Discrete Computer Geeks. Recovering a hard drive

[sl****]

I had an external hard drive crash.  It spins.  I can hear it.  But no computer will recognize it. I have even tried going back to my old limited DOS knowledge to try and see it.  I have googled every option I could.  It may be dead.  I am sure a good computer service might be able to retrieve some or all of it.  What I want to retrieve is 10+ years of Kinky photos, mostly of me!  How does one find a computer store that you can trust to retrieve every kink imaginable of you in compromising postions?  

[Alquimyst]

Hi, my advice is to do not touch it anymore, the more you try to recover the data yourself the more damage you may do.
The best option is to find an expert person who has the best experience for saving your data and ask to be present when they do the job.

[scottishswitch]

Your options are limited. If the drive physically works, ie. you can hear it spin up and possibly hear the heads clicking, then you may be able to get the data back using a program caled spinrite (google it). The good thing about that is it won't make the situation worse.

Anything beyond that is risky and best left to a professional.

[Deleted Member]

I am a Mac computer technician and we are professional and never look at anything personal unless it’s been asked to check.
Regardless what we found on a computer unless it’s illegal we are bound to secrecy and confidentiality.
Believe me I got few calls from customers stucked in the porn spam window on their screen… I always try to make them comfortable by saying that they must have click on a dodgy email and got spammed. It’s a recent virus 😈😂

[Deleted Member]

But to respond to your question about the hard drive, as mentioned below it’s best not to switch in to much. Depends where it’s been stored you might be able to get it back…. Just need to use the appropriate computer with the original OS…

[Deleted Member]

What led to the crash? Has the drive been dropped? Does it have an external power source, or is it powered by USB? I assume you're using Windows?

[bi****]

one option you could try first - open it up and take the drive out, then plug it into your PC as an internal drive. It could be (fingers crossed) the electronics and not the drive. Probably not, but if the thing is bust, you're not going to hurt it more by taking the drive unit out. Worth trying before you go to the expense of pro data retrieval. Also: such companies can be found online, might be less embarrassing to send it off for repair of all thoise.. erm.. pictures of your friend.

[Redneck_Nerd]

Best case scenario, it could be the electronics in the external housing at issue.  In which case the above mentioned removing the drive itself from the housing and installing it internally in your computer could work past that.

I've had luck before with swapping the electronics board on the outside of a bad hard disk itself, with a drive that was still spinning but wouldn't read properly anymore.  I had to a used, identical drive to source the board from.  With that method I successfully recovered all my files off the drive, and in fact used it for another number of years as a secondary storage drive that I just kept for unimportant files like game installations.

Years and years ago, we had a drive fail in an old 286 PC, in that case we went as far as to open the drive casing itself (A real no-no).  We carefully freed a stuck read/write head, and my uncle blew cigarette smoke across the platters (Which is bad, but we joked might lubricate things just enough to not stick again right away).  That drive also resumed working long enough for us to recover all the old software for the computer that we didn't have other access to (And actually worked with minor, intermittent issues for a number of months before being retired).  This case though I would consider nothing more than a fluke, as it's said that a speck of dust on a platter is about equivalent to hitting a boulder on the road, and can cause serious failures in no time...

[Deleted Member]

Try a different data cable too. I've had cables fail before.

[sl****]

Thanks folks.  This is a drive that I pulled from an old computer when I upgraded.  I removed the drive from a laptop and bought and external housing for it.  It was wokring fine one day and the next day I plugged it into the same computer and it would not read.  I have switched the housing, the cable and even the computer I was using to try to read it.  It spins but nothing else.

I appreciate your suggestions.

[ol****]

Ok, this sounds like it could be tricky.

Your caution in the 21st century is both understandable and sensible.

You could try EaseUS for free or you could try Recuva, also for free. Both software tools that keep the disk safely in your possession. They both come with fairly good instructions.

First question is can you see the disk in the disk management pane of your PC?

A spinning constantly (and constantly clicking) disk is not a good sign. If the heads or the platters are dmaged then the disk is probably toast except to a proffesional data recovery company.

Note: If you decide to ditch it then hit it several times with a big hammer to be on the safe side.

[sl****]

There is no clicking.  Only spinning.  Thanks for the suggestions.

[Deleted Member]

There is special software you can download which will read the drive and enable you to copy files for transfer. I can't direct you to it. Try youtube how to videos.

[sl****]

Thanks all.  I tried recuva, Easeus.  Neither could find the drive.  The only way I can even see the drive is via MSDOS which I have forgotten how to use.  May have to do some digging.

[Gidorra]

If you are willing to spend a couple hundred bucks it can be done. There are a lot of videos on Youtube where you can find smaller shops who will not invoice you thousands like they would with a big corporate recovery. It does not matter how damaged your drive is, they have an archive of all sorts of contemporary and historic drives, so they swap out e.g. the logic board of the drive or whatever it takes and can retrieve the data. They do not have to look at your pics to confirm that the recovery was successful

If you knew what you are doing, you could try yourself, i.e. first you would have to be clear about the diagnosis, but I think you would not be asking here in that case.

I had once tried a logic board swap on an HDD, but it was not the same revision and I could never find another exactly like the one I needed... the data were not important to me, so I didn't bother again.

It is 2021, drives are so large these days, that you can lose a LOT of important stuff. Why don't you take this as encouragement and get yourself a cheap NAS off Amazon, so a copy off all your files get backed up automatically? I know from experience that people are typically most receptive to this idea after they just lost all their business data... which is strange, seeing how they have a legal duty to maintain a backup infrastructure anyway

[sl****]

Thanks.  I do backup my work stuff, although admittedly I have not done it in a few months.  I was using this drive to store a lot material from a past computer and did not have it backed up.

[JazmineLatishaJones]

External hard drives tend to take a lot of beating. This probably isn't going to be helpful to you now.

Best practice is BACKUP...BACKUP...BACKUP!

Nothing, especially today's electronics, lasts forever. 

I worked as a computer tech for many years. I did doctors, lawyers, real estate and insurance offices. Often data recover was a must. Lost data usually meant lost revenue for my clients 

One of my oldest tricks was to put the affected hard disk in a freezer for awhile. A bad hard disk is often cause by heat generated friction. Cooling the drive down sometimes will help you to get it running long enough to pull your data off 

[sl****]

Thank you.  It is definitely too late for a backup.  Freezer trick sounds easy.  may as well give it a try.  For everyone here, I have tried everything you have suggested.  So far none of the softwares have been able to read it.  THank you for you offering your advice though.  I do appreciate it.