Are there affordable options for data recovery from a damaged hard drive?
I have a Seagate 500 GB/7200rpm something or other hard drive that suffered trauma when the Macbook it was in hit the ground. The drive is like 2 years old. I sent it to Data Recovery Labs and they quoted $1690 to recover the data. Surely there must be an alternative that *normal* people can afford? Any tips?
What do you mean by “freezing it”?
But can this be done if the dead computer can’t even be booted?
Have you tried plugging it into an external harddrive case you can get from bestbuy for like $40-$50. Try freezing it for about 30min and reconnecting it to the computer, this option only gives you about 15-20 mins, so you need to get your data off ASAP. It also depends on how bad the drive was damaged. Last but no least try geek squad they might be able to get you data of around $99-$160.
Freezing it is a little trick that will sometimes make the hard drive operable.
All you have to do is put it in the freezer overnite and then in the morning simply install it in a slave situation to a master hard drive and many times the drive will be accessable and you can transfer the data from it to a Flash drive or to the Master Hard Drive.
If you know someone that is into computers they may be able to do it for you.
BTW, freezing the hard drive will not damage it.