So I lost an important drive...

[OzzieGT]

So I lost an important drive today. It's not backed up. I have been meaning to set up CrashPlan on this computer since I moved it to Linux but that never happened.

The drive was mounted on a Ubuntu box, it's a 500GB Seagate HDD. Pretty old. So the problem is that the drive is no longer recognized on POST. It sounds normal when it starts up, but doesn't seem to be working. I tried plugging it into a USB dock on my Win8 machine and Disk Management isn't showing any new drives.

Options? Can someone point me to a good drive recovery company? All help is appreciated at this point.

 

[denis280]

Did you try the freezer option.but it all depend how bad it is

 

[OzzieGT]

I don't think the drive is physically damaged, as it wasn't dropped or anything. It's showing up at all so I don't think it is a heat issue either.

 

[OzzieGT]

After some googling it looks like it's a 7200.11 drive, could possibly be a BSY firmware failure. Symptoms match...

 

[Elixer]

Guess you can try to find another HD of the same make / model / circuit board, and do a swap of circuit boards.

Only other option is send it to the pros.

 

[master_shake_]

i would send it to the pros before trying anything.

they will have more experience and you will learn that backing up stuff is cheaper than the costly amount of data recovery.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yeah, I'm going to concur with the "have a pro do it if it's important" crowd.

Have a pro do it if it's important. I've only known a couple people who had it done, and it was ~$1500 in both cases, but hey, maybe you'll get lucky.

 

[Phynaz]

Don't mess with it if it's important. Send it out for data recovery, but be prepared for a multi-thousand dollar bill.