Where should I send a dead harddrive?

February 27, 2024 8:52 AM

Do you have a personal recommendation for a data recovery service that works on dead hard drives?

My PC died a catastrophic death several years ago, and it turns out that I hadn't been backing it up like I thought I had (long story), meaning that many of the files on the desktop didn't make it to the external backup drive. Importantly, this includes many, many pictures from my older daughter's young childhood, that were never uploaded to the cloud and are thus otherwise irreplaceable. I took the dead PC to the local computer shop in town, and they removed the hard drive to see if they could extract anything for me, but the guy working there told me that he couldn't "get it to spin up" because the drive was so messed up and that it would need to be sent away, by me, to some place that specializes in this type of file recovery.

Worried that I'd be paying for more disappointment, I put it off for years, long enough that I can't even remember the name of the place he recommended, but a downsizing of my home office has me looking at the hard drive again and now I'm finally ready to at least try to recover all of those irreplaceable pictures. So I turn to y'all to ask: have you ever done anything like this before? Who did you use? Would you recommend them? In case it's not obvious from the wording of the question, I'm not particularly tech-savvy, so I'm not even sure I'm asking the right questions here. But assuming I am, I'm very interested in personal recommendations, and also any other wisdom you may have to share. Thanks!

posted by saladin to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

When the company I worked for needed this kind of service, we sent the drive to Ontrack. That was 25 years ago, but it looks like they're still around, so that longevity says something.
posted by fedward at 8:59 AM on February 27

DriveSavers is the big-dog in this industry.
posted by Wild_Eep at 9:27 AM on February 27 [4 favorites]

Ack, editing window closed on my edit. I meant to add: I've talked on the phone with their staff before and found them to be caring and friendly. Their services are *not* cheap, but it's a one-time expense to retrieve the irretrievable. (You might check to see if your homeowners' insurance might cover some portion, maybe.)
posted by Wild_Eep at 10:10 AM on February 27

One thing to keep in mind, to keep your expectations realistic… Data on hard drives does not last forever, even under the best of circumstances. There is a pretty good chance that, “several years later,” there has been some bitrot (physical changes of the individual bits of data stored on the magnetic platters from 1 to 0 or vice versa), in addition to whatever else happened to it initially. That’s not to say that nothing will be recoverable necessarily, just that there are some complications due to the time passed since the drive was last used.
posted by tubedogg at 10:19 AM on February 27

Yeah, OnTrack, which is part of Knoll. I know someone who did it because their data really was important, but it was like $1500. I handled the legwork for them, and OnTrack was super professional and effective.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:05 AM on February 27

The local shop where I am is Gillware Data Recovery, about which I have always heard good things. (I can do some recovery on a physically okay drive, but I've had to refer anything more complex than that -- which your case absolutely is -- to Gillware.)
posted by humbug at 3:53 PM on February 27

I like Gillware because they'll send you a digital directory of files they were able to recover for free, and you only pay if you decide you want access to them. So if there's total damage (or enough to corrupt just the particular files you want), you're not on the hook for anything.
posted by Rhaomi at 5:08 PM on March 15