Help, recoering files from My Passport

[TheRock]

Hello folks,

I am new here and not a technical type of guy. I am a professional underwater photographer.

I have had 2 WD My Passport drives go down. They have quite a few folders of travel images on them, some of which were not backed up at the time the drives started acting up.

Every online search I can find for data recovery starts at $700-$800 and goes up.

Is there anyone here in the forum that can do this sort of thing at a reasonable price?

The disk spins but won't mount on any of my iMacs or MacBook pro computers.

I took them to the Mac repair guy and he is hopeful about getting the data from one of them but can't see the other drive with his recovery software. So I would need someone to have a look at that one for sure. I live on Guam so he is pretty much my only hope here.



Hopefully someone in this forum offers a recovery service at an affordable price.

Thank you.

Tim of the Deep

[TheRock]

Sorry, that headline is supposed to be "recovering"

[ShaneWard]

I am a professional underwater photographer.

Umm, must have lots of breathtaking images from underwater then ...

Okay, do you know how old the drives are and have you tried to take the drives out of the case and connect them to the computer directly. It might be a loose USB connection or something. Also could you tell us the noise the drives make and such and do you have more information on the circumstances of the failure.

Shane

[data-medics]

Hello,

If the heads haven't failed (we'll have to test them to know for sure) then we can recover it for $450 flat rate (our standard pricing for this sort of recovery). Plus you'll need to buy from us or provide an external hard drive to put the data onto. You can just click the link in my signature to visit my site if you're interested. We do a lot of these here.

[data-medics]

Just out of curiosity, does the drive do any clicking or does it spin down after being powered on?

[lcoughey]

Well, my first guess is that your Mac guy is likely to kill the one drive before getting your data recovered. But, who knows, he might get lucky.

The cost to recover your data depends on the condition of the drive and the cause of the data loss. It is not uncommon for the WD Passport drives to have physically failing heads that require significant clean room work and possibly multiple head changes. With average cost of parts, alone, being between $200 and $300, it is unlikely to find any clean room data recovery service that will change the heads for less than $1000, unless it is a service that charges you for the parts separately.

If you value your data at no less than $300, it would be worth getting your drives assessed by a professional data recovery lab. I cannot speak to other lab's prices, but for non clean room recoveries of drives that are 2TB or smaller, my company charges $350CAD (about $295USD when I lookup the exchange rate online right now). But, it would be $1400CAD if we have to change the heads.

[TheRock]

Thank you for the input. The MAC tech has been very successful in the past in recovering data from crashed hard drives and told me today that he is able to start recovering data from the one drive. SO I now just have one to worry about.

The damage seemed to occur when the hub (Xcellon) seemed to start to have problems powering all drive plugged into it. Who knows why (Guam power surge, cheap hub, etc.??) but afterward I had trouble with My Passport two drives mounting on both my iMac and MacBook Pro. I understand they have small boards of some sort inside and it could have damaged those boards.

The other My Passport has the power light go on when you plug it in and it feels like it is spinning inside. But it won't mount on anything we have tried.

Thank you for the input above and also for the PMs. It looks like I will wait for a few more comments here and then probably send it off.

Images, of course, aren't worth a thing until you sell one. But, yes, there were some salable images on the drive so I will probably move forward with sending this off island to someone with more sophisticated equipment.

Thanks again. Any more ideas greatly appreciated.

Best,

T

.

[jono-ats]

We're a WD Preferred Partner.

We charge $849 flat rate for a 2 TB and will replace a WD drive under warranty (if applicable) at no add'l charge. But I see that price is above your maximum.

As far as being "reasonable", it's a matter of perspective.

[TheRock]

I guess my "persepctive" is that WD offers no in-house solutions for WD drives that fail and forces its customers to spend in the neighborhood $1000 to attempt recovery from an outside source. Not really my idea of standing behind a product. So yes, I am looking for a more reasonable solution... one that I wish WD directly offered its customers. The $149 WD great deal becomes an economic nightmare that WD washes its hands of. I am sure you have a fine service but with all of the new technology these days, is $849 plus shipping two ways really reasonable? Sounds like a price that was established 15 years ago and never went down as recovery techniques improved. Just my 2 cents.

[jono-ats]

We didn't have 2TB portable drives 15 years ago, and the technology . . . with encryption and higher areal densities, makes recovery a different prospect now.

We get drives shipped from all over the world, so it depends upon the client and the relative value of what is on the failed drive.

Does the Hilton in Tamuning still serve awesome Japanese breakfasts?

[HaQue]

When a donor drive can cost $200 or more each, and sometimes you need more than one donor per case.. then no I don't think the price is any way unreasonable. Also people seem to forget that when you pay someone for a service, you are not paying for the exact operation and time done on your individual case. You are paying for a little bit of knowledge, little bit of tools, little bit of expenses for premises, little bit of insurance, Parts, profit, etc etc etc..

As a customer, it is your right to shop around.

If you said to ford "I only want to pay for MY car, only what it cost to make it" You would be paying Millions for it for tooling etc.

How about if a DR Comapnay said that to fix your drive they would need a firmware tool at $500, a Hardware tool at $10,000, around 8 hours.. where in the real world they would be peppering in other jobs while waiting for some operations to finish.. and add a donor, laminar cabinet etc.. Do you want to pay for all that, or a small portion along with every other customer?

I can say that a great proportion of drives fixed elsewhere exceed the flat rate quoted.

[northwind]

$849 for this kind of recovery is a bargain, really.
Ask around.

If you said to ford "I only want to pay for MY car, only what it cost to make it" You would be paying Millions for it for tooling etc.
How about if a DR Comapnay said that to fix your drive they would need a firmware tool at $500, a Hardware tool at $10,000, around 8 hours.. where in the real world they would be peppering in other jobs while waiting for some operations to finish.. and add a donor, laminar cabinet etc.. Do you want to pay for all that, or a small portion along with every other customer?

That's a nice example

Couldn't agree more.

[Dmitri]

Every online search I can find for data recovery starts at $700-$800 and goes up.

If I didn't completely forget my geography lessons, you're in Micronesia.

Did you check Australian data recovery companies:
http://amcs.net.au/
http://totaldatarecall.com.au/
http://elcotronics.com.au/welcome/
?

[HaQue]

I can vouch for elcotronics - very reasonable prices as well

[ShaneWard]

The cheapest option is to have BACKUPS! One extra drive, just in case!