Any recommendations for drive recovery?

[Descartes]

Yes, I do backup; unfortunately, I backed up to this drive as an interim solution when I was moving my house, and now this drive crashed. This has left me in a horrible situation.

It's a Hitachi drive from a Dell Inspiron 9100. I put the drive in an external USB case and tried to access it from another machine. It does show up, but accessing it nearly locks up the machine and sometimes says, "The semaphore timeout period has expired." Great. I was able to copy some files over with xcopy.

Any suggestions/thoughts? The drive isn't clicking or anything. I have considered that it might be the USB case, but it's always worked fine with other systems.

Much appreciated.

 

[Zirconium]

Put the drive in a ziplock baggie and freeze it. http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.c...e-to-recover-data.html

 

[Old Hippie]

I like Get Data Back.

The trial versions of GetDataBack will perform the recovery and will show you all the files that are recoverable. You can open and view files to verify that the recovery was successful. In order to copy the recovered data to another location you need to purchase a license key for the software.

What have ya got to lose?

I wouldn't try the freezer trick, unless it was a last ditch effort for a mechanical problem. And this doesn't sound mechanical.

 

[corkyg]

It is also worth a try to get a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter and temporarily put it in your desktop. It very well could be the USB case or some part of the USB chain.

Adapter

These only cost about $7 or so. I recommend them for any laptop owner's toolkit.

 

[MadAmos]

Just be aware that if the drive is damaged the more you try to save it the more damage you can do to your data I would not try the "freezer trick" as the condensation can cause more damage and may make recovery even more difficult. If Data is really important!! it is not the best time to try and learn how to recover a damaged drive while possibly killing the data you need to save. In the past I have had good luck here and it cost about half what I was quoted at the more well known places. Of course if is Data you can live with out or replace easily then it is the perfect opportunity to see what you can learn and go ahead any try it "all"

Amos

 

[Eadward1]

I used kroll ontrack. it was expensive but they got every file back after a mechanical failure of the HD.