Help -- Harddrive nightmare come true!

[labdogs42]

Yes, the drive with most of my pictures on it has failed. No, everything isn't backed up. Yes, I know how stupid it is that I am in this situation, now PLEASE help me find someone who can help! My computer guy says I might be able to recover my stuff with "advanced data recovery". Has anyone used one of these types of services? Any recommendations? I'm trying to keep busy surfing the net for info so I don't get hysterical about this situation. Thank you!

 

[Barbossa]

I've used a data recovery service for work, I would guess that most cities/towns have them. The service that I used were able to recover quite a bit of data, actually more than were in the directories because a lot of deleted data remains on-disk. Check out your yellow pages, hopefully you'll find a reputable outfit.

 

[TerryKitten]

My mom used drive savers... but they are spendy people but got EVERTHING off. Could buy a new computer for the price... but then how much is your data worth.

 

[labdogs42]

My mom used drive savers... but they are spendy people but got EVERTHING off. Could buy a new computer for the price... but then how much is your data worth.

The price doesn't really matter to me at this point.

 

[cherylp3]

check out this article by Kim Komando - it may help
http://www.komando.com/tips/index.aspx?id=2938

 

[mmcguire]

If they are precious photos, I personally would go with a professional recovery service.

I had a hard drive failure a couple years ago and bought some software that recovered some of my pics, but a professional with more experience and better tools could probably have done a better job. I now wish I'd put the software $$ toward paying someone to do a thorough recovery.

 

[Toby'sFriend]

I've never used one of the services.


A couple of years ago I had a hard drive go bad. I bought a new computer and then installed the bad HD in an empty bay as a second HD. I bought a software that inspected the bad HD and copied everything that was recoverable out onto the new computer's HD. I got all my files back.

You have to the HD installation. It sounds much more complicated than it actually is - if it intimidates you I'd just go with the data recovery service.