External Hard Drive Broken - Options

[DelBoy72]

I bought an iomega 1TB hard disk last year.
One day last week, it just stopped working.
There is power getting to it, but it just bleeps and the usual fan-like sound is not heard, like it normally would be.
I assume its not "booting up" or something.

I contacted Iomega and they say that they will replace it, as it is still under warranty.

This is great, but the thing is, they will not retreive my data for me.
I have contacted a couple of local companies that I found on the web and they are of course unable to give me a quote over the phone without seeing the drive, but depending on the type of problem and the tools they will need to use to retreive the data, it could be upwards (possibly way upwards) of €200 to get my data back.

None of it is critical data, just years of photo's, music etc, but €200 seems excessive.

Anybody had experience of these companies?
Are they really that expensive, or have I gone to one that may be assuming that it is important company data and looking to charge me through the nose because of that?

 

[Towger]

Believe me, for €200 euro they are not going to do much. I don’t think there is anyone in the country with the equipment to read data directly off a disk's platters. But at that level you are looking at possibly tens of thousands.

You could take the HD out of the case and put it into a computer, you may then be able to access the disk and try some disk recovery software. If the disk just makes sick noises you have a hardware fault and there are various tricks which have been used over the years, freezing, heating, replacing the PCB etc with another from a HD of the same model/revision etc. After that you are looking serious money/equipment.

 

[DrMoriarty]

I'm afraid Towger's right.

Ultimately, a backup ain't a backup unless there's (at least) two of them. Preferably in different locations.

 

[schmile]

Did you try replacing the case? The exact same problem happened to me and that is all it took. Turns out the usb connection got knocked out of place so power was getting to it but it wasn't booting up. Saved more than I had expected. There is one place that was recommended to me that does data retrieval because I was convinced I was in total trouble. I haven't used them so can't say but might be worth looking into.

[broken link removed]

 

[michaelm]

Perhaps the drive enclosure is faulty. Maybe you can remove the drive and try it in a USB caddy. This might sound odd but try it on its side and on its back, if it was dead as a dodo I'd give it a bang on the desk (while powered off) . . you might be lucky and get it to work once and copy some data off.