Hi everyone and congrats for this great resourceful website, tons of info here!

Unfortunately the reason I post is not a good one (I suppose this happens a lot here).

I have a HGST 500GB Laptop hard drive that is dead.
To be honest here, I punched the laptop. The laptop is dead. So is the HDD. I connected to a "tower" pc and it makes some horrible noises. I immediately shut it down after I hear them.

Of course, my backup was quite old and now I'm desperate to get what I can from my files. Most of them, business data and some family pictures.(and some private videos... ).

I was told to order a new identical drive and change the electronics board. Would that make sense? Is it energy-related? I thought this would be something with the drive mechanics.

If someone can suggest next steps, I'm all ears.
Data is important but I have a high - limit on how much money I want to spend on this.
I'm located in Athens, Greece, but I'm a frequent traveller, so I can bring drive with me elsewhere.

Thanks in advance.

99% certain if the laptop was punched and the drive makes mechanical sounds is has read-write head (mechanical) failure. You do need professional help to recover your data. The fact the drive spins up means it is not an electronics issue. However you did exactly the right thing shutting the drive down.

Personally I can recommend Northwind Data Recovery in your area. You will find his details on this site.

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

Horrible noises and punching the HDD means problems with the heads and the platters, exchanging the PCB will not help in that situation. DO NOT open the drive yourself! Do not try to power it up again! I would suggest that you package the disk to prevent further shocks during the transport and bring the disk to https://www.northwind.gr/gr/ in Athens. I hope for you that your data is still recoverable. (Please let us know about the outcome in the end)

I second Northwind.

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

definitely Northwind.

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Data Recovery Pakistan

Yeah sounds like issue with heads, for £280 I can do this case. PM me if you want to discuss further.

Regards
Rej
Copy Paste Master

So, after thinking about it for a while, I decided to follow your suggestions and contact northwind.

The drive is now with them.
Communication was great. I will keep this with updates.

I will thank you all for your help when I get my data back!!!

You’re in good hands with Northwind

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

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

I'd like to confess a happy ending here

I got a call and an email yesterday with the results of the recovery, it looks like most of the data was saved.
I went downtown to their place today and got a drive with my data.
They look good

It was an expensive procedure (380 euros) but I'm very happy to have all that important stuff back.

They were super nice and professional and I owe them this testimonial.
All good!

Great, Nothwind and Dimitis is Good

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

happy to hear it.

good job northwind. congratulations.

That’s how it should be with a decent pro! Of course it costs money, but the results speak for themselves. Glad it didn’t turn out to be another “amateur disaster”!!!

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

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

380€ it's a very reasonable price I think.

Very good for both!

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http://www.pclab.com.pt facebook.com/PCLAB.A.T
ACELab partner

Thank you all for recommendations and kind words, all went well with this one.
Client was very happy (and no, Mike, we don't look at client data so we didn't look at your home videos).

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

Very low price! Great deal. Here it's double price

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https://cslpc.ca/