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Thread ID: 120077 2011-08-24 05:20:00 Customer service for portable harddrive fail sempre_vivace (16509) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
1225545 2011-08-25 03:32:00 You'll be surprised what data recovery programs can do. One of the guys here the memory card / windows couldn't even see it. The program did. And I managed to get every photo off it. Before I reformatted the memory card

It'd probably be just as good for hdd's
Speedy Gonzales (78)
1225546 2011-08-25 04:03:00 Hi Everyone

Thanks for all your advice and comments.

We went back to the shop today, and my husband talked to the tech working on it. The tech said it keeps crashing on him every time he gets a small amount of data off it. So there is some hope but it will be a mission. We've asked him to concentrate on the folder of photos that we are missing. I semi go along with the opinion he is 'googling' for help and hoping for the best!

They have promised (here's hoping) to cap the recovery cost at 250! Better than the 800$ I guess.

We have had another offer from another computer company in hamilton to fix it, so if nothing happens by monday we'll courier it to them.

What a mission! And so worrying, thanks everyone for your help :-)
sempre_vivace (16509)
1225547 2011-08-25 05:56:00 Leave it with them. It sounds like he knows what he's doing. At least he hasnt given up on it.

Ive had that with issue with data recoveries, get a bit of data, then the HD disconnects/shuts down etc. Its a long painfull process. Taking it somewhere else wont really help.(except perhaps Comp Forensics)
He is probably fitting this job around other repair jobs, to keep costs down. If he had to concentrate solely on your data recovery the cost would get quite high.
1101 (13337)
1225548 2011-08-25 07:17:00 If he had to concentrate solely on your data recovery the cost would get quite high. That depends on if they are charging by the hour regardless, or actual time worked.

Many times while data recovery can be slow, there is usually a lot of time when a person is actually doing nothing apart from watching, or can be doing other things.

I did a LONG data recovery from a badly corrupted drive once, it took approx 25 hours to copy the data from the drive to a PC that was doing the recovery.
While it was slow it just chugged away on its own all day and over night :sleep -- The customer sure as hell didn't get charged for 25 hours.
wainuitech (129)
1225549 2011-08-31 08:15:00 No, this is wrong, if the drive is spinning then you can do recover data your self with the help of a third party data recovery software and it will recover your data instantly, go for "Kernel for FAT and NTFS" hard disk data recovery software to recover your photos and files from it. EmmaW (16510)
1225550 2011-08-31 08:31:00 No, this is wrong, if the drive is spinning then you can do recover data your self with the help of a third party data recovery software and it will recover your data instantly, go for "Kernel for FAT and NTFS" hard disk data recovery software to recover your photos and files from it.

Spinning means nothing.

The heads may well have all broken off. The platters will still spin, but nothing will be readable without a new head stack at least.

But you sound like a spammer anyway, so what would you know?
Agent_24 (57)
1225551 2011-08-31 09:14:00 The tech said it keeps crashing on him every time he gets a small amount of data off it.
The more he messes with it the worse it can get.
I personally would take it back and if you really need the stuff, send it to the pro recovery place.
pctek (84)
1225552 2011-09-01 12:09:00 I tried it on 4 different laptops and nothing would read it. On windows it kept saying "needs to format"

If it is something simple like the boot sector being corrupted, you can safely format the drive (quick format) then run Recuva to recover the deleted files (run a deep scan).

It does work, this happened to me just yesterday, took roughly 3-4 hours to run the deep scan, then another 18 hours to recover all the data, lost some file names and 6GB of data, but I managed to recover 490GB not a bad result over all I think.
Deimos (5715)
1225553 2011-09-01 12:36:00 Hi

Wondering if the external hard drive has been used on Windows 7 but formatted in Windows XP. Now I'm aware this should not matter but my Brother has exactly this problem too. I formatted his external using Paragon, on my Toshiba Laptop, running XP Pro. Can save to and read files from it when connected to my Lappie. His Sony Laptop, Windows 7, when connected to this same external hard drive, says drive needs to be formatted. I know you have tried yours on other laptops but did they have different operating systems?

BURNZEE
Burnzee (6950)
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