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[mechman]

I recently had to get a new hard drive fitted to my lap top but lost quite a bit of info. I got in touch with a company that could retrieve the data for £260, seems a bit salty to me, any comments on that anyone ?
Norm

 

[Kayos]

Depends what you mean by lost

If the drive is damaged then £260 would be a bargain, however if they are copying a good drive from a dead laptop then it’s a rip off

 

[maz0]

If its not a mechanical issue then you could just buy a HDD caddy, plug it all in via USB and pull the files off your self. If its mechanical then £260 is peanuts so depends how much the lost data is worth it to you.

I once recovered files for a chap who had 3 or 4 years of his sons baby pictures on it with no backups so he kinda needed them at all costs. I took it into work and was using software that was £2.5k per license and about £7k worth of hardware, it wasnt necessary for the job, but you can see why they charge so much.

 

[rtbcomp]

You can't guarantee successful recovery unless you know exactly what is wrong with the drive. For example if oxide has been scraped off the platter that bit of data is lost.

 

[julianf]

£260 is too cheap to be anything that you want to pay for.

Ie at that level, you can diy. And if its too far gone to DIY, then £260 probably won't do it either.

I mean there are instances where, maybe, you've lost the file system, but the actual data is still on the disc. That may be beyond novice DIY, but covered by that sort of money, but anything that can't be done with free software will be way way more than £260.

 

[frank horton]

my daughter paid €350 to get her plug in memeory stick copied......wedding photo's.......nobody in the UK could do it and I tried.......
a firm in Germany said there should be no problem........
after 24 hours they sent several samples of photo's from the memeory stick to prove they'd done it.....
once paid both the old and the new mem/stick was UPS'd back to her......
EXPENSIVE, just depend on ur point of view..........good luck

 

[Shedendman]

Questions
What went wrong with the old HD?
Did you replace it or did someone else?
What OS did you have on the HD?
Do you still have the old drive? (i'm guessing you have) if so,get one of these

https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/storage/6805-sohousb-magic-bridge-sataesata-ideusb-bridge/

Or equivalent
If the old HD is goosed then sorry tuff,slap on the wrist with the saying "BACK UP YOUR INFO"

 

[gaz1]

what i will say is always back up your software or even your pics and other stuff on another hard drive

im just doing that at moment tend to hate doing it with alot of files but at what cost losing everything and dont forget new hard drives can go down

what was right then is still the same now no company out there can guarantee getting your stuff back

so read this food for thought

https://www.extremetech.com/computi...-a-regular-person-repair-a-damaged-hard-drive

https://www.extremetech.com/computi...-regular-person-repair-a-damaged-hard-drive/2

 

[maz0]

For backup now, I just use a business dropbox account, its £7 a month which gives me a terabyte of storage. My computer could go up in flames tonight and wouldnt lose a thing, fresh format of Win10, log in to dropbox and your sorted. It’s also ransomware proof as you can time slice with it, chosing to recover files before they were encrypted. It’s one of the small conveniences in life I dont mind paying for, like spotify, netflix etc. Highly recommend it for future.

 

[Shedendman]

A one off payment for a few USB drives is even cheaper

 

[maz0]

A one off payment for a few USB drives is even cheaper

They are inconvenient though and that is the biggest issue with backups, no one does them. It also wont help if you get hit by ransomeware and they are plugged in. Backup really needs to be on the fly and effortless to be effective now. Another bonus for cloud backup is its accessible from any device anywhere in the world. For a terabye of USB backup you could have more than a year of cloud + its features. Theres not much comparison really.

 

[WorkshopChris]

For backup now, I just use a business dropbox account, its £7 a month which gives me a terabyte of storage. My computer could go up in flames tonight and wouldnt lose a thing, fresh format of Win10, log in to dropbox and your sorted. It’s also ransomware proof as you can time slice with it, chosing to recover files before they were encrypted. It’s one of the small conveniences in life I dont mind paying for, like spotify, netflix etc. Highly recommend it for future.

Out of interest what software do you use to backup to Dropbox? This is something i am looking at in the new year.

 

[maz0]

Out of interest what software do you use to backup to Dropbox? This is something i am looking at in the new year.

No software needed if you can keep most of it to one folder (the drop box one) if you have multiple folders across the drive that you want to sync in a fancy way then Synback is a good piece of software for that.

 

[Seadog]

Following a post here a few weeks ago, I bought a cheap SSD so that I could mirror my system drive. All my other data is on a NAS. However, I managed to crack a 64GB micro SD card back in July. All of our holiday pics from Alaska with some amazing whale pictures. If it's recoverable, and there's some doubt about that because the substrate may be damaged, I'm looking at £600-700 to recover. It's costed on the total size of the device even if you're only using a tiny fraction of the storage. Still trying to justify the cost to myself

 

[gaz1]

They are inconvenient though and that is the biggest issue with backups, no one does them. It also wont help if you get hit by ransomeware and they are plugged in. Backup really needs to be on the fly and effortless to be effective now. Another bonus for cloud backup is its accessible from any device anywhere in the world. For a terabye of USB backup you could have more than a year of cloud + its features. Theres not much comparison really.

i have drop box free account so dont need windows 10 for that then again i have over 1.5gb free space

as goes for back up id rather use a hard drive im in control of it not a server and also im not keen on uploading files to the net governemnt snooping at files not for me sorry

in the mean time its worth buying 3tb hard drive for back ups at 68.00 its peanuts compared to what it used to be even 1tb is around 30.00

too many factors can go wrong with online stuff

 

[gaz1]

Following a post here a few weeks ago, I bought a cheap SSD so that I could mirror my system drive. All my other data is on a NAS. However, I managed to crack a 64GB micro SD card back in July. All of our holiday pics from Alaska with some amazing whale pictures. If it's recoverable, and there's some doubt about that because the substrate may be damaged, I'm looking at £600-700 to recover. It's costed on the total size of the device even if you're only using a tiny fraction of the storage. Still trying to justify the cost to myself

it is recoverable as long as the computer can read it if not it becomes way harder to recover the files

but its mainly if the computer can read it due to the crack on it

also for ssds try this place as uses bench tests in real life usage not what the companys say

https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/

 

[mechman]

wish I could speak klingon

 

[MattH]

Surely you understand that there are different parts within a pc.
The hard drive contains your data, if the hard drive failed recovery the data could range from difficult to impossible. If the laptop died because of the processor the hard drive will be fine.

It’s like a company offering to take the engine out of your old car and make it run.
Maybe not to much of an issue it the car was scrapped because the sills rusted out.
But more of an issue if the car burned to a crisp.

 

[indy4x]

as goes for back up id rather use a hard drive im in control of it not a server and also im not keen on uploading files to the net governemnt snooping at files not for me sorry

in the mean time its worth buying 3tb hard drive for back ups at 68.00 its peanuts compared to what it used to be even 1tb is around 30.00

too many factors can go wrong with online stuff

So can stuff in your house, belt and braces use both, unless you move your backup to another location away from your property then your backup isn't safe

Fire, lightening strike, flood, theft are all risks as are mechanical failure of your extra drive

 

[Seadog]

it is recoverable as long as the computer can read it if not it becomes way harder to recover the files

but its mainly if the computer can read it due to the crack on it

That is the problem. It is unreadable due to some numpty inserting it the wrong way and cracking across the connector. To recover it will mean stripping the cover and then soldering on wires and plugging the lot into an emulator before they even think about trying to read the chip. Unfortunately, a 64GB substrate occupies all of the area of the card, so the likelihood is that the silicon is cracked.