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I've gone through two 1TB external hard drives that have various degrees of damage and the files are years worth of memories. I have no idea on how to filter all the computer repair services reviews in the city. Any recommendations on someone or a business who are experts in data extraction?
Brooklynian » Forum » Park Slope »
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Last time I had problems I was referred to Tekserve by a few people including the Apple store guys. They do all kinds of data recovery.
http://www.tekserve.com/
http://www.tekserve.com/service/datareco.php(\__/)
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I second Tekserve
Peanuts -
Tekserve sounds great. They charge $130 for diagnostics, which will apply to service charges. May try to get diagnostics done someplace else first for a second opinion.
Thanks! Any other suggestions for repair services. I'm also considering a company in California that has good reviews and is economical.
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What type of damage is it to the hard drives? Is it the power supplies that have blown out or are the drives misfiring, where you can turn it on and hear it spin, but your computer can't recognize it?
If it's the former, all you may need to do is get a new hard drive case to place the hard drive into, which are inexpensive.
On the other hand, if it's actual physical damage to the hard drives themselves, one trick you can try, is to take the hard drives and leave it in your freezer for 24 hours. After 24 hours, plug them into your computer and try to extract as many files as possible. I have used this method in the past multiple times to repair hard drives from physical errors, remapped data, etc.. and have also been able to recover the majority of the files on damaged hard drives.
The ability to keep the hard drive cold when spinning is key since they can get very hot internally from all the friction produced.
Ideally, you don't even want to take the hard drive out of the freezer after the 24 hour period, keep it in the freezer and connect it up to your computer if the power cables and usb/firewire cables are long enough to reach your computer. This way, when the hard drive is running, the temperature is still kept cold.
It doesn't work all the time, but it has surprisely worked for me more times than it hasn't.
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On the other hand, if it's actual physical damage to the hard drives themselves, one trick you can try, is to take the hard drives and leave it in your freezer for 24 hours.
Definitely a physical problem. One drive won't power on and the other spins but is not recognized. Will definitely update this post after the trying the freezer idea. Thanks!
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You should also buy another hard drive and back up your computer every day. This way when (and all hard drives die) it dies, you can get your data back from the backup.
Much cheaper than getting it done by a store.
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you could take the hard drives out of their case/shell and try using something like this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002 -
The freezer trick worked for me, for reals. I was able to get about 2 minutes of data transfer for each 15 or so minutes spent in the freezer. Pop it in, pop it in the Mac, COPY in small, critical chunks.
I recovered about 4 years of design work. Files that my living counts on.
And yes, I have duplicates now.
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