Ok.. cos' if I were to send to another shop to repair, it would only cost $95 (including free pick up service). The data recovery center (walking distance from my house) that charged me $160, made me wait 2 weeks to get back my data which is really long!

I'm confused. Have you had your data recovered yet or not?

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

It is in the process copying data from the data recovery machine But the guy said I could only collect the hard disk back next week. Does it usually take this long for a 640GB hard disk?

Oh , so u didnt get ur data back yet ? If it is in the process right now - then it should not be very long. Most likely they dont have to many imagers and u have to wait for one to get free. Also hope that their diagnostocs is correct and they wont encounter any problems when imaging ur drive. It happens u know.

And whats the chances there will be 'errors', or heads fail requiring replacement, and incurring extra costs...

i'm a bit confused. bad sectors problems require special equipment to repair or just use some software is suffice?

oh ignore my question. I googled and found out the answer

i saw that the technician uses the program - SpeedClone!

Anyway, wanna seek your advice, bad sectors problem can be repaired by reformatting or shall I send in the hard disk for warranty?

when u get ur data back - waranty return the drive imo.

Hello,
I really need help here. I gave another external disk (1.5TB) to the guy to transfer my data onto it. I thought he would just copy the data to unused portion of the disk but he reformatted my disk! The problem is how can I get back the data that was on my disk before the reformat? I've tried Undelete Plus, Recuva and PC Inspector File Recovery. None of them helps!

Thanks!

What is overwritten is lost.

If he just formated ur drive and didnt write on it - try using R-Studio or RecoverMyFiles. If he formated ur drive and wrote on it - ur old data was overwriten and u wont get it. Sry. There are a lot of nuances to this though , how much data did u have when u gave him the drive, how much data did he write when he formated ur drive etc.

i'm trying EASEUS now.

a lot of ppl dont like easus. I use it from time to time , its not that bad, but very slow. Dont hope much for the structured recovery. Search through the RAW folder it will create for u and go by extensions. Ull lose filenames so will have toclick manually on a lot of em.

actually i only need to know the list of the files that were on the disk