It is possible to recover files from a broken hard drive?

Question

I have an external hard drive that I keep my photos and music on, to prevent from crowding my desktop. My kids knocked it on the floor today ad now it's making this weird spinning/clicking noise and it's not connecting to the computer...am I going to be able to get my 3,000+ pictures from this thing..or is all lost?? :(

Answer 1

It is possible to extract the data. I worked as support engineer for a removable drive manufacturer and we had a guy that did that kind of stuff all the time. Search for data recovery and you'll get a lot of options.

Answer 2

This is a relatively easy process. I have seen people take hard drives that were inside house fires and easily extract the data. There are two types of hard drives. Disk hard drives and flash hard drives. The flash drives are extremely new so i doubt that's what you have. Disk drives have a disk in them, much like a cd, except much bigger. When it fell the disc was misaligned. The noise you are hearing is the disc hitting the case. Do not try to use it because you will risk scratching the disc, erasing some of the data. Search for data recovery centers in your area. Go to your local electronics store and ask them. Make sure you have a brand and model. The data recovery store usually charges by how difficult the recovery is. The more damaged the more expensive. They have to physically take apart the drive and remove the disc. You will need another drive for them to transfer the files over. Being that it is only dropped, I estimate it to be anywhere from $10-$30. Hope that helps.

Answer 3

Yes, it is possible to recover files from a broken hard drive. You will need to recover deleted formatted corrupted files using something like asoftech data recovery program.

http://www.asoftech.com/articles/External-Drive-Data-Recovery.html



I've had used it many times in the past and it always worked for me. You need to connect external hard drive into your desktop computer and run the data recovery software from there. It will rebuild the external hard drive drive and hopefully recover lost photos videos document and other files.

Answer 4

You could possibly take it to a computer shop with the chance of repairing it, but the odds are against you i'm afraid.

Answer 5

take it to a shop.

then you need to decide how much the pics are worth.