Western Digital external data recovery ideas

[TitanJeff]

I have a student who put most of her project work for the past few semesters on an Western Digital hard drive which was in a I/O Magic shell.

It was dropped and immediately started a grinding noise. She took it to the local mac guru who has been unable to recover any of the data.

My gut tells me it's a goner but I wanted to run it by the gurus here to see if they might recommend anything that we might try before giving up.

All suggestions appreciated.

 

[jw2002]

You can always try freezing the drive and then trying to read the data from the disk while it spins up cold. However, the drives I have tried this with were too far gone for it to work. Aside from that the only other possibilities are the professional services that remove the platters and scan the physical surface of the disk.

 

[nanofrog]

You can always try freezing the drive and then trying to read the data from the disk while it spins up cold. However, the drives I have tried this with were too far gone for it to work. Aside from that the only other possibilities are the professional services that remove the platters and scan the physical surface of the disk.

It's super expensive though.

 

[skorpien]

Yup, expensive but more effective than freezing the disk. I dropped an external and it was too far gone to freeze. I have a theory that if it fails from a drop, the mechanism inside the drive is too far damaged for the freezing to move it back into place. The stories I've read online usually refer to drives that fail under normal use (though I could be wrong). Luckily I didn't have too important of data on there. Let your student consider this an expensive lesson learned. It's unfortunate, but in the future hopefully she keeps multiple backups, especially of such crucial information. Good luck!

 

[nanofrog]

Yup, expensive but more effective than freezing the disk. I dropped an external and it was too far gone to freeze. I have a theory that if it fails from a drop, the mechanism inside the drive is too far damaged for the freezing to move it back into place. The stories I've read online usually refer to drives that fail under normal use (though I could be wrong). Luckily I didn't have too important of data on there. Let your student consider this an expensive lesson learned. It's unfortunate, but in the future hopefully she keeps multiple backups, especially of such crucial information. Good luck!

If you have to have the data and there's no backups, then a recovery service is essentially all there is. Occasionally, it can be done by the user, but it's rare, and more likely to waste whatever remains on the platters.

Backups are critical for essential data. No way around that. Otherwise, the user is playing Russian Roulette.

 

[TitanJeff]

Thanks for all the replies.

Is there any recovery software which might be worth investigating? I see a number of them online. She did copy her work from her macbook pro onto this external before deleting the original. I wonder how much, if any, could be recovered.

 

[mooblie]

.......She did copy her work from her macbook pro onto this external before deleting the original. I wonder how much, if any, could be recovered.

...in that case, tell her to IMMEDIATELY stop using her Macbook Pro, to maximize the chances of any recovery of the deleted files. As in: Shut it Down NOW!!

 

[TitanJeff]

I should have been more specific...

I'm sure most of the data was transferred weeks ago.

What is the window for recovery usually?

 

[mooblie]

Ah OK! I'm sure that window for recovery is measured in a few minutes' use (or maybe an hour's use) after the files' deletion.

A few weeks? I'd be surprised if anything is left that hasn't been overwritten. Sorry. Back to Plan A!