Any one ever crack open one of their hard drives?

[roadtrippin]

SO any one ever crack open one of their hard drives?

My cat caught a bat and knocked over a 4.54 terrabyte drive. It was 13 years of torrent flacs from dime and traders den..

It powers up.. but clicks and wont detect on the computer..

Any thoughts, suggestions... That data is precious!

[GRC]

You can't 'crack it open' unless you have a clean room.

Introduce the innards to the dust that you'll find (and cat hair etc.) in a normal home, and you'll truly kill it stone dead.

If it's a USB drive, then it will be a hard drive within a USB electronics + case, and you may be able to remove the actual drive from the USB casing and try it on its own, but no, no, no - do not 'crack open' the actual drive.

You don't have any backups?

[roadtrippin]

SO. It was an external hard drive.
I removed it from its plastic case and connected it to a another power source and a sata / ide adapter.. No luck.. It powers up but clicks..

I regret to say no ..backup.

I stayed at a holiday inn..- watched some youtube videos and saw people opening them.. I understand the clean room necessity..

Just wondering if anyone attempted to fix or sent a harddrive in to for data recovery..

[LeifH12345]

I believe you can send it into a lab, but its gonna cost ya. Search for a local technician if you think its worthwhile. There's one here that does free evaluations.

If it was all stuff shared here and on dime, you might be able to get it all again over time. But if there were some of your own recordings on there, that's a different story.

[xjsb125]

If it clicks DO NOT continue to power it up. Take it somewhere and let them determine what kind of failure it is having. The clicking you are hearing is the read/write head bouncing off the platters inside. Every time it bounces it's corrupting the data, making it harder to recover. Data recover is expensive. I mean ridiculous expensive if it's a bad failure. Like I said, let someone take a look and help determine if they can recover your data without sending it out. If it has to be sent out, I can highly recommend Datatech Data Recover Labs. They are based out of Denver, but have local sites for drop off and initial analysis in lots of locations. Most importantly, moving forward always have a backup of any important documents or files you have on a hard drive. I learned the hard way, twice!

[roadtrippin]

Thanks for the responses.

I am in Denver , so it makes sense to check out Datatech.

Yes.. Backups from now on...

I got caught in the vicious cycle of buying hard drives and then constantly moving stuff as hard drives got bigger and cheaper..

It was really nice having 1 big fucker with a P touch label of A-Z.

[Jay]

I bet you wish you backed up your data.

It is amazing how many people rely on one source for their data.

[LeifH12345]

Originally Posted by Jay

I bet you wish you backed up your data.

It is amazing how many people rely on one source for their data.

always have 2-3 drives if you don't want to lose the stuff.

i've got a 4TB drive 250 miles away with all my most cherished stuff backed up

[guygee]

I have switched-out circuit boards before to successfully repair a hard drive. It works if you have an essentially identical spare, either from an existing unit or bought off of the internet (check ebay and other more specialized outlets). Actually cracking a HD open to retrieve a platter requires a clean-room, as already wisely advised above. There are several descriptions online on how to make your own inexpensive DIY cleanroom, for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPEa0Wc9iUc

I have considered doing this when I lost a HD exhibiting "the click of death", but chances are if you have had a disk crash like that there is already substantial damage to the platter that will make at least some of the data irrecoverable anyways. If you really value the data that might remain, you can try the DIY method or pay rather dearly to have the data recovered professionally.

[saltman]

FYI when they are saying pay dearly they are meaning on the order of $2,000 or so. Professional data recovery is very expensive.

[roadtrippin]

Thanks for the input...
I have been traveling for work and have not addressed it yet..