Helo gurus,

I am Christina from Greece.
I have a Western Digital Mybook 2TB . It started making strange noises and it is not detected from my PC, anymore.
How do I proceed? I do have important data inside.

Thanks in advance for any help.

what do you mean by strange noises ? is it clicking clicking... ?
was it dropped ?

normally clicking suggest an internal failure, in which case you should not proceed at your own, since you have important data on it.

DIY has it pros and cons. your data your choice.

_________________
RAID/Server Recovery

Contact member "Northwind"

In cases of "strange noises" DIY has no "pros", only "cons".

Please do not try any DIY attempts

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

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

And what should I do?
No it has not dropped and I cannot exactly describe the sound.

Do you have any suggestion?
(I was not planning to do something myself, without some guidelines)
Is there some kind of diagnostic tool I can run on my own, or it will be worse?

Is Northwind in Greece?

[edit]
OK, I found the info.
It is http://www.northwind.gr/ and it is in Greece, also in my city.
I will contact them and let you people know
[/edit]

Do you have any idea of the price range?

+1 "Northwind"

_________________
RAID/Server Recovery

I do have an update

I contacted member Northwind via the webpage and it turned out to be just a few blocks away from were I live.
I went this morning and left the disk there.
I must say I am impressed by the professionalism and kindness of both Dimitris and his staff.
The diagnosis is free of charge and they will let me know what's wrong with the disk and how much it will cost in a couple of days.
I stressed out the urgency of recovering my data and they promised me an answer today.

I want to thank you people for the suggestion.
(It remains to see the final result/recovey + price)

Oh. I also did mention that I found the company via this forum and they were extremely glad.

Thanks Sean and chinopk for suggestions.

Christina contacted us and it turns out she's in the neighborhood as well.

Also, I have to admit, it's sadly rare that people do actually listen and don't try to lay hands on things they don't know. She didn't attempt any DIY's or anything nasty, and that raises chances of recovery. We see botched DIY drives literally every day, and finally that was a little refreshing.

Unfortunately heads are damaged so it needs clean room work.
It's a Sadle G6 2TB with a lot of sensitive data, we'll do our best to recover it.

She's also getting a nice HDDGURU discount

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

Good luck Dimitris, let's hope it goes well!

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

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

For sure Christina is in the best hands @northwind

_________________
Digitalsupport Data Recovery
https://digitalsupport.dk

An update;

Drive is imaging now. I had to hotswap it to convince it to start, which is kinda rare for those Sadle G6s.
Maybe because H0 is a little slow. It reads though.
It looks like Christina has 1,7TB of data in there It's going to take a while.
Let's hope all goes well till the end.

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

PS. Thanks Allan and Sean.

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

WOW 1.7TB with a weak head

Knew she was in safe hands

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

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

I'm a bit scared as I read the thread, but I am confident my data will recover.
(FYI it has a lot of HUGE medical images inside)

I also cross my fingers for the final quote but He said I'll get a discount, because of you people

Thanks again to everybody for all the suggestions.
A friend of mine told me he would open the drive to see, but thank God I read the forum first and did not let him try.

Waiting for your call Northwind

no need to be scared you're in good hands

to see what ?
just for curiosity ?
how would he saw the weak head ?
(not to mention the not clean environment)

you made the right decision

The heads needed to be swapped anyway, so a "friend" wouldn't be able to do anything, except to make things worse.. So it was indeed a wise decision not to let them touch the drive.
In case h0 dies, perhaps a second swap will be necessary too.

Christina is informed of the situation. Thankfully she asked us to skip about 500GB of data she doesn't need so that will speed things up a little.
The drive is currently imaging other heads at full speed.
Let's see how it goes.

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

Well, I got a 10% discount, on the agreed price. (I'm happy about that - because of the forum)
I will get my data after the weekend (I'm happy about that too)

BUT
(forgive me Northwind, but I have to ask, no offence meant)

I have 2 questions for you gurus:

1: Does it take that long really? (I mean when it is recoverable)
2: Does it cost that much? (I know you cannot put a price in "your own" data), but still I'm a bit puzzled, a newbie in the field, I could buy an empty same drive 3-4 times.

I know it's silly questions, I know the rest of you might not want to comment, but still I'm curious on what is the average price and time frame for such a work in other countries.

I'm not complaining, I'm just asking Excuse my ignorance and "client" stupidity.

I guess I will see all answers and hear from Northwind again after the weekend. (I'll be in a hospital, so do not consider me rude for not answering if anyone asks something and I do not answer)

[Greek follows]
Δημήτρη μη παρεξηγηθείς, δεν έχω κανένα πρόβλημα μαζί σου, έχω απλά περιέργεια και πολλούς "μαλάκες" φίλους κομπιουτεράδες που ρωτάνε, αυτούς που θέλαν να το ανοίξουν.
[/end Greek]

Even when a drive is "recoverable" it can take a lot of time to recover and it rarely reads at full speed, it can be microscopic problems on platter or dealing with a lot of bad sectors and so on.
The cost for a recovery can vari depends of what kind of problem it has and how long time the recovery takes, but if you buy a new drive you don't get your data back...and get your information back it's what counts, right.

Bosse

_________________
Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

Well,
It Takes Time As The Process Has To Go Via Many stages [ Analysis , Quotes , Arranging Spares , Clean Room Process , Imaging And Then Final Data Extraction ] . Secondly The Quotes Are Always High By Pro As They Have To Have And Maintain Professional Equipment And Knowledge To Do This Kinda Work .Just Like a Medical Doctor Doing a Operation .I Hope Its Clear

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com