Hi all
hope you guys solve my burning problem I'm faced with at the moment
I have a Sony Vaio with a Toshiba 500 gig hard drive and when I started up the computer one morning it wouldnt boot at kept on saying something like software failure and gave me 2 options let windows fix the problem or Start windows normally no matter what I did it still wouldnt boot ....(and Ive also tried safe mode , command prompt and all the other options ) so what I did was I removed the hard disk and plugged it externally (with a SATA to USB cable with external power) to another laptop and at that point it identified the Drive but wouldn't read any of the Data. so what I did was I installed EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional . It identified drive as well and asked me whether I want to recover data and I pressed YES. So it started reading the drive and when it got towards the end of the drive it wouldn't read and was stuck at one place ... ( this was after about 8 hours of reading the drive) and finally it asked me whether I want to format the drive for it to be able to read and at that point I pressed NO as I didn't want to format the drive cause it might loose all the valuable data which I have collected over 5-6 years ... yes I know its stupid of my not to backup the data ... and it also gave me the option of recovering the data it read so far ... when I looked at the files it didn't have the most important files that I had in the drive which are pics mp3 and so on. so I didn't recover it and came out of the program (EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard) and when I went back into the program immediately after it didn't even recognize the drive. This is the story so far ... I'm sorry if I haven't made it out clear .... Hope you can understand ... I have a few questions and sincerely hope you guys can help me out here...

1) is the data still be recoverable ??? (If I take it to a place Tech Guys in UK)
2) Is there anything else I can do myself before taking it to Techguys ??

I badly need this data hope a can help me pls pls pls ... waiting for quick response from you

You have two choices on this one. If you have a desk top computer you can try to plug it direct to the MB and clone your HDD right away to another one. To continue on like you are is only going to lose your change to recover the data that is on there now. Once cloned you can use the clone and run a recovery progarm on it. You can try to use ddrescue on this one to clone to another HDD.

Second option is contact pcimage here is member here on this forum and high qualified with all the right tools to hand a drive in your condition. He can get back your data for you on this one and save it for you.

Third I would recommand that you take it to PCimage and have this one done. I would not recommands any old IT Tech to do this one for you. A failing drive in your condition the more you try and play with it and do not understand what is really wrong with it will only damage it further and more change to lose your data on it.

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Iorana Haraharaini

Right now the data is probably recoverable, but the drive sounds like it's degrading rapidly.

By all means try and DIY it and image it, but all the time you are hammering away at the drive you are lessening the chances of recovery and increasing the costs of recovery if/when you do decide to get pro help (not Tech Guys, they are just PC techs, not DR Guys with respect)

I guess this might sound like scaremongering, but we see so many cases where people have hammered their drives to the death and make them irrecoverable.

Of course it's your data and only you can take the choice to gamble with DIY recovery, and if you do opt for DIY I honestly wish you the best of luck.

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

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