data recovery from dead HD?

So the HD on my 3 year old notebook died. Without warning, suddenly I got the 'click of death'. Since its a mechanical failure and the BIOS won't even recognize that a HD is present, I can't think of any way to rescue the data, short of sending it to one of those professional data recovery services.

While I have a lot of the stuff backed up, some isn't, such as iTunes songs. I'm trying to figure out if it's cheaper to pay and (maybe) get everything recovered, or forget about it and re-buy the songs.

Does anyone here have experience with one of those professional data recovery services? Do they work? How much approximately do they cost (my HD is a regular 30GB notebook drive)? Which ones could you recommend?

thanks!

 

It'll be pricey, so it may not be worth it.

There is a myth going around that if you put the HD in a ziplock bag and freeze it for a few days, it'll work for a few minutes, enough time to backup. Or so it's been said!

 

I thought you could authorize up to 3 PCs for your iTune downloads. Why can't you re D/L the songs. Professional recovery service will easily cost you $1000+.

 

Don't assume it's mechanical failure just because it's clicking. It could be an I/O board failure. At the repair shop I work at we keep many HD I/O boards on hand for just that reason. Sadly, this is not standard practice for repair shops. We tend to do a lot more work in our data recovery efforts than any other shop I've ever had experience with. I guess you could call around and see if anyone in your area could help, but if you do be sure to ask if they do I/O board swaps for data recovery and if they have laptop drive I/O boards.

If worse comes to worst we could discuss you mailing the drive to my shop via PM.

 

and Yes freezeing them does work some time

some time swap logic board on hard disk work too
what brand of hard disk is it

Hiatachi?

 

thanks for the replies. I just put in a new HD last night and got everything back up and running. Data loss seems less than I thought, I had more stuff backed up than expected I might try that freezing thing, but I'm somewhat wary of ruining other bits of the laptop by shoving in a frozen drive into the HD slot, the risk might not be worth it. And yes, it was a Hitachi drive that died.

 

If I may, you might look for or borrow an ide/usb case to try to recover your files. The cases can be had at meritline.com and others for about $15 shipped.

Or just put the money into a external back-up drive, 320Gig for about $99 bucks iat your brick and mortar stores.

 

i tried putting a bricked hard drive into an external housing but it still doesnt get recognized by the pc.