Hard Drive is DOA

[sfalls]

Please don't suggest Option +R or Option + Command +R. I've tried it all and think I made my failing hard drive worse. I've taken my laptop to TWO different repairs shops and neither one of them have been able to get the data off of the hard drive. My option now is to wipe the drive clean and lose all my data, pictures, files, etc. I was told I could send the hard drive somewhere and pay a fee to have the data pulled off. Does anyone know who does this? It's a 2016 or 2017 so not that old. Any suggestions are much appreciated as this came out of nowhere and I don't have my laptop backed up on the cloud.

 

[maflynn]

Sadly your options are limited and this was one (of many) reason why I left the platform

if the drive is dead Im not sure you'll be able to wipe the drive

 

[Sanpete]

You have a spinning hard drive? There are places that will disassemble the drive if necessary to recover what's left on it. But it sounds like yours is still working partially. If you want some advice here, could you describe the how it's failing and what others have tried?

To find professional help, google hard drive data recovery service.

 

[glenthompson]

Ontrack.com has been in the business for years. Don’t know their charges. Depending on where you live there may be local firms that provide theYou didn’t mention which MacBook you have.

Here’s the process I would try if I had this problem - remove the drive, put it into a drive caddy and try to read it on another Mac. This eliminates cables and other internal hardware as the issue. If no joy, next trick is the freezer trick. Put the drive in the freezer for one to two hours. Remove and try to read it. Sometimes the temperature changes can help read data. If that fails then you will have to send it off for recovery.

If you get the data recovered the very first thing you should do is buy an external drive and start a backup.

 

[matram]

I have no tips for the US but I did this once in Sweden, many years ago, and the cost was well above a 1000 USD for data recovery. Note that hard disk generally fail because of damage to the platters. Although a data recovery company can recover more information from the platters that the disk itself can, there is no guarantee that they can recover your data.

You do not say what computer(s) you have. But what I have done in similar situations is to remove the faulty hard drive and mount it via a SATA-USB adapter on another computer.

There you can run disk diagnostics / repair and get more information about the problem. If you are lucky you might be able to repair the disk to the point you can mount it on your other computer and pull of some data.

If not, you can still make a raw copy of the sectors of the hard drive to a new disk. This would allow you to recover single extremely critical files by searching the raw data for the parts of the file. This is not really an option to rebuild the disk.

The above suggestions assume you have a working knowledge of the command line and Unix.

To confirm, is this really a hard disk and not an SSD? If the computer is from 2016 the only Macs having hard drives are the low end iMacs I think? The reason for asking is that data recovery as discussed above is only really an option with a hard disk. If is is an SSD I see no options.

For the future consider some backup solution.

 

[BrianBaughn]

If it is a mechanical hard drive and you're considering taking/sending it to a data recovery service…don't mess around with it anymore.

 

[Powermax]

Take it slow and start from the beginning. I assume it is a build in SSD?
What symptoms are showing up? The Laptop is not starting at all? Did you enable File Vault?
I would suggest trying to connect it to another Mac using Target Disk Mode.
Of course you should always back up your data but I guess in your case it is too late for that.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Let's get a few things out of the way first, ok?
What MacBook do you have? Is it a MacBook Pro?

What year is it?
2016?
2017?

The hard drives on these are SSDs and are for all practical purposes, not removable.

Tell us what happens when you boot to internet recovery.
(command-OPTION-R).

You need to do this after booting to internet recovery:
1. open disk utility
2. go to the "view" menu and choose "show ALL devices" (VERY important step)
3. click the "first aid" button and run it on each of the volumes/partitions you see on the left.

What kind of "reports" does disk utility give back to you?

It MIGHT be possible to get your MBP booted from an EXTERNAL drive.
If you're booted from an external drive, it may then be possible to access the internal drive and get your personal data off of it.
But first, you have to CREATE the external drive.

Do you have an external drive around? Platter-based or SSD?
Or even a USB flash drive that is 32gb (or larger)?
If you have one of those, let us know, and we'll tell you what to do next.