Recommend a place for HD data recovery?

[lemonstar]

1st time for everyone - got caught short of space and had some not particularly essential stuff on an external WD500G drive that has just started clicking. The main PC wouldn't detect it a couple of days ago but I stuck it on my T60/Win7 and it spun up after a few clicks and got detected it so I ran a drive check and it picked up only a couple of errors - new backup drive arrived this morning and now clicking drive can't be detected by main PC or laptop - virtually all data is unimportant but the drive is as good as full - downloaded music files, ebooks and pdf's.

http://www.kingdomdatarecovery.co.uk are quoting a min price of £99 - up to a max of £479. Anywhere else cheaper worth approaching?

The drive when you reboot it by applying external power makes 3 attempts to spin up - 3 clicks the first time, 2 the second and not sure about the 3rd attempt twice or once I think - then it goes silent. It's never been noisy or played up in any way.

I doubt that software is going to provide any solution - any last thought before I stick it in the freezer!?

Neil

[RealBlackStuff]

Have you tried it in a USB enclosure, or using an adapter like Apricorn's Drivewire?
A program like HDD Regenerator can do wonders also. http://hddregenerator.net/
I've used that a couple of times.
Another oldie but goldie: Spinrite from here: http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
And some more: ddrescue and dd_rescue: http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Ddrescue

Since you have a WD drive, get Data Lifeguard to test the drive: http://support.wdc.com/product/download ... 30&lang=en

You should realize though that the HD is basically no longer reliable.
Fix it with one of those progs, copy all the data you need off it, and then relegate it to the spares drawer or round-bin it.
For more info, see also: http://www.technibble.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10385

[lemonstar]

Thanks for those suggestions. I made a note of the Drivewire adapter.

I tried a few utils but the drive just can't be detected by anything - I had an old version of spinrite - no piece of software has even made the drive spin up or move the heads. Apply power and it spins up and you can hear the heads clicking but that's it - as I said it did get recognised by my laptop the other day so I have tried unplugging and plugging in the power cable just to see if it will do the same thing but no luck. Because the diskcheck ran fine I believe all the data is there but I imagine the heads are damaged in some way. I stuck it inthe freezer in bags for about 3 hours and it spun up slowly and without the clicking so I was momentarily optimistic that it would be seeking long enough for the laptop to at least detect it - as condensation was building up on the outside of the case I decided to shove it in the fan oven which was preheated to ~50C - I turned the oven off and left it there until it looked dry again and tried it again - it still seems the same as it was before - just clicking so I imagine possible that the drive control circuitry is faulty of that one or more of the heads needs replacing which they can do but at a cost >£99 I imagine. I just wondered if there was any chance that anyone would do it for less.

Is there any point in pulling the actual drive out of the WD external hard drive case and trying it in my main machine?

[Johan]

I've had quite good succes with rescuing data off "very dead" drives using PC Data Rescue (using an old ver. 2.1) and GetDataBack for NTFS. With the first SW I've cloned sector-by-sector (very!) defective HDD's which even the Linux-gurus at work (who almost can do anything!) could do nothing about. I then used the cloned HDD as a source for recovery. Slow but effective... it saved hundreds of hours of work from a friends HDD at one time.

Johan

[lemonstar]

I found this place from the Western Digital site:
United Kingdom
Unit 6 and 7 Mercian Park
Felspar Road
Tamworth
Staffordshire
B77 4DP, England
UK Phone number: 0800 DATA SOS (0800 3282 767)
Intl Phone number: +44 1827 55999
UK Fax number: 01827 66666
Intl Fax number: +44 1827 66666
Email dr@disklabs.com

I have tried various pieces of software and nothing is managing to detect or communicate with the drive - nothing has managed to bring any response from the drive - other than the sounds made when it is powered up so I remain convinced that software will not do anything - in 20 years I have managed to get drives working again with various bits of software but it really doesn't feel as though it will work out this time.
Sprinrite couldn't detect it
HDD Regenerator reported that it couldn't find "sector zero".
Detect new hardware from Device Manager detects nothing even if I try it while powering up the drive.
WD HD utilities don't detect it either.

So.. are there any data recovery companies anyone can suggest that may charge less than £99? The drive is about 5 years old - I have drives that are 10 and 15 years old working fine. It's not the end of the world if it's gone but I don't want to give up without really trying.
Maybe 2-3 hours in the freezer wasn't long enough - it just sounded as though it took far longer to spin up. I've tried 2 other power sources and another data cable.

regards
Neil

[RealBlackStuff]

You could try to find another exactly the same hard disk like yours, and try to swap out the electronics board.
Might be cheaper than £99.-
On some HDs this works, on others it doesn't.
If you have really important stuff, you'll need a professional recovery service and cough up probably 10 times your £99.-
Is it worth that? Only you can decide.