I have a Western Digital MyBook Essential 250GB external hard drive that for some reason can no longer be read by my main computer. It turns on, whirrs a little bit, does a couple of clicks and then nothing. When I try to find the drive on my main computer, it doesn't show up. I've tried attaching it to two different laptops with no success either. I have another external drive that works just fine, so it appears to be the external drive that is the problem. I have a lot of stored information on that drive that I would like to recover--photos, video, music, documents, etc. I contacted a data recovery service here in Houston, but they wanted over $700 to do the work of recovering the data, which I really don't want to pay that high a price if at all possible. Any suggestions on places in Houston that would be more reasonable on the price? Anyone have a friend that does this type of work on the side and willing to do it? I'm willing to pay someone, I'd just like it to be reasonable. Thanks (and sorry if I put this on the wrong board)!
That price sounds about right. They typically have to disassemble the drive and install the platters into a working drive, and the work has to be done in a "clean room". The best solution is, unfortunately, to back up all your hard drives. They will all fail sooner or later. The question is when.
I have had a few crashes in my time. They all started with erratic behavior that allowed me to get back into the drive and rescue some more recent data before losing the drive. You may want to just keep trying and see if you can get in. One of them I must have tried to boot 20 or 30 times before the drive finally mounted for access. Maybe the USB cable or housing is the problem? Try swapping the whole drive into another housing. I think one can be obtained for about 20$ to 40$. Call the vendor. They may have some tips/experience or their own service which might be more effecient and better priced due to volume and specializing on your drive type. Good Luck.
I thought a little more on your problem. If you have not gone to a professional, you might want to try the following. Go to the internet and download a small linux distribution that can run from a live CD. I personally like Puppy Linux. There is a possibility that the hard drive is failing, but something in windows is making the situation worse than it needs to be. Many people have reported varying degrees of success in rescuing data this way. system rescue linux Puppy Linux Home There are several linux variants that are more full featured, but this is just another thing to try if willing.
