OT - Data Recovery

Submitted by A2MIKE on

My hard drive crashed.  Then to make matters worse I made the mistake of taking it to Best Buy.  Long story short, I have some Excel spreadsheets that are saved to the hard drive that I need to access.  Best Buy was no help, and now my local guy says he can't find them.  Anyone have recommendations for the online data retrieval companies?  I am afraid that Best Buy deleted my user profile, which complicates things.  Any help is much appreciated.

MGoBoard

MIMark

November 15th, 2017 at 6:34 PM ^

I do a lot of data recovery. I have no lab at home so my physical options with the drive are limited. I would plug the drive into a Linux box and try dd to image the drive. If you get a read, you're good - now mount the image and retrieve your data. If you don't get a read, you might be able to swap out boards. Research your specific drive before trying because there is a possibility of making things worse by swapping boards. Now if there's a mechanical problem, then you really need a lab. I can recommend some good companies. And if I'm speaking Greek to you, take these suggestions to a friend who can translate and have him or her try it out.

Joined: 05/05/2009

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BannerToucher85

November 15th, 2017 at 7:16 PM ^

Good advice.

Assuming the drive is readable at all, definitely image the drive (using dd for example) There are plenty of examples of how to do this online. You probably want to image each partition separately as they are easier to mount than dealing with an entire drive image.

If you fail to see any files after you mount the imaged partition, all is not necessarily lost. The "crash" or the folks at Best Buy may have corrupted or overwritten your directory structures. In this case file carving software such as foremost (http://foremost.sourceforge.net/) or scalpel may help identify files independently of any existing directory structures. 

If you are really adventurous, an open source forensics suite such as Autopsy (https://www.sleuthkit.org/autopsy/) can be used to perform much lower level analysis of the partition images that you created

Joined: 11/24/2011

MGoPoints: 1621

Solecismic

November 15th, 2017 at 7:14 PM ^

Assuming it's not a SSD, another +1 for the freezer trick. Double-wrap it as tightly as possible in freezer bags to keep out moisture. Freeze for 12 hours. If it's a certain type of mechanical failure, you'll get about 10 minutes of use from that trick. I once saved the contents of a drive that way. I've also had 22 administrative assistants bother me today. WTF?

Joined: 11/27/2016

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Swayze Howell Sheen

November 15th, 2017 at 7:18 PM ^

there are a number of hard drive repair companies that can help (google finds them)

but the bigger problem is you: why not use dropbox or some other service that syncs files to the cloud? you really can't rely on one machine/disk for anything, it's just a bad idea.

 

Joined: 10/05/2008

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