Hard drive recovery

Twinbird24

Twinbird24

Member
I have a Hitachi 160GB notebook HDD, it was dropped while still inside a Toshiba laptop and is no longer responding. Windows 7 doesn't recognize it on my machines, and when I plug it into my desktop directly with a SATA cable, my PC freezes and won't boot if restarted while the HDD is connected. It doesn't freeze when I connect the HDD via a SATA-USB adapter. The only program that can recognize it is HDD Regenerator, but it sees it as "0" Mb and when I try to repair the HDD, the program tells me the master boot record is damaged. I need to get some music off this hard drive.

Do you guys have any suggestions? Is the HDD gone? (I don't wan't to pay $1000+ to take the data off).

Thanks!
 
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You can try this link; ( www.dtidata.com )
but I have no idea what they charge. I know a lawyer who baked his one and only HDD and to recover his data required that the drive be disassembled in a "Clean Room" by a professional data recovery company; and the data somehow read off the disk platters. Cost to said lawyer : $2200.00

I'd try the link to see what ballpark they are in; but be prepared to go hunting online to redownload your lost music.
 
Thanks for the link, I also found another company based in Canada near where I live, but they charge from $200 (if the damage is minimal, im guessing) to $5000 :eek:

I'm downloading some HDD recovery tools, but non seem to be working. There is damage with the platter/ head I think :( I will try to do some more work on it myself, but I don't think there is much I can do.

Members from other forums, including a HDD recovery forum, are also giving me links to professional HDD recovery companies...

BTW, the HDD isn't actually mine, so I'm not so worried about the lost music.
 
There is damage with the platter/ head I think :( I will try to do some more work on it myself
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Those kind of action can be performed in so called "clean room" only.
You can't do it at home.
 
Ya, I don't have a clean room in my house.
Isn't there some way to make a "clean box" or purchase one somewhere? Rather than using a whole room.
 
Twinbird24 said:
Ya, I don't have a clean room in my house.
Isn't there some way to make a "clean box" or purchase one somewhere? Rather than using a whole room.
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The term Clean Room just means a static-free environment. If you can create one, you can try to recover this data yourself, but it's a lot like modifying the registry - if you've never done it before, don't start now. If you decide to give it a go, do yourself a favor and try the transplant on a drive you'll never need to use first. Cheers.
 
Thanks. If I open up an HDD, I'll do it with a working drive that I don't use anymore to see how it goes first, but I will probably try it, I don't really have anything to lose.

Update: so I opened up a drive that I didn't need and ran it with the top off (just for fun, still worked like this). Then I opened up the damaged drive, the heads were busted up, I removed the platters and put them in my other working drive, but still nothing.
 
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Well Mr. Dixie was about right this time. If I were you at this point, since you said the HDD was not actually yours, I would be looking to buy a replacement for whoever it does belong to and either hunting the internet to redownload the music it had on it, or making a sincere appology to the owner, or both.
 
Twinbird24 said:
Thanks. If I open up an HDD, I'll do it with a working drive that I don't use anymore to see how it goes first, but I will probably try it, I don't really have anything to lose.

Update: so I opened up a drive that I didn't need and ran it with the top off (just for fun, still worked like this). Then I opened up the damaged drive, the heads were busted up, I removed the platters and put them in my other working drive, but still nothing.
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Are you sure the platters never came anywhere close to a magnetic field? Also, are you sure the replacement enclosure had the exact same spec as the dead drive?
 
I never guaranteed recovery of his data (and was only planning on trying to recover it using software, so I had nothing to lose by opening it up). And I realized the enclosure didn't have the exact same spec as the dead drive. He won't pay $800+ to get his data recovered, the music will have to be re-downloaded.

At least if I have to do this again in the future, I will know more (I did some research on taking the HDDs apart and stuff, so hopefully next time I do it I will have better luck).

Anyways, the HDD is pretty much completely dead. Thanks for all the replies though!
 
Twinbird24 said:
I never guaranteed recovery of his data (and was only planning on trying to recover it using software, so I had nothing to lose by opening it up). And I realized the enclosure didn't have the exact same spec as the dead drive. He won't pay $800+ to get his data recovered, the music will have to be re-downloaded.

At least if I have to do this again in the future, I will know more (I did some research on taking the HDDs apart and stuff, so hopefully next time I do it I will have better luck).

Anyways, the HDD is pretty much completely dead. Thanks for all the replies though!
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Sorry to hear that, mate. At least you got some good experience out of the deal and all he lost was music. Coulda been worse. Cheers.
 
Ah, that's different. You were helping someone. I thought from what you wrote earlier that you had damaged it. Good man, it's right to be helpfull. Though if ever you have occasion to try this again, or even if you want to try this with that same drive, I would recommend transplanting the platters into an IDENTICAL drive from the same manufacturer. That way you have a matching board, heads, dimensions, and electrical specifications, etc.
 
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