WD 320 GB HDD

[TeddysM]

My HDD Fell to the ground and since then has not been working. The drive shows up in mycomputer but i cannot click on it...what do u guys recomend....took it to best buy and they could not recover it....

[poehere]

A droped drive poses many problems, one the heads could be stuck to the platters, two you have spindle motor problems, three your platters are now misaligned. This is not a DYI job by all means. If you search and see the head alignment problems alone on this drive you will understand all of this. You might do a search in your area I know that Jono-ats is not too far from you and he is a high standing member in this community and hightly recommanded for his work in the repair field. Give him a PM and see what he says to you on this one,.

[lorand]

Freezing technique!
You may try this option for me worked many time!
Remove the electrical part of from the HDD seal the HDD hermeticaly in one of those bag and put it inside the deep freezer for 40 minutes! Try to be quick after taking out from the deep freezer and place the electronical part conect and start up the recovery!
Most of time works may you recover some of your data!
Good luck!

[pcimage]

NO NO NO

DO NOT TRY THIS!!!

[Alexii]

My HDD Fell to the ground and since then has not been working. The drive shows up in mycomputer but i cannot click on it...what do u guys recomend....took it to best buy and they could not recover it....

Poehere gives u standart line without even bothering to read ur post, Lorand is very wrong and PCimage is very right. About ur particular sittuation. The droped drive indeed can branch up into a multitude of problems however in ur sittuation it inits , gets a drive letter assigned to it ( meaning u can see it in ur My Computer ) This is good news. Meens service area of the drive is being read. Now tell me. Are u prepared to possibly lose data with DIY atempts ? If yes then u can hope for the best , sacrifice a goat and get ur hands on a logical recovery utility like R-Studio for example. In the drive selection click on ur drive , scan it and recover ur files back. If u are very lucky and the fall just made a mini crash that screwed up ur MFT a bit - R-Studio will work and ull get stuff back.

Ill say again. Do the following only if u dont care much for data and u want DIY ONLY. BE PREPARED to lose it all.

[hddmania]

PLEASE DO NOT FREEZE YOUR DRIVE!!!!!

Also, what you are seeing in My Computer is the external hard drive box and not the actual hard drive...

If the Best Buy couldn't get your data back, you got the physical issues. If you value your data DO NOT power that drive again. Seek a professional help.

My guess is the stucked motor....

[TeddysM]

PLEASE DO NOT FREEZE YOUR DRIVE!!!!!

Also, what you are seeing in My Computer is the external hard drive box and not the actual hard drive...

If the Best Buy couldn't get your data back, you got the physical issues. If you value your data DO NOT power that drive again. Seek a professional help.

My guess is the stucked motor....

what kind a programm best use?

[thatdellguy]

When are people going to realize that the 18 year old minimum wage techs at BestBuy are not data recovery professionals?

[XanderSholtz]

BestBuy's Geek Squad does have a data recovery division in Louisville, Kentucky where all hard drives are sent for recovery

[Doomer]

BestBuy's Geek Squad does have a data recovery division in Louisville, Kentucky where all hard drives are sent for recovery

we saw some screwed up drives after them

[jono-ats]

We had two clients recently who had their PCs "serviced" by the aforementioned company, whose drives had been summarily reformatted and a fresh copy of the OS installed, WITHOUT any kind of data backup or recovery.

The customers said they signed a work order agreeing that BB was not responsible for their data.

Ouch!

[harddrivespecialist]

we saw some screwed up drives after them

Had few cases from them also.

[harddrivespecialist]

what kind a programm best use?

Unfortunately, no program will be able to fix this problem.

[hddmania]

Yep, me 3.... We had the drive that was serviced by them and what a mess!!!!

Not to be mean, but when your family member has a hart problem, I'm sure you'll take your family member to the heart doctor, not a local dentist. I'm sure you won't go to a book store and buy a book call Heart Surgery for Dummies or GOOGLE how to operate open heart surgery in your bedroom.

Often time, it will end up costing a lot more if the drive was messed with by non-professionals to undo the damages that were caused.

[XanderSholtz]

By their data recovery division, or the the 18 year old minimum wage techs at BestBuy?

[quasimodo]

Last time I checked Best Buy had a partnership agreement with Ontrack. As for the Techs Yes, they mess up drives.

[hddmania]

I wander if the Data Recovery Division/Ontrack or the tech from the shop labeled this drive as unrecoverable. My guess is the Data Recovery Division as I've seen a few rejected by them that turned out to be recoverable but their initial quote were $1,500 and up and about 5-8 business days recovery timeline... (This make scense that they ship the drives to somewhere thus needing at least a week worth of transit time)

I also heard good things about their data recovery services, too. Don't know it's true or not but I heard some success stories that they got 100% recovery on the drives that needed the HSA swap on WD drives.

If it was the tech, more than likely they run the logical recovery software and may caused additional damages

[XanderSholtz]

Geek Squad is professional when it comes to data recovery, they use Ontrack for hardware and SA/FW issues, they do all the logical / PCB repairs at their facility in Louisville, of course that doesn't stop Timmie at the retail store from doing whatever he thinks will work before it gets to them.

[TeddysM]

Good news guys.....send it out to HDmania and he took care of it for me. he recovered all me files....this guy is the best i highly recomend him.

[drc]

Good to hear. No offense to you XanderSholtz if you work there or something, but Best Buy is Bad News when it comes to your data. Timmie at the retail store can and will do everything he can think of to screw up your drive, including but not limited to freezing it, whacking it on the table, putting it in the break room toaster oven, and running eighteen different raw scan softwares on it while it is occasionally clicking before calling it unrecoverable or escalating it to the mail-in center.

I'm really not kidding, at the last place I worked we dealt with drives that had been to these clowns ALL THE TIME.