Any Independently verified HARD DRIVE RECOVERY experts?

johnny_c

i was going to try the free seagate sotware , which lets you access the files (if it can) then download the full software to recover them which actually seems a very genuine approach... but how do can you know if its physical damage?

closed

by looking at the platter in a "clean room"

seatools is not recovery software, it's diagnostics

There are free undelete tools like recuva, but your problem appears beyond that - but as I keep trying to allude to, if you had the data on another drive at some point, recuva deep scan may be able to find them AND depending on drive model, there may be a firmware issue.....

johnny_c

closed wrote: »

by looking at the platter in a "clean room"

issue.....

Of course - but Seagate are advising consumers to try their software UNLESS in the case of physical damage. WHo has a clean room to know this!


I am also looking at that firmware fix...

> No the data was only on the external. i was using it as a master - mistake!

I see there is seatools , and ''seagate file recovery software'' both listed. I was going to try the file recovery system. If it can, it will find the files (for free) and then you pay to buy the 'full' program which recovers the files.


THe drive is recognised, and whirrs on load up, and doesnt click, so i dont know if that maens it is physical or not?

closed

software recovery programs tend to do more or less the same thing, so the seagate file recovery software may be very similar in functionality to free stuff available, ie recuva etc.

Seatools should indicate the status of the drive, eg smart status.

noises and beeps are the only obvious indicators to hd crash, which is obviously more likely if it has been dropped or opened outside a clean room.

johnny_c

Thanks for your time..

think i might try the seatools, and see what it says before perhaps contacting seagate about a recovery by themselves. I'm prepared to pay , but i cant throw money at it . I wanted to make the most educated choice before going with someone..

goodnight

agrinnall

johnny_c wrote: »

> No the data was only on the external. i was using it as a master - mistake!

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with using an external drive as your master, the hardware is going to be pretty much the same as an internal drive, but your mistake was in not treating that master as if the data was on an internal drive and making regular backups of it.

poppellerant

Using SeaTools, what is the model of the drive and current firmware?

Have you tried looking at how healthy the drive is? You can do this with CrystalDiskInfo.

Mondez

IMO, you shouldn't be trying to do any data recovery of the files themselves on the damaged drive, the only thing you should try to do to the drive is take an image of it, either to a file or directly to another disc. All the messing around just put more wear on the disk and reduced the chances of getting anything back. All file recovery and data repair attempts should be done on an image of the drive.
To take the image, you want to take a raw image of it. The live linux recovery discs usually come with a command line program called ddrescue and I have had good success using it to image or clone failing drives. Of course it isn't all that user friendly, but disk recovery can be something of a black art anyway.

duggan1

johnny_c wrote: »

Some folders now say fatal hard drive error, where before the belfast expert looked at it, this never appeared. And i cannot copy the files. it just takes forever and then says failure.

Would be interested to know who this expert is, mainly so we never use him

We've used ontrack before and find them to be very good, although expensive.

I_have_spoken

Anyone quoting less than £1,000 is a numptie