Seagate Hard Drive Crashed PLEASE HELP!

Hey guys, its been a while since I have posted, but I have a HUGE problem if someone could help me out.

I am getting married in a week. And the hard drive my fiance had all our engagement pictures on, just crashed.

It tipped on her table and now the hard drive will not mount, it just make a whining noise but no luck mounting.

What can we do to save it.

We do not mind spending some money to get the files off them, since we have over 2 years of pictures on there.

Please help!!

Thanks

 

im not sure if you're talking about an internal drive or an external drive, but regardless. the best way i can think of is to download spinrite, burn it to a disk, and boot from the disk with the hard drive in a computer to try and fix it

 

There are data recovery companies that specilize in this - check the Seagatesite, they have their own "branch".
But this is costly...
I don't know how much it costs, but expect it to be in excess of a few hundred possibly 1000 dollars...

(About 5-6 years ago it would have been around 3000-6000€... but technology moved on since then)

 

I hate to say it, but the hard drive is damaged beyond repair. Spinrite might recover something, but it sounds like the hard drive motor is no longer working correctly.

The only option that has a reasonable chance of working? Pay a data recovery specialist. I think Seagate recommends this service...(l ink)

 

^^^
unfortunately, i second the above...

You could try some Data Recovery programs to get it back... but im not too confident it would work

 

If I was in your shoes I would go straight these guys.
http://myharddrivedied.com/
Make sure not to use the drive anymore either as you might do further damage.

Why do I recommend them? I've never used them or any other data recovery service. But I've seen their Youtube channel and this guy Scott Moulton explains everything he knows about data recovery and it is just mind blowing what these guys can do. He's recovered data off harddrive where someone has drilled a hole threw it, but because they didn't drill threw the harddrive platters he was able to take the platters out and put them into another circuit board from the same company and recovery the data. He does forensic data recovery too. In his youtube videos he's said that he gets lots of external harddrives that have been knocked off tables or desks, they are very easy to damage.

I know nothing about spinright but here's what Scott Moulton has to say about it on the front page of his website.

Spinrite is not data recovery software.

I get many questions about why I left off Spinrite on my recommendations of recovery software. I specifically leave off Spinrite because under the strictest terms it is not data recovery software. Almost every single data recovery package knows, and will warn you not to write the data back to the original source drive. Data Recovery/Forensics software almost always recover from a source to a destination. Spinrite does not do that, it refreshes the surface and controls reads to get the maximum amount of data from the sectors and then puts it back down on the same drive.

One last piece of advice. If your data is important to you, weather it be pictures, mp3, homework, or whatever, make sure to burn multiple copies to cd or dvd. There is plenty of software to help you do this and keep it organized, searching around these forums is a good place to start.

Edit:
Here's their pricing
IF THE DRIVE IS STILL FUNCTIONAL STOP USING IT OR TRYING TO RESTART IT, SOMETIME YOU ONLY GET SO MANY CHANCES AT THE DATA BEFORE YOU DESTROY IT!

We charge an evaluation fee of $50 payable by check,
Visa, Mastercard or American Express.

Overview of the Process
We do an evaluation of hard drive for $50 after which we can tell you what is wrong with the drive, the probability of recovery, and if possible we will provide you a list of recoverable files. This process takes a 5 to 7 business days to perform. If we are able to recover the files, the $50 fee is deducted from the data recovery charge. Our standard price for ALL data recovery is $800 per a drive plus parts if needed. Here are the details for recovery:

The Evaluation
We have about a 96% recovery chance and our $50 eval fee is cheaper than the cost of acquiring another hard drive to test with. We have extensive parts and equipment and do an exhaustive test on the drive that takes a week after we receive it. If you would like to have us do the eval then please print and fill out that forms below and send it in with your drive so we have the contact info when the drive arrives. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.


* We do exhaustive tests of your drive to determine the exact problem BEFORE spending a lot of money to find out what you CAN'T recover!
* We have the same FORENSIC EXPERTS working on your hard drive that reassemble drives for legal cases!
* We use write blocking systems to provide integrity to the drive so additional damage does not occur!
Standard Desktop/Laptop IDE/SATA Drives

We charge $800 for a standard IDE/SATA hard drive recovery. The only additional charge is if parts are necessary. On some drives, we need what is called a donor drive. The donor drive is a MATCHING hard drive that we have to locate and purchase specifically to break it down for parts. It is very necessary to match the drive exactly. Because of this sometimes the drive costs more than the same size drive on the shelf at the store. We will let you know if it is necessary to obtain parts after the evaluation.

 

What about putting it in the freezer trick?

 

At work a doctors HD in his work PC crashed and he needed some images off the drive for his practice and for the life of me I don't know why he didn't save them to his Shared drive or to the department drive. So the hopsital ending up paying 1060 USD to get the data back. The Hospital billed the doctor personally though.