iMac HGST HD Data Recovery

[todd578]

Hey, Noob here to MacRumors.

I currently have a Late 2013 iMac 21.5 i7 - Running Mojave 10.14 and recently my computer started getting slower and slower and slower until it barely ran!

I'm not extremely tech savy so I ended up taking my iMac to the apple store close by where I live, they ran diagosnos on it and discovered the HD was in the process of failing. So they ended up replacing the HD with a new one and I have the removed bad HD.

My question is, what is the best way to recover the data? I'm a hospitality developer and it's mostly Word, Excel, Picture and Sketchup files.... I have 5+ years of work that is on there. Unfortunately I never set up time machine and or any back up method....

So far my inquires have been vague and varied, from $500 to 1.5K or more. The thing is I feel this is a pretty "grey" area and I could possibly be taken advantage of simply due to my lack of understanding of data recovery.

Is there a way to mount this drive externally via USB or any available port, and run a data recovery program myself?

Any advice and or info is greatly appreciated! I hope I posted this in the correct area of the forum....

It's a HGST 1TB SATA 5400 RPM 2.5 Inch Model # HTS541010A9E662

 

[weckart]

You can mount this in an external caddy and run any number of free and commercial data recovery programs. Drag and drop via Finder will possibly work if you disk is starting to fail but still going.

What you have been quoted for is data recovery from a dead drive that no longer spins, reads or mounts. Those companies use bespoke in house data recovery software and use special hardware to get your hard drive up and spinning again for the duration of the recovery. That is a long and slow task that can take days hence the very high asking price. Also data recovered in that way is rarely in an easily readable form, so it is usually only resorted to in an emergency, where the commercial costs outweigh the cost of recovery.

 

[todd578]

Thank You Weck for your insights. I agree, I guess it really comes down to how far gone my drive really is, to the point if it's worth the cost. I'm thinking i'll give the external caddy a try, run data recovery software and see what happens....

Thx Again, Much Appreciated!

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I have 5+ years of work that is on there."

There is a longstanding computer user practice called "backing up".
I suggest you learn something about it for the future welfare of your business.

Get a USB3/SATA docking station that accepts 3.5" drives.
There are tons of them on amazon, cheap.

Connect the old drive to the Mac, put the drive into it and let it spin up.
Does it mount on the desktop?

If so, IMMEDIATELY copy the relevant folders/files to your internal drive.

And again, learn something about backing up.
I suggest either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
Stay away from Time Machine.

 

[todd578]

Ok, Thanks Fish - I whole heartedly agree, setting up a backup system this week, good thing you mentioned timemachine, I was going to try that. I'll look into the 2 you suggested!

Just ordered a dock from Amazon, looking forward to when it arrives, and giving it a go. Fingers Crossed!