Data recovery Failed External Drive

[ZapBranigan]

Does anyone know a "good" place to get data recovered from a failed external hard drive.  I'm not looking for cheap. I'm looking for a reputable place.  My wife has a million pictures on an older external drive and sure enough that thing failed. It's an older drive about 650 GB and for the most part close to full.

 

 

[RebelSS]

You bet. Kroll Ontrack, in Eden Prairie.. My computer guy at the computer fix-it place here says they do world wide recoveries on hard drives, and they're the best, he says....,

Edited January 19, 2016 by RebelSS

[delcecchi]

Hmmm, maybe carbonite isn't looking so bad after all.  That 60 to 100 bucks a year might be cheap. 

Not reefing or I told you so.  I have been doing my own backups and this story made me reconsider whether to add cloud.  

Edited January 19, 2016 by delcecchi

[ZapBranigan]

Yep the cloud in some form.  My wife (after this disaster) keeps copies of her stuff on one of the photo sites cloud storage.

This data recovery is not cheap.  and it's one thing to put it on a external hard drive but when that is the piece that fails your in the dog house.  My fishing pictures which were in her stuff was on a sd card on my electronic picture frame at work. So they all got recovered.  That just made her even madder because I didn't suffer any loss.  You definitely need to keep the data in more than one place. 

 

[delcecchi]

I don't reuse SD cards, so I keep all them.  They are so cheap. 

And I have everything on the computer, plus a back up, plus an occasional system image.  And I started uploading all the pictures to flickr (terabyte free) and I'm still thinking about carbonite.....  

Trying to stay out of the doghouse, proactively. 

[MN Mike]

Gillware is a very good place to get data recovered, used them a few times, straight up people, very fair.
 

Mike

 

[RebelSS]

Hmmm....hope something works.

Edited January 20, 2016 by RebelSS

[ZapBranigan]

Thanks guys it gives me a couple of places to call and see what I'm really looking at.  I think a year ago it was over 1000 hoping that got more reasonable.  But maybe if the bonuses are any good here this year I'll take the plunge and get her data back. I guess it doesn't hurt to place out a bit of a reminder here anyway.  It can and does happen.

We tried all the usual things pulling out the hard drive (its like a Lap top drive) and reading it with a device that reads laptop drives direct.  It makes the noise and feels like the drive is spinning.  I'm guessing the logic board failed.  I have not looked on hsolist for another old unit like it then try to disassemble it and place the silver disks into the newer unit.  Too afraid I'll wreck something permanent.  I don't feel I could ever get it back together correctly.

Looks like I'll take the plunge later in March.  here's keeping my fingers crossed.

 

 

 

[upnorth]

OK to me a back up is that.  A secondary/redundant storage.  I have a NAS here in the house that I back up my data files to, meaning I copy them to the secondary device and they still reside on the original source.  So....if either fails I have a backup/fall back. 

Just moving them off the PC/smartphone/tablet is not really a back up.