Recovering data from dead laptops

[DJT]

Am a bit of a Luddite when it comes to PC's and I do have a propensity to killing them off and not maintaining back ups.

After an incident between a Dell and a cup of coffee a couple of months ago I got hold of a Sata/IDE to usb2.0 hard drive adapter ( digitech XC-4150) from Jaycar for I think about $40 and recovered the data of on the hard drive really easily. I spent today going through all the dead windows laptops (there's a few...) and have revived all my Astro data and also a lot of personal photos from the last 5 years whilst at the same time putting in a back up strategy.

Now moving onto the Macs.

Best $40 I ever spent. Just get one.

Now where are those clear skies?

[leon]

David that is pretty impressive,:thumbsup: maybe backing up may be a thought though.:scared3:

Leon :thumbsup:

[RAJAH235]

Hi y'awll...
Just a heads-up, in case you did not know about this program.

Go to grc.com & for the measly sum of just $89.00 US, you will have the best
HDD maintenance & recovery tool available. (Works on SSD's as well.)

Guaranteed to work or your money back.

It's called "spinrite", by Steve Gibson.

(NB: I have no interest or affiliation in either grc.com or spinrite. I just use it.)

[sil]

spinrite is awesome but its really only for smaller hard drive sizes. I use it and do data recovery for folks for years, and 2TB drives it never fully completes while 1TB its a 50/50 chance of completing its run. but otherwise its damn good

[RickS]

Using Spinrite as the first option for recovering a failing drive sounds like a recipe for disaster. It writes to the drive FFS :eyepop: It might be worth trying *after* taking a raw copy of the bad drive.

Cheers,
Rick.

[DJT]

hmm..Maybe I didn't make it clear but the laptop drowned then fried rather than having a hard drive failure so copying the data across from a dead laptop wasn't a biggie at the end of the day. Have tagged this though in case I ever do get a hard drive failure.

Cheers

[bigjoe]

Love that one Leon:)
bigjoe.

[mynameiscd]

Hi all
I had a crashed drive years ago and was told it was un-recoverable. I tried everything even rewriting the partition tables and boot sector but still no go and then a friend told me the freezer method.
I put the drive in a bag and then sideways in the freezer for about 20 minutes and then plugged it in and BIOS could see it and then got most of the data (raw) and copied to another drive. I can't remember what program I used to decipher the files but eventually got most of it back. The cold has something to do with the platters in the hard drive but anyway I'm lucky to semi revive it for short bursts.
It made me get into a regular backup routine because one night when I'm packing up I'm bound to drop or step on my laptop and at least I haven't lost the last year's files.
So many times I hear my friends loosing all their photos but it's so easy to get complacent and not backup.
Which reminds me I should do a backup now
Cheers
Andy

[sil]

I no longer do data recovery (as a business) but I do freebies for mates because I know the pain of being seperated from your data :( There is no single method that works, it all comes down to "it depends why the need to recover". The freezer trick can sometimes work but silly tricks like that are a last resort once you've exhausted the sensible options. Spinrite is just a damn useful tool to use for different purposes. In many cases it IS a best first step for some types of hardware failures where sector loss is creeping, to stabilise the drive long enough to take a raw copy. Its also essential if you buy second handdrives off ebay to thoroughly test a drive to make sure you can trust using it. I have a ton of spare drives in the garage I fully test and format to make sure I can use them or give them out. But like any tool if you have no idea what you're doing, or worse think you are an expert already then you are going to use tools like Spinrite at the wrong time.