How badly have I fried my laptop? [more inside]
posted by Bobby Bittman on Nov 8, 2009 - 8 answers

Stupid computerfilter: I didn't back up, and now the external drive seems dead. Options? [more inside]
posted by neewom on Oct 10, 2009 - 6 answers

Yesterday, my portable hard drive got knocked over while it was being read from and began making a vicious gurgle. My husband unplugged it before I could try to disconnect it. When I turned it back on, it's still sounds terrible. [more inside]
posted by droomoord on Sep 11, 2009 - 19 answers

My Maxtor Basics 1 terabyte external USB 2.0 drive no longer mounts. I have been through all the usual stuff with tech support (including disk management and device management) and I've tried it on multiple computers. Although the green light comes on when it's plugged into USB, apart from that it's not talking to the computer. There has been no strange noise, clicking, smoke or smell. Maxtor tech support say it's a failed drive. A data recovery company I phoned said it's probably damaged firmware but the data on the disk is probably safe. I'm nervous about sending it to a data recovery company because I seem to be looking at about GBP £179 minimum or maybe many, many hundreds more. Is it likely to be a matter of simply soldering something here or replacing something there, ie a job that I could take to a local geek? Or should I be looking to take this to a major data recovery centre? I'm in London, UK.
posted by skylar on Aug 26, 2009 - 7 answers

I am trying to recover data from a WD3200ME-01, a WD 320GB USB-powered drive but the physical drive does not have SATA or IDE connection - only a mini USB connection soldered to the circuit board - and the drive is not recognized via USB anymore. [more inside]
posted by dozo on Jul 16, 2009 - 9 answers

Anyone ever have any experience with Drive Fish? It's a data recovery company. [more inside]
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Jun 22, 2009 - 9 answers

Hard drive recovery: my external USB hard drive is mounting fine on both my mac and PC, however, all the files are showing up as garbage characters. [more inside]
posted by mike_bling on Jun 1, 2009 - 4 answers

All my calendar entries gone! Help! Any way to recover them from either my phone or iCal on my Mac? [more inside]
posted by pablocake on Apr 30, 2009 - 5 answers

A friend plugged his Seagate usb external drive into a MacBook Pro and then somehow inadvertantly accepted a prompt to set the drive up for Time Machine backups without thinking. The drive hasn't been written to since then. Is there a way to get the original data back (there's no backup, of course)? Failing that, any recommendations for data recovery services in the UK?
posted by amestoy on Apr 9, 2009 - 9 answers

How can I repair any broken files resulting from power loss during defragmentation? It seems that most file recovery applications want to move everything to a new disk, but this is not a good option for me because I don't have any other drives large enough. I was using iDefrag on my terabyte (My Book) external hard drive. It had gotten almost 21 hours in, and somehow the power cable got unplugged and the battery died. To make a long story short, iDefrag can't see the disk at all, Disk Utility sees the hard drive but not any of the data or the partition itself, and verify and repair are not selectable. [more inside]
posted by N2O1138 on Feb 22, 2009 - 6 answers

How can I recover data from an iBook (G4) HDD using my new Intel-based MacBook? [more inside]
posted by saraswati on Sep 14, 2008 - 5 answers

I was working on someone's laptop and all of their data has been overwritten. How do I break it to them gently? [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Aug 26, 2008 - 29 answers

Please recommend a data recovery/harddrive recovery firm, familiarity with HFS+ filesystems a plus. I've got a dead harddrive that spins up and shows one partition, but I cannot repair it either under OS X or with a Linux live CD. I've tried a few software packages, but none of them get any data off the drive. (Though Data Rescue II does show a list of the file names, when I restored a file, it didn't open, so it can see the files, it's just returning corrupt data.) [more inside]
posted by Brian Puccio on Aug 17, 2008 - 7 answers

Dead hard disk on a G3 iMac. Seemingly healthy 2nd-hand G4 iMac. If I try to access data on the dead machine via target disk mode, is there a chance—any chance at all—that I could screw up the healthy machine? [more inside]
posted by neroli on Aug 3, 2008 - 7 answers

How can I figure out what file a particular FAT32 sector belongs to? [more inside]
posted by harkin banks on Jul 20, 2008 - 3 answers

Can you save data from an iPhone, in any manner, once it has entered "recovery" mode and iTunes informs you that you need to restore the phone? [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena on May 11, 2008 - 3 answers

Got a 2000 server with PCI SCSI RAID card (Mirror) and the mobo seems to have died. I just want to recover the data and host it on another machine. How do I do that? [more inside]
posted by tslugmo on Jan 18, 2008 - 4 answers

How do I pull data from an old Windows 98 HD using Vista? [more inside]
posted by scrump on Nov 19, 2007 - 13 answers

My windows didn't want to boot up, so I bought a new hard disc installed Windows on it and made the old one slave. The old hard disc reads as completely empty. Why? [more inside]
posted by A! on Nov 4, 2007 - 15 answers

How do I recover music from an iPod that has suddenly reset itself? [more inside]
posted by Doug on Oct 14, 2007 - 10 answers

What is the easiest way to make a bit-perfect copy of a potentially failing laptop hard drive? The copy target would be a new 2.5" drive that I'd then install in the same laptop. [more inside]
posted by killdevil on Aug 11, 2007 - 37 answers

I was going to repartition an external USB hard drive in Mac OS X 10.4 in Disk Utility, and after I clicked Partition, I thought I clicked Cancel when I learned it would result in data loss. I guess I actually clicked OK, and then I quickly quit Disk Utility and disconnected the drive (it had already been unmounted). Now, when I reconnect the drive, it shows up as having been repartitioned, and all of the data on there is gone. Can I get my data back? [more inside]
posted by jbb7 on Jul 7, 2007 - 6 answers

Does anyone have experiences with Gillware for recovering data from a dead hard drive, aside from user bhance? They are cheaper than the big enterprise-level data recovery companies, but I'd like to see comments from more than one person if possible.
posted by matildaben on Jun 17, 2007 - 3 answers

How do I get Knoppix to read .doc files? [more inside]
posted by Danf on May 7, 2007 - 15 answers

I accidentally formatted my NTFS drive with HFS and wrote some data on it. Now how do I recover whatever is left? >>>Any filesystem experts around here? [more inside]
posted by oneous on Apr 26, 2007 - 6 answers

I clobbered a file by saving a downloaded file with the same name. Options? [more inside]
posted by rkent on Apr 24, 2007 - 5 answers

How can I run a dictionary attack against a password-protected disk image file on OS X? [more inside]
posted by alms on Sep 24, 2006 - 16 answers

My hard drive died and I want to recover a great deal of the data that (hopefully) still exists on it. After reading the Metafilter Wiki, I know this question has been asked before, but my question relates more to the process of recovering the data than the actual possibility of doing so. [more inside]
posted by Effigy2000 on Sep 18, 2006 - 16 answers

My motherboard died, and now I need to hook the harddrives up to another PC to get the data off. Problem: Some of it was in the "My Documents" folder, and I can't get to it without being logged on to an admin account. I have no way of doing that, since I can't boot from the old windows installation anymore. [more inside]
posted by borkingchikapa on Sep 16, 2006 - 4 answers

Firefox-Is-On-CrackFilter: I deleted a non-default Firefox profile and things got deleted from my desktop...not just icons, but folders that I was storing there. How do I recover them? [more inside]
posted by needs more cowbell on Sep 15, 2006 - 10 answers

I tried to "clear" a selected portion of my Google Desktop Scratch Pad, and it cleared the entire contents. I can't figure out any way to restore it ("undo" didn't do anything, and there's very little documentation). I have some hope, because Google describes the Scratch Pad as "automatically" saving as you type. But has it saved over whatever file it uses with a blank slate now? Please help!
posted by mabelstreet on Sep 8, 2006 - 2 answers

Can I recover data (pictures) from a bad DVD-R? [more inside]
posted by bingwah on Jul 31, 2006 - 8 answers

Data recovery in target disk mode: what are the pitfalls? [more inside]
posted by mds35 on Jul 30, 2006 - 8 answers

My 12" Powerbook G4's hard drive has gone belly up. Help me figure out my options. [more inside]
posted by maxreax on Jul 25, 2006 - 10 answers

My hard drive recently started sparking, then smoking and burning. I quickly turned off the computer, but now I need to recover my data. I can see the spot on the hard drive that is black, so I know where the problem is. Is it safe for me to spend thirty minutes or so backing data off of this damaged drive? Alternatively, is it possible to repair the drive, at least enough to backup my data? Or have I lost everything? [more inside]
posted by gd779 on May 31, 2006 - 35 answers

DIY data recovery from failed disk drive: what low level diagnostics can I run? [more inside]
posted by StickyCarpet on May 22, 2006 - 8 answers

Recommended data recovery places in New York City, specifically Manhattan? It shouldn't be a huge problem, but I don't want to just pick a name from the Yellow Pages. There is, of course, [more inside]
posted by booksandlibretti on Feb 28, 2006 - 11 answers

Is there any good way to try to recover a journal that was on Diary-X? [more inside]
posted by drezdn on Feb 26, 2006 - 3 answers

My camera recently ate a month's worth of intense picture-taking! About 90% were salvaged by imgsave, but of course the remaining 10% are the best or most important. Each of those broken images completely draws as a thumbnail, but only partially renders when opened. There is no apparent consistency to how much is drawn or which pictures were eaten. [more inside]
posted by whatzit on Feb 17, 2006 - 9 answers

Is there any hope for my dying/dead Serial ATA drive? [more inside]
posted by Venadium on Feb 8, 2006 - 9 answers

Partition Magic Tragic destroyed a partition on my hard drive, is there anyway to get the data off of it? [more inside]
posted by Mijo Bijo on Jan 28, 2006 - 9 answers

WinXP SP2: Forcing hibernate to resume from old hiberfil.sys [more inside]
posted by adzm on Jan 8, 2006 - 8 answers

DataRecoveryFilter : Computer died. Internal hard drive saved and put in an external usb enclosure (Maxtor). Tried to read user data (Documents and settings\user): Access denied. Windows Xp. Don't have a computer in which I can put the saved harddrive (and boot from). What can I do? [more inside]
posted by aroberge on Jan 4, 2006 - 22 answers

Can anyone recommend a data recovery service in Ottawa? [more inside]
posted by docgonzo on Nov 2, 2005 - 5 answers

I just lost a month's worth of journal entries in a locally saved plaintext file. Is there any way to get them back? [more inside]
posted by skoosh on Oct 29, 2005 - 11 answers

I have a badly fragmented drive that, even after repeated defrag runs with Diskeeper, remains heavily fragmented. I think as a consequence some of my directories have become inaccessible because when I try to access them i get an "I/O device error." Does this mean I have bad sectors (and if so, what do I do)? Is the data in those directories lost for good? Should I try and copy what I can and dump the drive? [more inside]
posted by JohannStrauss on Oct 23, 2005 - 11 answers

I've been asked--nay, commanded--to recover an image from a web site that recently went offline. [more inside]
posted by Soliloquy on Sep 7, 2005 - 5 answers

Retrieving data from fire-damaged hard drives. [more inside]
posted by punilux on Aug 8, 2005 - 9 answers

Help me recover data off a (seemingly) dead laptop hard drive. [more inside]
posted by killdevil on Aug 2, 2005 - 5 answers

Data recovery from a secondary hard drive. I downloaded a demo version of some recovery software which lets me see which files are still there. I'm looking for recommendations of free alternatives (XP pro, primary HD NTFS, secondary HD FAT32). [more inside]
posted by sailormouth on Jul 29, 2005 - 7 answers