Data Recovery from FreeAgent External Drive

[Aperitif]

Anyone had cause to get data recovered? Any recommendations for a decent service? Don't know if the drive has been 'dropped' or just failed, but it doesn't work. Swapping it from PC to PC is no deal either.

 

[ian turner]

1. How much are you prepared to pay
2. Try removing the drive from the case and plugging it directly into the PC
3. Why were you using it as the sole storage location instead of as a backup ?

 

[Aperitif]

1. How much are you prepared to pay
2. Try removing the drive from the case and plugging it directly into the PC
3. Why were you using it as the sole storage location instead of as a backup ?

Thank you Ian.

 

[Red Light]

Its not cheap!!! It generally involves extracting the platter(s) and mounting it in a reader.

I would be inclined to buy a drive caddy from Maplin and transfer just the drive to it first to make sure its the drive that's failed and not the electronics in the caddy. A drive should easily survive being dropped if the heads were parked at the time. If it happened while reading data it might be a different story.

Can't recommend anyone but there are plenty of people that do it - Google is your friend.

Good luck.

 

[ianrauk]

A friend of mine used a data recovery company to get back all his photos on a failed external hard drive. It cost £700

Sorry 'teef, that's not much help is it.

 

[ttcycle]

I also know this to be very, very expensive, a friend of mine spent over a grand.

I backup and stick all info from a hard drive onto DVD - if I was super anal I'd back up that DVD too but very little needs double back up.

I'm sorry to read this, I know of recovery software for small units such as CF cards but not sure they would be successful with external drives.

 

[ian turner]

Hence why I queried how much the OP was prepared to pay as odds on it will start at over £100 just for a control card swap and rapidly increases if it's the drive platters themselves.
You don't need a full caddy as there are usb to sata/ide adapters which you can plug straight into a drive and save the bother of inserting into a caddy. This for instance.
Mind you a quick search on removing drives from the freeagent suggests that in itself is fiddly.
Too many folks who don't know what backup means until they need one

 

[Red Light]

I backup and stick all info from a hard drive onto DVD - if I was super anal I'd back up that DVD too but very little needs double back up.

You must have a small hard drive to back it up to DVD. Storage is so cheap these days that backing it up onto external hard drives is much easier. Plus don't forget the one people always forget. Store a back up copy at a location away from where your computer is. That way if there is a fire or other disaster you don't lose both the computer and backup. The easy way is to keep a backup of your home computer in your drawer at work.

 

[ian turner]

Backup suggestions always get out of hand and head into the realms of industrial grade recommendations.
Unless you're running a business then offsite storage is strictly for pessimists as the chances that you will drop the drive while transporting it exceed the chances your house will burn down (you might even drop it after your house burns down ). In the 20 years I've lived on a street of over 100 houses the only house fire has been a wendyhouse and as far as I know it didn't have a computer in it
It's hard enough for most folks to remember to backup so a nas drive and scheduled backups are probably more effective than a usb drive you have to plug in and run a backup manually.
DVDs are fine as a short term measure but in the long term the writeable variety have a limited lifespan (though that limit may still be perfectly adequate)

 

[Red Light]

Backup suggestions always get out of hand and head into the realms of industrial grade recommendations.
Unless you're running a business then offsite storage is strictly for pessimists as the chances that you will drop the drive while transporting it exceed the chances your house will burn down (you might even drop it after your house burns down ). In the 20 years I've lived on a street of over 100 houses the only house fire has been a wendyhouse and as far as I know it didn't have a computer in it

I know people quite a few people who have had fires and interestingly three out of an office of fifty had had fires in their kitchens due to electrical appliances - dishwashers and washing machines. The fire officer giving the training said he asked the question because people were always surprised at how many fires there were and not leaving the appliances on overnight or when you are out was an easy safety measure.

People often lose everything when they have in a fire but at least with a backup off-site you will have copies of your photos, videos, address books etc safe.

Its very easy to do to slip a drive in your pocket and drop it in a drawer at work. If you drop it on the way it doesn't really matter because you are insuring against a computer failure. The probability of dropping the backup at the same time as the computer fails is much much smaller than the chance of the computer failing alone (the risk of each multiplied together).

 

[ian turner]

drop it in a drawer at work

from what height ?
People who think their disk drives are immortal are not the sort of folks who will be capable of maintaining a rigid backup regime involving swapping drives between home and a second location. Which would probably be 95% of computer owners
Online backup might be viable though they might have to do the initial backup over a number of months to avoid their upload limit being exceeded.
But realistically even that is asking a lot.

 

[Red Light]

from what height ?

A disk drive that is not in use will take a drop from a fair height. The shock ratings are really quite high. Its only when the heads are reading or writing that they are more vulnerable.

People who think their disk drives are immortal are not the sort of folks who will be capable of maintaining a rigid backup regime involving swapping drives between home and a second location. Which would probably be 95% of computer owners

Its easy to do with a three disk system. Make two back ups, keep one at home, take the other into work with you and bring back the backup that is stored at work ready for the next backup cycle.

Online backup might be viable though they might have to do the initial backup over a number of months to avoid their upload limit being exceeded.
But realistically even that is asking a lot.

I would be very wary of on-line backups - yes I know they are the vogue. Its easy to build up a backup incrementally over months or years but if you ever need it can you envisage downloading a 0.5-1Tb restore file on a domestic connection to say nothing of your ISP waving their fair use policy about.

 

[JohnHenry]

I'll have a look (I'm in Crawley) for you.

 

[ian turner]

Its easy to do with a three disk system. Make two back ups, keep one at
home, take the other into work with you and bring back the backup that is stored
at work ready for the next backup cycle.

If you can be bothered. If you don't forget etc etc.
Still asking too much of your average user. They need something that does it for them hence online being better (until the online provider goes bust)
Also irrelevant to the OP who is currently facing a monstrous bill if It's the drive that's duff and not the USB case and
won't be able to afford all those drives for a while.

 

[PaulSB]

Just idly browsing as I can't sleep and got to wondering why the question of backups is viewed as so difficult for people to deal with.

On our small office system and at home we have external hard drives permanently connected. These run incremental backups every day. I check the "useability" of the stored data every now and again. It always works.

The biggest problem I have us getting my wife to save stuff logically so I know what I'm backing up!! Clearly a fire will destroy these backups but I think the chances are slim bh comparison to a hard drive failure.