Drive crashed (literally) and I need the info off it

[velvetdreams21]

Heres the situation, I had a 500g external drive on the top shelf of my comp stand, forgot about the cord being so short and I pulled the comp out to unhook everything and it crashed onto my cement floor. Ever since then if I were to plug it in it would click, the comp beeps but nothing is recognized. I immediately turned it off and its been off ever since.

The drive is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 st3500830a.

If you guys have any ideas by all means let me know. This happened about a year ago, and I really want whats on it, mainly the pictures of friends, ex-girlfriends, and past relatives but I really want it all.

EDIT: I looked around a bit for DR companies, 2 were asking over $5000 which I think is just insane but then again the companies were mainly for businesses. Best buy quoted me at $400-$500 if they can fix it, if not then the company they send it to is up to $1,500 and Best Buy does know its not simple data recovery from a failed drive.

[pcimage]

Heads have failed/crashed.

It's not a simple recovery and $1500 is a reasonable price for this, although someone off here could probably do a little better, and they would come recommended.

Any takers guys?

[Steve]

What ever you do ..DON'T send it to BestBuy.

[velvetdreams21]

Aside from their prices on everything, whats wrong with Best Buy?

[Steve]

BestBuy is a retail store, They know very little, if anything, about
data recovery.
And many times they make matters worse.

[velvetdreams21]

Damn

Im really hoping someone around here has much better prices then. I mean its not something I can take care of right now but Id like to know what my options are.

[Steve]

Give it a day or 2 for some of the other pros in this forum
to reply. I'm not sure if anyone is close to you or not.

[thatdellguy]

BestBuy does not do data recovery and will destroy your drive. They make easy money by sending out your drive to a third party data recovery company.

[Cleanroom]

BestBuy does not do data recovery and will destroy your drive. They make easy money by sending out your drive to a third party data recovery company.

Best buy/geek squad does have a data recovery service that is run by Ontrack engineers. The geek squak/ontrack lab is in Tennessee i think.

[harddrivespecialist]

Best Buy will make your problem much worth, unless they send it to their Tennessee data recovery lab right away.
Your chances would be better if one of the reputable members of this forum would be willing to do this for you.

[velvetdreams21]

Got a message from one of the DR people here, thanks for the info guys.

[Irenesdream]

My daughter dropped her Hitachi Deskstar HDP725050GLA360 Sata 500GB external hard drive. Now it just clicks. Personal data that is important to her. Is recovery possible for a decent price. I've looked at video's and it seems as though it would be relatively easy IF the heads need to be changed. Do I need to find another drive exactly the same? I'd take any reasonable quote on doing this.
Thanks

[Dizidago357]

We got a drive in from a customer about 6 months back that had been sent to the "knowledgeable" techs at BestBuy for recovery. When asking the customer what work had been done, if any, he said that BestBuy had mentioned some sort of freezer technique that did not work, and because that didn't work they now had to send it out. Also had a customer one time say they had brought their drive into them for a recovery, and BestBuy accidentally formatted over the drive.

Bottom Line - Never take a drive to ANY BestBuy for recovery, their techs are laughable at best.

Dizi