Laptop stopped working and then would not reboot. There was just this beeping sound about every second. Not a bios beep code I could find. So I removed hard drive and hooked it up to external adapter and realized that it was the hard drive beeping.

My internet research suggests this is a job for data recovery service. What is a fair price range for this fix? It sounds like the spindle has seized or the heads themselves. Also, what is the probability of most data that I want being able to be recovered?

Just trying to determine if this something worth pursuing or not. (My teenage son's laptop)

Thank you very much for your input.

Depending upon the problem, the price will vary.
Stiction problem or seized spindal motor seems to be the issue.
Get an evaluation done by a good DR company, some wont charge for evaluation.
Data recovery from such drives ,if not tampered with , will be quite successful.

Many pros on this board can help you with your recovery.

Jon

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

Hi,
I had the same problem with this (exactly ST95000420ASG) drive. Switched the laptop into standby, tried to resume after about 10 minutes, windows appeared back but when I clicked something, the system froze. There was some beeping and I also realized the HDD was not spinning. The same after powering the laptop off/on, so it was obvious that HDD stopped working. I knew something about head stiction problems and was quite sure it's just this case, but there was a lot of important accounting data on the drive that I hadn't backed up for more than one year, so I didn't want to risk damaging the platters by opening the drive outside of clean environment.
I took the drive to a local DR company for diagnosis. They said the spindle was seized, heads damaged and they should be able to recover 80% of data for $600. I didn't believe them, because the damage didn't match the situation in which the drive failed. But the data was worth that price, so I agreed. They recovered more than 99% of data, in fact everything that was important.
When I took the faulty drive back, I wanted to see where the actual problem was, so I opened it, and found out that the head stack was not there. I don't know whether they had to replace my head stack by some known-good one and then took it out, or they just kept my head stack as a spare part However the spindle rotates freely, and when I plug the power in, it spins up without any unusual noise, so I still think that was just a stiction problem ..

Could be one of three things:

Stiction (most likely) - heads stuck over platter
Heads mashed into ramp (less likely)
Seized motor (very unlikely)

If it's stiction it shouldn't be too expensive, unless the heads are damaged.

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

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Thank you to all. I think I will check out datasaversllc.com That is pretty close to me.