Worst case scenario: Dead HDD, no backup. What can I do?

[pg22]

Hello,

So today was not a good day. My Macbook's HDD just upped and died, for no apparent reason. It was working as normal, shut down, it hangs, I restart, and I see a "?" and if I put my ear very close to the Macbook, I can hear faint clicking repeatedly. I took it to the Apple store and my nightmare was confirmed.

Here's the thing: they won't get the replacement HDD until Wednesday, and they offered to attempt to get the data off my old HDD for $150. I said no, thinking I had made backup DVD+R's at home. Turns out, I really didn't

At this point, I would indeed have them try to salvage my data for $150, but the HDD is sitting here right next to me, and if I shake it I can hear something rattling around. I have memories of a broken spindle arm of a iPod. I'm thinking that this is not salvageable.

What do you guys think? I have until Wednesday, as they told me once the new HDD comes in, I have to give them the old one back. Can Apple indeed do it? What if they can't? Anyone else?

Thanks much.

P.S. Apologies about this being a Mac laptop in a mostly PC forum, but this is soley about the HDD and the situation is a bit urgent. Thank you.

 

[RebateMonger]

I haven't shaken many hard drives, but that doesn't sound good. $150 to recover data would be a steal IF the drive is physically readable. It doesn't sound like it's going to be readable. At that point, you are into the $1000+ data recovery scenario that comes with physical drive damage.

If I had the drive in-hand, I'd attempt to connect it via a USB drive adapter and see if it's physically readable on another computer. I don't know what to expect if you hook it to an IBM-PC. I assume another Mac should be able to read the drive.

Unless you are willing to pay a lot to recover the data, then you'd better be prepared to lose the data and come up with a better backup system for next time. ALL hard drives fail. Some just last longer than others. Get an external USB hard drive for $50 or $100 and learn how to do periodic backups to it. DVDs are too much work and too unreliable for most folks to trust as a backup media. Sorry.

 

[pg22]

Ya, this is depressing, but $1000 is too much. The ONE thing I did back up was all my pictures from the last year of traveling. If I lost those, me = suicide.

But I basically lost everything else. :

I'm not holding too much hope for the HDD either. I wonder if they charge $150 if they are successful or not...

Thanks for the response.

 

[jkresh]

They are some companies (ontrack is one example) that will look at your drive for a fairly small amount and give you some idea of what they can recover, then tell you what the actual cost to recover is. If they can recover your data it will probably cost more then the $150 that apple is asking for (but they are more likely to succeed then apple) and if they cant it will be less then the $150. Be careful with connecting it to another machine to try to read it as doing so might further damage it and leave less of a chance of them recovering. If the data is int that important you could try recovering it yourself (another machine + software (though I don't know of any mac specific software), the success rate wont be as high but cost is lower.

 

[RebateMonger]

As jkresh points out, almost anything you do to the drive can potentially damage it further. If you HAVE to have the data, the best thing is to disconnect the drive and send it to professionals.

If it's not physically readable (and I don't know how to tell this on a Macintosh), then you won't be able to use software to recover the data. If it's readable, then software can potentially recover at least some files.

Drive failure is always a no-win situation that's best avoided with backups.

Follow the links on this site to excellent free videos about hard drive data recovery.