I have an external Lacie hard drive that I have stored music, pictures, and documents on; however, it is no longer readable and makes a clicking noise. I’ve hooked it up on two different computers with the same result – the computer tells me that the drive needs to be formatted. Well, if I do that I’m just going to erase what I have on it.Â
So far I think I have two options. I can try to repair on my own and even try the put it in the freezer overnight trick, or I can take it somewhere for data recovery.Â
Any suggestions on who I should take it to or how to do the data recovery myself?
Data recovery companies can cost hundred or thousands. I would research data recovery software online. When you see something you like let me know and I can possibly “find” you a copy.
I’ve used http://www.drivesavers.com twice and they did an excellent job, but were very expensive on one job because we asked for a 24 hour turnaround – the did it, and we got all the customer data back but it cost about $1500. I used them another time and it took a long time because the drive had a head crash, but we got all the customer data back – that cost about $1000 because the data was badly damaged and they could only retrieve little bits of files at a time.
I used ITS-Data Recovery at 9182 Independence Ave in Chatsworth, CA once and they recovered a 160GB SATA drive for $695 and we got all the customer data back. They were a lot cheaper than driversavers, and did an excellent job as well. That was back in Oct of 2006 – I’m sure the prices have come down some because the service is being offered by more companies.
I also always send along a new target hard drive, because it’s quicker to deal with the restores than having them send the data on CDs.