Heya m8. In ur sittuation i have no reason to belive that u will get a partial recovery, unless the shop screws the operation or u omited details. All u heard is clicking, not scrathing =) With other symptoms ur HDD follows , i would venture a guess that failing head(s) is(are) the culprit. Data stored on the platters of the drive , so a correct head transplant should give u all. Now about HDD recovery being all or nothing - thats not true. There are a LOT of instances of partial revcovery when it comes to mechanical failure.

There is no Certifications exist for data recovery pro's, unless it one of those self made up certificate by mr. Scott or Cheatem and How....
I would say to stay away from people who will try to present their DATA RECOVERY CERTIFICATE, because its a BS.

Using someone reputable from this forum will guarantee you best available options on the market and fair pricing. There is more of the reputable companies in US market, but they usually big and very expensive.

_________________
www.datarecoveryne.com

BTW. Both I365 ( Seagate ) and Ontrack offer free diagnostic on a standart priority job. They are big boys in DR business. So depending on the urgency can always try em get the diagnostics and estimate to play around with.

This discussion is pointless. Talking about me, I ask for a diagnose fee. Fixed. Non refundable. Then disk is analysed and a list of the recoverable files and their condition is sent, encrypted, and a password to open the file is given separately. At this point the choice is GO / NO GO.
Assume that there are unpredictable things that can happen during the recovery process.
IF needed, and under authorization, I can check the content of some sample files or readability / integrity (for common file formats, of course).
If there are special needs, it has to be discussed as PROJECT before doing anything. I think every professional service would follow this "simplified" roadmap.
Finally, YES, it is possible that only a part of data can be recovered OR - for example but not limited to - the file system is KO but data still intact so you have NO folder names NO file names but FILES you have to rename and classify manually YOURSELF. But this situation usually comes out during analysis.

You want to be ensured that your data is safe and sound ? The answer is NO until the drive is seen and analysed. At present you should ask a crystal ball, not post in a forum.

P.S. @ Alexii, AFAIK, ONTRACK (at least here), do charge an evaluation fee. So many others.

wow I did Computing for my undergrad. But I've never really gave much attention to Hard Drive issues. I *always* believe in hard drives just because I've never encountered any hard disk related issues since young!

Datahound charges $249 service fees + $75 for parts. Does that sound good?

Any professionals on this forum that will provide a lower fees?

BlackST. In Canada ( and i am pretty sure in the US as well ) Ontrack and Seagate do diagnostic free... But thats not the point. The guy is just asking the opinion of ppl who are dealing with this type of sittuations on a regular basis. Noone expects u to open the drive VIA TCP/IP and fix all the problems... Now i repeat myself in the sittuation described i am inclined to think that there will be no damage to MFT or the platters , a few days ago head worked and showed all the data. Enclosure was never reported as droped or anything by the OP. I think its just a simple case of dieing head.

with such a high density disk you must have a clean flowbench. IMHO.

Seems to good to be true , the price... IMHO if u described the sittuation to em - they are assuming ded MFT , logical recovery, not head swap.

IMHO ppl need a flowbench or a clean room for all internal HDD work. But i stand by my post.

Oh the price includes head swap... and they have good reviews. They have clean room facilities too. That's why I think they are my first choice now.

I never dropped the hard disk. But I touched the circuit board before (wanted to feel whether it was warm). But only after I did that, I realized it was a huge mistake after reading various websites

For a headswap on a 640Gb WD? Hmmm

Bollocks

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

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

I am with PCimage on this one... I never heard of a price that low for internal work... Even the simplest single platter 1 head swap would be more... And about touching the PCB - dont worry , u cant kill it by just touching.

Thanks so much for all your advices!
Now i feel much better! I just need to shop around for reliable services thats affordable. But all the services require me to ship my hard disk to another state. I'm from Ann Arbor, I couldnt find any specialist here ... all of them don't have clean room facilities.

First of all you can change your external hard disk data cable and power cable then you can check it if then your problem not solve then you can connect external harddisk with slave port and then you can copy of all your data and in slave port your harddisk not detect then you have to go with hardware engineers because there are bad sectors in your harddisk.

_________________
m3i zero

hey keveenjones,
you're right! it's due to bad sectors! i paid $160 to get it repaired. Fair price?

yeah m8. its a fair price imo. Grats and remember to backup =)

Sure! this is an expensive lesson!
If it's a bad sector problem, does it require opening the hard disk to repair?

no. They just imaged ur drive onto a donor drive.

Oh... does that require 2 hrs of labor? as in time actually spent on it, not elapsed time

possible. Depends on a lot of factors. Bad sector ammount , equipment they have etc. My boss for one does not care much for hours spent. He charges 200$ for DDI minimum.