I have a SEAGATE Momentus 7200.4 500Gb that is the main drive of my laptop, it started erratic behavior and windows now crashes in the middle of startup, I ran MHDD and shows a lot of sectors >500 ms and a lot UNC I think that it is self destructing... I will like to recover the more data i can before it crashes, but i'm new in recovery and there are a lot of recovery software around and i'd like to have your expert opinion before buying anything.

Thank you for your time and sorry my bad English it is not my main language.

First of all you will need to IMAGE the failing drive to a good one, using non-windows s/w (such as dd_rescue, media tools pro etc..). Then use recovery s/w such as GetDataBack, R-Studio etc..

But if your drive is failing, then there's a good chance it will fail completely while using amateur tools/methods.

AT THIS POINT professional recovery shouldn't cost much more (if at all) than buying decent s/w.

DIY at your own risk, but please don't expect a cheap professional recovery if the drive fails completely, expect 10x cost it would be now.

If it's only personal data that you don't mind losing then certainly go down the DIY route by all means and I wish you all the best of luck

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You can use R-Studio startup version (bundled with R-Studio) to boot your computer and make an image of the disk. You can do that even when it runs in its Demo mode, that is, without buying the software.

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R-Studio Data Recovery Software

Thanks,

I will go myself the data on the drive is personal and only have like 2 gigs of important info

best regrds