[Howlin Fester]

There are some places that say they can recover data from defective hard drives. Never had to use one, but if you've lost a lot of good memories, might be worth it ? For example : https://www.securedatarecovery.com/services/hard-drive-recovery.

My wife broke an SDD on a business trip. Tried sending it to one of the places that said they can recover. Give them 300 dollars to start. Then said they needed to order a part. Another 200 dollars. Then.. Nope. Can't fix it. Have a nice life.

I would rather put the next failed SDD in the back yard with some nightshade, bread, milk, honey and Guinness for the Leprechauns. At least the Leps will be happy.

 

[CactusPete23]

My wife broke an SDD on a business trip. Tried sending it to one of the places that said they can recover. Give them 300 dollars to start. Then said they needed to order a part. Another 200 dollars. Then.. Nope. Can't fix it. Have a nice life.

I would rather put the next failed SDD in the back yard with some nightshade, bread, milk, honey and Guinness for the Leprechauns. At least the Leps will be happy.

OUCH! Never knew they charged that much ! Wow, and zero results too ! That is nuts !

 

[Midgetguy]

My wife broke an SDD on a business trip. Tried sending it to one of the places that said they can recover. Give them 300 dollars to start. Then said they needed to order a part. Another 200 dollars. Then.. Nope. Can't fix it. Have a nice life.

I would rather put the next failed SDD in the back yard with some nightshade, bread, milk, honey and Guinness for the Leprechauns. At least the Leps will be happy.

Yeah, I don't believe any place when they say they can recover from an SSD. With how they work based on electrical signals and essentially reflashing memory at the data bit level, you pretty much should just accept that any data on an SSD is gone when it dies because that would pretty much only happen due to some sort of electrical fault (blown capacitor, uncaught power surge, etc.); no recovery, no recourse with it. It's almost like trying to compare digital video signal to analog video signals; an analog signal can kinda work, kinda not, but a digital signal either works or it doesn't. HDDs have hope because it generally tends to be those moving components that fail and the magnetic data storage is generally quite hearty.

 

[Karendar]

I have a synology NAS - two actually because I upgraded. I've had a power supply go bad (replaced free of charge by Synology) and a catastrophic disk failure. I didn't lose a single byte of data in either case. I would definitely recommend them.

Running a hybrid raid 4 x 2.5 inch enterprise class disks. All of the NAS backs up in the cloud and on a usb disk. My music and pictures are safe!

 

[chillaxing]

Thanks for all the suggestion guys. Will look into all of it.

 

[Karendar]

Yeah, I don't believe any place when they say they can recover from an SSD. With how they work based on electrical signals and essentially reflashing memory at the data bit level, you pretty much should just accept that any data on an SSD is gone when it dies because that would pretty much only happen due to some sort of electrical fault (blown capacitor, uncaught power surge, etc.); no recovery, no recourse with it. It's almost like trying to compare digital video signal to analog video signals; an analog signal can kinda work, kinda not, but a digital signal either works or it doesn't. HDDs have hope because it generally tends to be those moving components that fail and the magnetic data storage is generally quite hearty.

I second this statement. Mechanical disks are much easier to recover, but may cost a fortune. If the freezer trick doesn't work or replacing the controller doesn't work, kiss your data goodbye... Better off investing in a decent backup solution to save some heartache.

**Edit** although it is to be noted that mechanical disks CAN damage themselves and be somewhat unrecoverable. If the reading head overheats, it can warp and scratch the surface of your disk, as the space between the head and the disk plates is as thin if not thinner than a hair. If that happens, there's a possibility the disk will have unreadable parts. (Ok, let's not get too technical)

 

[OldDude04]

I'm using a Netgear ReadyNAS 2 bay with 2x8tb WD Red drives in Raid 1, and a Seagate Business Storage NAS 2 bay with 2x3tb Seagate IronWolf drives in RAID 1. I also have a laptop with a 256gb SSD for OS only and a 2tb 2.5inch storage drive. My music is on the Seagate, and if one of those drives go down, the other is mirrored. I also have my music on the 2tb inside my laptop. Pics and home vids are on the Seagate as well, but backed up onto a 4tb external hard drive monthly and then put in our safe. OCD? Maybe, lol.

 

[Midgetguy]

I second this statement. Mechanical disks are much easier to recover, but may cost a fortune. If the freezer trick doesn't work or replacing the controller doesn't work, kiss your data goodbye... Better off investing in a decent backup solution to save some heartache.

**Edit** although it is to be noted that mechanical disks CAN damage themselves and be somewhat unrecoverable. If the reading head overheats, it can warp and scratch the surface of your disk, as the space between the head and the disk plates is as thin if not thinner than a hair. If that happens, there's a possibility the disk will have unreadable parts. (Ok, let's not get too technical)

Having backups is definitely a good way to go.

I'm using a Netgear ReadyNAS 2 bay with 2x8tb WD Red drives in Raid 1, and a Seagate Business Storage NAS 2 bay with 2x3tb Seagate IronWolf drives in RAID 1. I also have a laptop with a 256gb SSD for OS only and a 2tb 2.5inch storage drive. My music is on the Seagate, and if one of those drives go down, the other is mirrored. I also have my music on the 2tb inside my laptop. Pics and home vids are on the Seagate as well, but backed up onto a 4tb external hard drive monthly and then put in our safe. OCD? Maybe, lol.

Can't have too many backups

 

[grs8]

The sound of a HDD @10k rpm and then headcrash... you will never forget.

 

[boblauer]

As I said only reason I use the USB drives is I have a dozen 2tb ones I got for free. Currently have 3 running, all backing up to other. NAS in a heartbeat if I had to spend money. Anyone who says they can pump an ssd that is not in an array you should quietly walk away from as that is usually not the case. Yes data recovery is very expensive.

 

[barondla]

I don't understand external hard drives very well. Since the magnetic disc rarely goes bad, why aren't they built so that the disc could be swapped to another identical external hard drive? Like changing CDs. We don't throw our CD collection away when a CD transport dies.

 

[Midgetguy]

I don't understand external hard drives very well. Since the magnetic disc rarely goes bad, why aren't they built so that the disc could be swapped to another identical external hard drive? Like changing CDs. We don't throw our CD collection away when a CD transport dies.

Don't take my words as fact, but the way I interpret things is that we're working with magnetic fields here. The bits on the disc are a aligned by the magnets used in the enclosure and as such, moving a disc without moving magnets in the exact same fashion would mean you're shifting the magnetic field and totally messing up the hold and order of the bits, rendering information useless because it's now scrambled and you can't undo it.

Again, DON'T take my explanation as any sort of fact because unlike other people, I'm a freaking idiot

 

[Richsvt]

Got to warm my flowerpot up as I am expecting and new set of binoculars and the TFZ King IEM tomorrow. Hopefully the remnants of Jose are gone so it'll be dry. Been trying to observe for the last few nights and all we have are clouds and rain. At least my I can still listen to music on these cloudy nights...

 

[Midgetguy]

Got to warm my flowerpot up as I am expecting and new set of binoculars and the TFZ King IEM tomorrow. Hopefully the remnants of Jose are gone so it'll be dry. Been trying to observe for the last few nights and all we have are clouds and rain. At least my I can still listen to music on these cloudy nights...

I don't have a flower pot. Maybe that's why all that arrived on my doorstep was my tennis strings and not something more exciting

 

[bjaardker]

There used to be the old trick of putting the hard drive in a freezer. No idea if it works. Never had to try.

As a sysadmin with 20 years in the industry, I can confirm it works about 15-20% of the time. It all depends on why the HDD died in the first place. Freezing the drive will work best with bearing/bushing failures and occasionally with physical head crashes. The idea is that the tolerances inside of the drive are small enough that freezing the drive shrinks the metal enough to get it to spin freely for a while.