Friend has damaged External HD, where best to send it?

[Buel]

Hi.

A good friend of mine has an external HD full of family photos and videos but it no longer works - I can find out more info if needed. My question is what companies are the best to send this to? He has no back ups of all this data).

Thanks.

[Buel]

Update - it has a power light showing but doesn't appear on 'My Computer'.

[DB83]

Proper data recovery companies will charge ££££ - these are not catered towards home/nom-commercial content.


I would try two utilities. GetDataBack or ZeroAssumptionRecovery (ZAR). These will tell you if the content is readable and recoverable to another drive - you will probably require the paid-for versions to actually do the recovery.


Assuming, of course, that the issue is the drive and not the usb connection from the drive to the computer. One might try another computer with the drive first.

[Buel]

Thank you. Apparently a chat from his work I.T. dept bypassed the USB power supply and still couldn't read anything.
Question - could it be 'hidden'? I seem to remember having an issue years ago and had to go to 'manage' section in the computer's settings?

[davexnet]

You can open the device manager and also the Disk Management tool to see if there is any sign the device is visible
to the system

[lingyi]

Thank you. Apparently a chat from his work I.T. dept bypassed the USB power supply and still couldn't read anything.
Question - could it be 'hidden'? I seem to remember having an issue years ago and had to go to 'manage' section in the computer's settings?

Assuming you mean USB interface, not power supply, which means the drive was connected directly by its SATA interface, which is the first step to troubleshooting.

What type of drive and brand is it? Almost all externals except WD and Toshiba 2.5" portables have a separate USB interface attached to standard SATA connectors. Remove the interface and attach the drive internally or use a third party SATA to USB adapter.

Next, boot a live Linux distro and try to mount the drive in Linux which is much better at reading finicky drives than Windows. If it can't be seen or mounted, the drive is dead.

As for data recovery services, Drive Savers is often recommended, but as stated above, be prepared for 4 digit cost.

[DB83]

Some time ago, I also had a similar issue but with an internal drive. Without warning, the drive 'vanished' from my system. But ZAR got the data from it.

[abolibibelot]

Proper data recovery companies will charge ££££ - these are not catered towards home/nom-commercial content.

Not true. It's still expensive, but these companies deal with individual customers on a regular basis.

As for data recovery services, Drive Savers is often recommended, but as stated above, be prepared for 4 digit cost.

It used to be very, very expensive, upwards of $1000, nowadays the average fee for a full blown recovery on a medium capacity HDD (500GB to 2TB) in western Europe would be about $650. Some big DR companies still charge insane amounts, but they're not necessarily the most reputed in the business ; in fact I've read stories where a large company deemed a particular drive unrecoverable, and then a small company with highly skilled and persistent people managed to get the data back with a very high recovery rate.

I would try two utilities. GetDataBack or ZeroAssumptionRecovery (ZAR). These will tell you if the content is readable and recoverable to another drive - you will probably require the paid-for versions to actually do the recovery.

Don't try anything at all unless you could first assess if the issue is a physical / mechanical one or strictly logical one.
Don't scan a physically defective HDD with a data recovery software, it's bound to make things worse, and while it's scanning (which can take hours and freeze altogether, if a drive is still barely working at the beginning it may no longer work at all at the end, and if the platters were damaged in the process it's game over), not a single file is actually recovered. Doing a clone or an image file is paramount in such situations. If ddrescue or HDDSuperClone (the two best software tools to clone / image damaged HDDs) can't extract data from the drive at a resonable rate (hard to say what “reasonable” is, a 5MB/s rate can be considered very low for a drive that normally reads at above 50MB/s, but then it goes down to 0.5MB/s and you regret the marvelous 5MB/s rate you had at the beginning...), then nothing else will get any significant amount of data out of it, unless it is properly serviced (which usually means replacing the “head stack assembly” in a dust-free environment).

Assuming, of course, that the issue is the drive and not the usb connection from the drive to the computer. One might try another computer with the drive first.

Apparently that was tried already. And if another HDD works fine on that computer, it's unlikely that the computer is the culprit.

Thank you. Apparently a chat from his work I.T. dept bypassed the USB power supply and still couldn't read anything.
Question - could it be 'hidden'? I seem to remember having an issue years ago and had to go to 'manage' section in the computer's settings?

No offense, but based on the kind of question being asked here, any DIY fix attempt is off the table.

What type of drive and brand is it? Almost all externals except WD and Toshiba 2.5" portables have a separate USB interface attached to standard SATA connectors. Remove the interface and attach the drive internally or use a third party SATA to USB adapter.

Indeed, nowadays an increasing amount of external HDD models have the USB interface directly soldered to the PCB, making even that kind of simple check very complicated. Some WD models also have a native encryption at the USB bridge level, which adds yet another layer of difficulty.

Next, boot a live Linux distro and try to mount the drive in Linux which is much better at reading finicky drives than Windows. If it can't be seen or mounted, the drive is dead.

“Dead” is unnecessarily harsh, as the odds for successful recovery are generally high at this point, provided that the owner didn't attempt anything foolish — like opening the HDD's case to “see if there's something wrong inside, try to move that thingy that seems stuck with a screwdriver, put it in the freezer, remove the platters to see if they can be read in the DVD player...”.

Some time ago, I also had a similar issue but with an internal drive. Without warning, the drive 'vanished' from my system. But ZAR got the data from it.

There are many types of failures with HDDs, what worked for one particular failure which happened to be of the logical type might be a recipe for disaster in a completely different situation. If you don't know any better on that specific topic, please don't give ill-advised advices that can have dreadful and irreversible consequences (unlike video for instance, where different things can be attempted to get a desired result, if something doesn't work all that is lost is the time that said attempt took, it can be started all over again, and at least a bit of knowledge / experience was gained in the process ; data recovery issues are much more unforgiving).


So. The first instinct was to reach out to a professional company, which is probably the best course of action if the drive's contents are important / irreplaceable / not backed up, and neither you nor the owner have the required knowledge to clearly pinpoint the cause of the issue, let alone fix it. Apparently you are located in the UK. A regular member from forum.hddguru.com works in a data recovery company located in the UK, and once (in May 2019) proposed me a 500€ fee for a complete service (“including parts, labour and shipping”, only the recovery HDD would have been a 50€ supplement for a 1TB external 2.5" model, if none provided with the defective one). I can't fully vouch for them as it was for someone (let's say an occasional client, who requested my help for her failed HDD, and I quickly found out that the issue was beyond my current expertise, as the drive was clicking which is a typical sign of head failure) located in south France, who wasn't confident about shipping the drive abroad, so she preferred to save some more and get it done later by a local company (for about 650€) as she was not in a hurry. But again, the guy is a regular member on a forum where most regulars are fellow data recovery experts from all over the world, so that alone should make him trustworthy. I could ask again about that offer and keep you posted.

A few questions, the answer to which might help with the pre-diagnosis :
– Can the drive be heard spinning ? Is it making abnormal sounds, like clicking ?
– Did it happen all of a sudden with no known cause, or was there a shock, or an electrical problem ?
– What is the drive's model / capacity ? If possible, have the owner look at the actual HDD's label, inside the external enclosure, which is safe to open, but he should NOT attempt to open the actual HDD's metal casing.

[lingyi]

[QUOTE=abolibibelot;2604571]

Next, boot a live Linux distro and try to mount the drive in Linux which is much better at reading finicky drives than Windows. If it can't be seen or mounted, the drive is dead.

“Dead” is unnecessarily harsh, as the odds for successful recovery are generally high at this point, provided that the owner didn't attempt anything foolish — like opening the HDD's case to “see if there's something wrong inside, try to move that thingy that seems stuck with a screwdriver, put it in the freezer, remove the platters to see if they can be read in the DVD player...”.

It's "dead" as far as DIY. If it can't be mounted, it's either the PCB or mechanical. Neither of which can be fixed at home and requires professional "revival".

As for data recovery services, Drive Savers is often recommended, but as stated above, be prepared for 4 digit cost.

It used to be very, very expensive, upwards of $1000, nowadays the average fee for a full blown recovery on a medium capacity HDD (500GB to 2TB) in western Europe would be about $650. Some big DR companies still charge insane amounts, but they're not necessarily the most reputed in the business ; in fact I've read stories where a large company deemed a particular drive unrecoverable, and then a small company with highly skilled and persistent people managed to get the data back with a very high recovery rate.

Cost depends on what the issue is. Something simple like a blown diode or pcb swap will cost less than a full disassembly and actuator swap.

[lingyi]

What type of drive and brand is it? Almost all externals except WD and Toshiba 2.5" portables have a separate USB interface attached to standard SATA connectors. Remove the interface and attach the drive internally or use a third party SATA to USB adapter.

Indeed, nowadays an increasing amount of external HDD models have the USB interface directly soldered to the PCB, making even that kind of simple check very complicated. Some WD models also have a native encryption at the USB bridge level, which adds yet another layer of difficulty.

The only externals that are confirmed to have the USB interface integrated into the PCB are WD and Toshiba 2.5" portables. There are no reports of any current 3.5" externals* having the interface integrated into the PCB. This is because, with the exception of the WD and Toshiba portables which have no equivalent size retail internal, all drives in externals are from the regular internal drive lines, either retail or white labeled.

*I vaguely recall having a very early 3.5" IDE external with the USB interface integrated into the PCB, have never seen or heard about since SATA drives became mainstream.

[abolibibelot]

It's "dead" as far as DIY. If it can't be mounted, it's either the PCB or mechanical. Neither of which can be fixed at home and requires professional "revival".

PCB failure may be fixable in DIY, but it's not a simple PCB swap, at least with recent models, as specific data are present on each unit without which it can't operate properly. There are specialized PCB resellers which for $50 transfer the required data from the damaged PCB to a compatible replacement and ship it back. But of course it works only if the issue is with the PCB and nothing else (in case of electric shock for instance, internal components can be damaged as well, typically the pre-amp). Sometimes it can be as “simple” as removing a shorted TVS diod (but this is only a temporary fix, since the drive is no longer protected, and even that is risky for someone unexperienced).
But typically a PCB failure means that the drive doesn't spin at all. If the drive can be heard spinning, but is not recognized, chances are that there's a problem inside.

Cost depends on what the issue is. Something simple like a blown diode or pcb swap will cost less than a full disassembly and actuator swap.

Of course, but the average fees I mentioned are for the second kind of recovery services.
The first kind would be about half those figures (200-300 €/£/$).

The only externals that are confirmed to have the USB interface integrated into the PCB are WD and Toshiba 2.5" portables. There are no reports of any current 3.5" externals* having the interface integrated into the PCB. This is because, with the exception of the WD and Toshiba portables which have no equivalent size retail internal, all drives in externals are from the regular internal drive lines, either retail or white labeled.

The first part may be true (I haven't seen Seagate external HDDs built like that, or 3.5" HDDs from any brand), but both WD and Toshiba manufacture 2.5" internal HDDs, so I'm not sure what you mean here.

I vaguely recall having a very early 3.5" IDE external with the USB interface integrated into the PCB, have never seen or heard about since SATA drives became mainstream.

Must have been long ago since SATA has been mainstream for about 15 years now !

[lingyi]

The first part may be true (I haven't seen Seagate external HDDs built like that, or 3.5" HDDs from any brand), but both WD and Toshiba manufacture 2.5" internal HDDs, so I'm not sure what you mean here.

The largest 2.5" internal drives from WD and Toshiba are 2TB. Larger drives are only available as externals with the special PCB. Seagate on the other hand offers all the same capacity 2.5" drives as internal and external.

Of course, but the average fees I mentioned are for the second kind of recovery services.
The first kind would be about half those figures (200-300 €/£/$).

Please provide the OP the name(s) of the providers that offers the services those prices as they're well below what I've read others experiences are.

[lingyi]

Agree we need to hear from the OP what the status of the drive is.

Still in the external case? Spinning? Clicking? Not spinning?
- May be a bad USB interface.
- Need to shuck and connect directly via the SATA interface.

What size drive? 2.5" or 3.5"
- If it's 2.5" could be not getting enough power if it's connected with just the USB cable. Connect to a USB 3.0 port directly or through a powered hub.

Connected directly via the SATA inteface?
Spinning? Not spinning? Clicking?
- If it's not spinning, it could be the PCB.
- If it's clicking, most likely it's a mechanical issue and needs (more expensive) professional recovery.

In any case, a valuable reminder to the OP's friend and everyone else that frequent backups are not optional!

[abolibibelot]

The largest 2.5" internal drives from WD and Toshiba are 2TB. Larger drives are only available as externals with the special PCB. Seagate on the other hand offers all the same capacity 2.5" drives as internal and external.

Alright then, didn't know that. Indeed I haven't seen 2.5" HDDs from WD with a higher than 2TB capacity (but I haven't checked the market for new drives lately). As for Toshiba, I've had a bad experience with a 3.5" 2TB model in 2014, and although I'm aware that getting a bad unit is merely bad luck, not statistically significant, not enough to conclude that the series or even the brand is bad, I found out that their customer support in Europe was non-existant for internal HDDs (at least 3.5", not sure about 2.5"), so won't buy one again. (To elaborate a bit : the drive was purchased from a relatively new online seller, not a big name but still an established name that appeared regularly in price comparators, and it happened to have a low price for that model at that moment ; luckily I could get the bad drive exchanged, because the online shop in question disappeared a few months later, so if it had happened then, since there was no direct RMA service from Toshiba, I'd have been SOL and JWF.)
Do you know if there is a specific reason why those two manufacturers don't produce higher capacity internal HDDs ?

Please provide the OP the name(s) of the providers that offers the services those prices as they're well below what I've read others experiences are.

Well it's tricky because I wouldn't want to publicly advertise a company I haven't had direct or at least indirect experience with... But here is a forum thread that discusses current price ranges for different kinds of failures. Here is another discussing how big firms with big fees aren't necessarily the best at solving tricky cases (that particular one involved a SSD).

[lingyi]

Do you know if there is a specific reason why those two manufacturers don't produce higher capacity internal HDDs ?

Not sure. My suspicion is that 3TB+ drives require larger cases to accommodate the extra platters required. The 12mm & 15mm heights eliminates their use is the majority of laptops and they don't want to compete with Seagate for a niche market, that will continue to shrink as large SSDs drop in price.

[Buel]

Quick one, chaps -

No clicking or similar (I have just asked him Re any spinning. Am waiting on the answer).
Green Power light does show when plugged in to the USB port.

HD details:
(Intenso)
2.5" Memory Station
Intenso GmbH Diepholzer Str.15 49377 Vechta

[abolibibelot]

It's going to be complicated if each time you have to pass questions and wait for a reply. é_è
What was provided was the brand of the external enclosure, not the actual hard disk drive inside, which could be either : Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung, Hitachi, Toshiba — that's about it if it's less than ~10 years old (perhaps Fujitsu still makes them 2.5" HDDs ?). The enclosure is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to data recovery (unless the USB connector is solderered to the PCB, and/or there's data encryption from the USB board but it's very unlikely with this brand, lots of WD external HDDs have both characteristics and it's a PITA when the USB interface fails, even if the HDD itself is still perfectly operational). You stated above that it had already been tested outside of the enclosure, or so I understood (somebody “bypassed the USB power supply and still couldn't read anything”, which should mean that it was connected through SATA).
Again, was there a known event that caused the malfunction, or did it happen all of a sudden ?

[lordsmurf]

I paid $1000 for data recovery about 10 years ago. The most irksome aspect is that they actually recover your files when it's sent in. If you choose not to pay, the files are deleted from their system, your drive returned. It really is a racket. My drive was looked at almost immediately, and a file list emailed within hours. The BS part is (at least then) you wouldn't know the price until after they looked at it, essentially held your files hostage, teased you with the emailed file list (and % "receoverable" aka already recovered, of each file). BTW, the sucky part about my drive failing? It failed in the middle of a backup. And I'd purged the backup drive to back it up again. I now retain multiple backups, with spare drives on hand in standby.

I used Kroll then, but DriverSavers would be my choice these days.

I lost a HDD several days ago. Sudden whistle noise, mouse froze, some USB ports locked up. The USB interface has drive data, it's a matched pair. 99% of the files were backed up, so it was mostly a wasted next day for rebuild. That Seagate is still under warranty.

Putting the drive in a freezer, etc, is really stupid. Don't do that, if the data matters. (I tried everything when a TV show drive failed. Nothing worked.)

[abolibibelot]

I paid $1000 for data recovery about 10 years ago. [...] My drive was looked at almost immediately, and a file list emailed within hours.

Did they specify the exact type of failure ?
Doing a complete recovery from a presumably physically defective drive (since only a failure from internal components would have justified that kind of fee) in such a short time was suspicious indeed ; even if capacities were lower a decade ago (but 500GB was already quite common and I got a 1TB in 2009, copying the whole contents of a perfectly functional 1TB HDD took about 3 hours, as platter densities were much lower), the initial assessment, disassembly, replacement of defective components with matching ones, reassembly, tests, filesystem analysis, and actual recovery if everything went well, all that must take quite some time, even for seasoned technicians. There are also firmware related failures or logical failures which might be quicker to solve, but even that takes some time to properly investigate, and it shouldn't cost as much. But the fact is that these companies make the bulk of their profits with relatively mild failures, the kind of which don't require as much time of actual work, and some may be tempted to misrepresent the nature of the issue, knowing that people reach out to them as a last resort, and that only fellow data recovery experts would be able to know the difference and understand the implications, and it's such a niche business that they won't even risk damaging their reputation since noone knows about them until they need their services... (And it would be easy for a really crooky company to actually create the kind of damage that would justify a high fee when they give back the drive, so that even a less crooky company couldn't call the b.s. when re-assessing it later on.)
Although this may have changed somewhat over the last decade, as there are more people hoarding moar data on moar hard disk drives, so statistically more failures (from individual customers and corporations alike), more data recovery companies, more competition, more available information, therefore less of a field day for businesses with less than savory practices.

I used Kroll then, but DriverSavers would be my choice these days.

Well, for the O.P.'s friend it would have to be a company located in the U.K. (presumably).

I lost a HDD several days ago. Sudden whistle noise, mouse froze, some USB ports locked up. The USB interface has drive data, it's a matched pair. 99% of the files were backed up, so it was mostly a wasted next day for rebuild.

Matched pair in what way ? Was the data encrypted when the drive was plugged in SATA, outside of the enclosure ?
One thing that is possible is that some enclosures (I have one like that, a Seagate incidentally, SRD00F2 precisely) have a special kind of firmware that sort of translates regular 512 bytes sectors into 4096 bytes sectors, which allows the use of HDDs with a higher than 2TB capacity (up to 2^32 x 4096 = 16TB if I'm not mistaken) on systems which normally don't support them (like Windows XP). When plugging the drive formatted through such an enclosure “naked” (in SATA), that special scheme can no longer be interpreted properly and therefore the data is no longer accessible through regular means, but some good data recovery softwares can still make sense of it. (In this thread it is stated that this can be solved by DMDE, which is quite cheap, and yet highly regarded on that forum.)

[lordsmurf]

I still have the invoice:

A. Media Evaluation Results Overview
* There is a failure of any one of the mechanical contained within the storage device, such as a failed magnetic head assembly or a bearings seizure. Proprietary techniques are required to overcome the mechanical failure and access the data.
* The file system that manages the files and folders, has been verified. Check the file listing reports to verify the files and folders.
* Ontrack will use proprietary tools to access the device, recover as much data as possible, and back up.
* The media should be replaced.
* Ontrack Clean Room expertise was required to access the data.
* ntfs1 has 1097 good files (286 GB), 0 repaired files (0 GB), and 151 partial files (77 GB).

B. Evaluation and Data Recovery Service Fees (Prices valid for 5 days from date of quotation below)
Product Price Qty Extended
DIAGNOSIS 65.00 1 65.00
DATA RECOVERY 1,000.00 1 1,000.00
MEDIA - HARD DRIVE - EXT500GB 150.00 1 150.00
Total Cost for Service 1,215.00 USD

Most of the partial files were 99%+ and still worked. Very few were fully unrecoverable. I still have that spreadsheet as well.

I believe it was a 400gb drive that failed, and the replacement drive was 500gb. I still have the replacement drive in my desk drawer.