Drive recovery options?

[Spork]

Anybody got a drive recovery company they use? Trying to help out my sister, she has a friend with an external drive (seagate) that has died, when you plug it in it just beeps at you. It doesn't come up far enough to assign a drive letter in windows or as a /dev/sdb in linux. Windows it pops up and does the driver install then nothing, in linux it shows all the dmesg info but then fails to provide a device.

The drive has a bunch of pictures on it and for some reason is just stored here...

Anybody ever had this done? approximate cost?

Thanks

 

[mbryson]

I’ve had it done a couple of times. I’ll check the invoice on the company and cost at work tomorrow. We’ve had surprisingly good luck even on SSD devices. I want to say it was $600-1000 to get the work done?

 

[jeep-N-montero]

I have used one of those hard drive readers in the past with decent results, similar to this one https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Exte...ocphy=9029752&hvtargid=pla-564037935583&psc=1

 

[4x4_Welder]

If it's an old drive, try sticking the drive in the freezer for a bit, sometimes they'll come back enough to extract data. This may be a one shot deal though, so plan accordingly. If it was made in the last decade or so it may not work.

 

[dutchman]

I used these guys: https://www.securedatarecovery.com/

Had an external HD crash with lots of important stuff on it. They weren't cheap, but got 97% of my data back.

 

[rholbrook]

I have an external drive reader you can try. You plug in any hard drive and it makes it think it’s just another external drive. You would have to remove it from its current container.

 

[mbryson]

The company we have used is Secure Data. I'll see if I can dig up the invoices

 

[shortstraw8]

Did you remove it from the enclosure?
I have taken two that were dead removed them from the enclosure and put them in my tower and was able to recover the data, and the drives worked just fine.

 

[Spork]

Did you remove it from the enclosure?
I have taken two that were dead removed them from the enclosure and put them in my tower and was able to recover the data, and the drives worked just fine.

Just a bit more back ground, I'm not the first guy with this drive, it looks like someone removed it from the enclosure but it's still got the Mini-USB connections on the front, can I remove the front and then it will just have the standard connection under?

I'm hoping the drive isn't already beyond repair, it looks like they pulled all the screws and got to the platters already then put everything back together.

 

[shortstraw8]

Just a bit more back ground, I'm not the first guy with this drive, it looks like someone removed it from the enclosure but it's still got the Mini-USB connections on the front, can I remove the front and then it will just have the standard connection under?

I'm hoping the drive isn't already beyond repair, it looks like they pulled all the screws and got to the platters already then put everything back together.

If the drive is already out of the enclosure, then I would not take anything else apart. The two seagates I pulled out had the sata connectors like typical hdd/ssd

 

[Spork]

pulled the USB adapter piece off the front so it just looks like a laptop drive now. Stuck it in an old laptop I have and booted off of a linux disk, it beeped the whole time it was coming up and then /dev/sda was missing when it finally booted. I rescanned the bus and /dev/sda showed up, fdisk -l /dev/sda (just dumps partition table) gives me a cannot open message, attempted to do a parted /dev/sda and it's been stuck for 10 minutes now.

Thanks for all the recommendations, I even tried the freezer trick, I'll have him contact secure data if the data is worth it to him.