. Don't tap too hard though!

If none of the above work, depending on what is stored on the drive, you may be able to use a recovery service where they remove the physical disk platters and recover the data. This can be costly especially if he has a deadline.

Many students run out of space on their computer/laptop hard-drive due to storing lots of music/junk etc. They then start to rely on the external hard-drive space. It's always a good idea to make a backup of important files on another USB pen drive or online storage.

pcombo

The drive is ready for the bin sadly.

Jaxt

just been on phone to him and hes emailing a recovery specialist , hes just said 470 gb of music film etc , god knows how.

pcombo

take it the 470gb of film and music is from somewhere like itunes

Jaxt

I hope it is he's 19 now and it's from his pc from 14 onwards so lots of stuff but he's doing tv film production at uni so a lot of data from hd film making which he's been on with for a few years , all irreplaceable
He,s not a fan of iTunes else his music would have been backed up on there too.any more feedback or recommendations on who to go for recovery would be gratefull for.

John_Gray

It's really quite surprising how many people think that computer equipment (unlike other consumer electronics) will work reliably for ever, so there's no need to back up its data...

robmar0se

John_Gray wrote: »

It's really quite surprising how many people think that computer equipment (unlike other consumer electronics) will work reliably for ever, so there's no need to back up its data...

I agree John, but if you have or had kids, you'd know that teenagers aren't exactly risk averse - school of hard knocks comes to mind?

Anyway to the matter in hand, I agree with previous posters that the chances of normal recovery are slim. If the drive was on/connected when it was dropped, you have what is called a head crash - when the head hits the platter.

I have had admittedly a different manufacturer (WD) external drives go AWOL, and in this case it was the small PCB inside that had blown. You could try extracting the hdd and try direct connecting it to a PC and see if you get any joy (doing this wold invalidate any warranty of course). Have to say though that I wouldn't be hopeful.

I don't have any exper3ience of these outfits that will retrieve data, as usually punters, find the costs too much, we are usually talking £100's.

macman

Sorry to state the blindingly obvious, but a 'back up' is not a back up if the original is then deleted...
470GB of data is I'm afraid going to cost several hundreds if forensic recovery is required, I recently got a quote for somebody for this on a 500GB drive and the quote was just under £500. Exactly the same scenario-they knocked it off a desk.

John_Gray

robmar0se wrote: »

I agree John, but if you have or had kids, you'd know that teenagers aren't exactly risk averse - school of hard knocks comes to mind?

And there was me thinking that one of the functions of parents was to try to educate their children in the important things in life...! (However bolshie they might be.)

CoolHotCold

MacMan is right, it'll cost at least half a grand for a reliable recovery specialist. The cost for this is because it has to be disasembled in a clean room, (Standard household air is about Clean room Class 1,000,000 specification and data recovery should be done in as clean a environment as possible) I recommend Kroll Ontrack Recovery as they operate in Class 100 Clean Rooms.

That said, with videos and music it will be VERY hit and miss due to the fact it doesn't take all the data to be damaged to make it unusable, just a small portion. And from what you're saying (Grinding/clunking/scratching noises it sounds like a head failure (or skipping prehaps). The more it's used the harder it becomes to recovery the data and the more damage is done to it.

It's not data backup if it's only stored on one location, unfortunately many people don't realize this and learn the hard way.