Data Recovery

Dallascisco

Platinum Member
Jun 4, 2003
2,417
0
0
Have a WD black laptop hard drive that powers on, gives 3 clicks, and then powers off when using my external cage or recovery kit on another machine. What other options, if any, do I have?
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
If it's hardware failure you're pretty much out of luck unless what you have on there is worth over a thousand dollars for a data recovery firm to extract it for you.


You might try spinrite and see if it can recover anything. It can move data off bad sectors and lock them off so you can get what you need off before the drive just fails. This did not work with my backup drive which is dead. I have a hardware issue (or maybe just seagate's bad firmware).
 

Jeff7181

Lifer
Aug 21, 2002
18,368
11
81
How badly do you need the data? If its irreplaceable, like family photos, pay the money and have it done professionally. If it would just be nice to have or you're curious if you can recover it, try the freezer trick and if the drive spins up and is accessible start copying data immediately.
 

paperwastage

Golden Member
May 25, 2010
1,848
2
76
couple of hours in the freezer? think 3-6? do more google digging.... the freezer trick is just like a last-resort (if the platter header is stuck, freezing might just contract something just enough to get in free for a few minutes, enough for you to get data off the drive)

as other people said, if data is that important, pay for a clean room hdd recovery solution that costs a lot