Hard Drive Data Recovery Service Needed
 

my trusty Dell computer did not survive our last house move and we lost all our family pics of 10 years, among them a Mother Son project of my third truck called Dusty a 1971 GMC

I'm a computer nerd by day and I have saved failed hard drives before so I tried my luck and no dice

So I bit the bullet and sent it in for a repair to a shop in Los Angeles and they returned it and said they could not fix it and it needs to go to a lab

have any of you used a data recovery service that you can recommend?

I placed the green highlighter on that hard drive just to block my phone number which I wrote on there with a Sharpie for the shop to have to call me

Re: Hard Drive Data Recovery Service Needed
 

I have had two friends use services like that. Both seemed happy with thier choices. Been about a year since they were used. Used # 2 and #3 on the list

https://www.pandorarecovery.com/blog...very-services/

Re: Hard Drive Data Recovery Service Needed
 

thank you so much, I'm going to contact all of them to get a quote, I may have messed things up by opening it up but we shall see, fingers crossed

Quick update, I think #3 quoted me as high as $1,800 yeah I know, when I mess up I go big!

Re: Hard Drive Data Recovery Service Needed
 

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This thread helps drive home the importance of data backup. My main/daily laptop has a second hard drive in the CD/DVD tray that I use to take a backup of data occasionally so that should the main hard drive fail, I'll have a recent copy of the most important stuff.

This same thing can be accomplished using an external hard drive or even some cloud based service ( think Apple or Amazon ). Regardless of the mechanism, the point is that when you have a backup, even an older one, recovery from failure is a lot less painful ( and expensive! ).

OP: I wish you the best in your recovery journey. Please note that sometimes a hard drive will "fail" causing your laptop/machine not to boot but can still be read using another laptop/machine without disassembly or using any hardware tools. Sounds like you already attempted this though.

-klb

Re: Hard Drive Data Recovery Service Needed
 

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^^^^ This.

I just installed mine as a slave drive in another computer and copied all of my important stuff off of it.....

LockDoc

Re: Hard Drive Data Recovery Service Needed
 

A guy I knew about 10 years ago needed a recovery service. IIRC, he paid around $1000 then so that $1800 quote isn't out of bounds IF they can recover the data.

He had spent several months gathering all of his family's digital photos, videos and documents onto a portable HD so it would be easier to backup. A few days after he had everything in one device and before he made the backup, he in a rush swapped the 12V HD power plug with the 19V Dell laptop power plug. No damage to the laptop but the portable HD with all the family pictures let the magic smoke escape. A second guy I worked with did data recovery on the side and tried his bag of tricks before outsourcing to a firm like the ones mentioned.

Re: Hard Drive Data Recovery Service Needed
 

so a quick update, I decided to go with Option #2 and sent the drive to them yesterday (their lab is in Los Angeles, California) they printed me a FedEx FREE shipping label, they followed up with an email asking me to click a link and sign and initial a contract electronically - I found that rather interesting

these guys have a no Data no Pay policy, but I think all of them have that

https://www.pandorarecovery.com/blog...re-696x154.jpg

Re: Hard Drive Data Recovery Service Needed
 

OMG OMG OMG

You guys will not believe this - GREAT NEWS

I was just clicking around in the Pictures folder and I clicked on a subfolder called eBay and under it there was a folder called Dusty, I thought that's strange why would I list Dusty on eBay

Well, I didn't list it on eBay I accidentally dragged the Dusty folder under eBay by ACCIDENT, cause D comes right before e type of thing

Well so what? Well I got all my truck pictures back you all !!!!

check it out, me and my 70 year old mom, anxious to [ahem] help !

Re: Hard Drive Data Recovery Service Needed
 

Don't ask how the pics from a broken hard drive got on to my new solid state hard drive, we don't care, ha ha

Re: Hard Drive Data Recovery Service Needed
 

Been there done that. :lol: Glad you found them. I tend to back up stuff like that to a DVD as you never know. All hard drives can/will fail, even the backup one.

Re: Hard Drive Data Recovery Service Needed
 

Is she just going to stand by and let that guy get swallowed by the truck?

Re: Hard Drive Data Recovery Service Needed
 

LOL, why yes, I believe so, she is on the Fast Track to Middle Management you know!