Trying to Recover Data

I am looking for a price to recover data from an WD My Passport external 1TB hard drive. The drive is clicking so and will not respond. All of a sudden my WD passport wouldn't mount. It wasn't dropped or knocked or anything. I have tried on several comps and with different usb cables in different ports. Disk utility sees it, but it's greyed out and it can't restore it. I ran disk warrior and it failed. Please help! I have to finish a client film on there by Friday!

There was a power cut in our local London area. After I switched my PC back on, I noticed that a large folder and all it's subfolders was now missing from the 'pictures' folder in My PC. This folder contained thousands of image and video files, totalling around 500GB or more. I've used some basic file recovery software that has found most of the image files, but the video files have all come back corrupt.

I have a western digital external hard drive with suspected impact damage. I cannot access or recover any data. Please advise on the cost and procedure of your repair service.

Hardrive was struck against a wooden table. Cracked outercasing but still in tact. when attempting to power up it just powers up then clicks and ceases. Then repeats. No detection thru laptop USB.

External hard drive has stopped working completely. It whirrs briefly into life but then beeps a lot and the motor stops. I have replaced the SATA connection but that has made no difference. Just need to recover data off the drive if possible.

Can not acces the drive. I think is due the drive has been droped , unfortunately. My external hard drive was working yesterday today I couldn't access it. The drive it showing up on the computer but it wont allow access. Could I have someone call me regarding this as all my London dissertation/ university work is on it?

The desktop computer was running a software that was writing files to the hard drive (D). When I came back to the computer the monitor was black and it was not responding and there was no weird noises. I restarted it using the button. When it started the drive (D) was not listed in the explorer, disk manager or device manager. I could not tell if there was any noises from the hard drive or not, but I think it was silent. I have now removed the drive from the computer. OS: windows 7 Hard Drive: 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm SATA 6Gbit/s PS. I would prefer if we could discuss on email and not phone. Then I could call Data Clinic if I think it is necessary.

Hard Drive Dilemma

Enquiry: My Hard Drive recently packed in. It was running ok the night before (although in retrospect after being asked about it, I'd heard it click a couple of times), but when I booted it up I kept getting an error message saying windows couldn't be found.
So on boot up I went to the BIOS menu to see if something had reordered the drives and discovered the hard drive couldn't be read. I then took it to a repair shop and they attempted to diagnose the problem (it was them who asked about the clicking). They left it over night for a diagnostic and said that on a couple of occasions the Hard Drive was picked up but the only info they could get off it was garbled nonsense. They said that they thought that the heads may have failed on the Hard Drive and that wasn't something they could fix and recommended someone else. The 2nd person came to the same conclusion and said he didn't want to tamper with the heads either as it wasn't something he could fix and so he recommended you.

The only other note I can think of is that the laptop seemed to be running quite hot leading up to the failure, but as I've replaced the hard drive this doesn't seem to be the problem. For reference, I live in Liverpool, just in case you need to refer me to that office.

My Response: What you have described there is a hard drive that is about to completely fail. It probably didn't help that the first repair shop you took it to kept it switched on last night. If a hard drive is running hot and slowly then my recommendation is to switch the hard drive quickly and wait a while for it to cool down - don't put it in a fridge or freezer and this will put unnecessary stress on the hard drive, instead let is cool naturally.

When it's completely cooled you can attach it again and attempt to copy your files off of it asap. If you are successful at this then you've had a lucky escape. If the hard drive begins to run slowly or is not recognised then I'm afraid it's too late for you to do anything - the hard drive is already badly damaged. If you need to remove the data from it you'll need to contact a data recovery company.

Finding a Data Recovery Company

You can look for a local data recovery company but my experience is that good data recovery companies a few and far between. Make a distinction between a data recovery specialist and a PC repair shop. They are not the same beast at all. Even though the shop may claim to perform data recovery, it's capabilities will be no where approaching what the data recovery company can do. The best way I've found is to do a countrywide internet search and then look at the reviews of the company. Another useful method is to look for bloggers who write about data recovery and hard drive issues - if you are in the UK you can visit the Recover Deleted Data web site. It deals in answering questions about all types of data recovery, not just retrieving deleted data.


Smartphone Data Recovery (iPhone and Android)

New Phone Data Recovery Service
Data Recovery Tips (http://data-recovery-tips.co.uk/), the UK data recovery service has recently started to provide phone data recovery in addition to hard drive recovery.

Having used this service provider before and had good results I will now also be sending broken phones I receive to have their data extracted to them.

A recent number of phone recovery enquiries are reprinted below: in each case Data Recovery Tips have a service to retrieve the data. Alternative service providers are recommended at http://blogs.rediff.com/data-recovery/.
Iphone 6s got dropped in water, was put in rice. It did not turn on, attempted screen replacement. The screen came on but was extremely dim until last night and screen stopped coming on. Need backup of all data.

  • I need to retrieve a number from Feb 25th of this year on an Iphone. It is not left on the call history log, since Iphone only stores the last 100 calls which means about a month back in time. Can you help me retrieve it?
    I have heard about your services all the way to Sweden and that is why I am going to London next week to have this phone number recovered.
    Therefore, I will show up on Wednesday morning on June 8th and am leaving for Stockholm on Friday morning June 10th at 6.30 AM.
    Therefore, I would like to kindly ask if I could collect my USB stick with the lost phone number on Thursday June 9th, before you close at 6 PM. I definitely need this number with me on my flight back, perhaps you could make an exception and wonder how much that costs extra? Money is not an issue. I have to get the data recovered before I leave.
    Please, call me as soon as possible to make an appointment on Wednesday, in order for you to be able to retrieve the phone number before my departure.
  • Phone was dropped in toilet by my son and was in there for a minute while turned on. I took it out and turned it off. About 10 minutes later the battery seemed to get really hot. Later that day I put it in one of those drying bags with drying crystals after opening it up and taking screen off. I left it in there 5 days. Now it have tried to turn it on but it is dead. I need to recover about 32gb of info which is mostly photos and videos. I live in Herts and work in London.
  • I have a samsung s7 edge that fails to boot. I have contact and messages that I would like recovered from the phone, is this something you can help with?
  • My Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini was recently infected with a virus. I had to perform a systent restore and wipe the phone in order to be able to use it again. The problem was that after the restore I realised that I had not backed up my data and as a result lost all my pictures. I am aware that it is possible to retrieve data after a system restore. Would it be possible for you to retrieve my data from my phone.