Hard Drive Damage

[Fireona]

I accidentally pushed my hard drive (IDE) off my table, with all the cables connected, while connecting my other hard drives back to the power supply and motherboard. It had dropped to about a 20-30cm, it didn't hit the floor, but I do know hung onto the cables from and it hit my table somehow. I checked to see how bad it was.

I was not able to get into Windows, so I removed the damaged hard drive and searched for some solutions. I found some suggested solutions from here, "http://www.wikihow.com/Recover-a-Dead-Hard-Disk".

I have tried freezing it for 2 hours, although that only allowed 3 of 5 partitions to be accessed, but I can't get in some of the folders and sub-folders in those partitions (I've learned my lesson to back up data now. u_u)... However, before I go looking for a hard disk technician, I was wondering if anyone has any solutions or can suggest some free data recovery programs.

Thanks.

 

[megamanx00]

Try using this

http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12

I'd say try and use it once and recover what you need, but if you need to recover everything on there sounds like you just shouldn't mess with it at all for now. Really though freezing it isn't the best idea. If it's damaged then every time you access it will just make it worse. To get everything that's savable on there you need to take it to a very expensive technician, who knows what he's doing, to take the Hard Drive apart and put everything in a special device that will attempt to read them. It's not enough to just have the equipment because if he's a jack-ass and isn't careful then small particles will get on the platters which defeats the point of taking it to him in the first place.

 

[bobbknight]

Data recovery is insanely expensive, you can spend over $5K to get info off a drive. I have the data that I need for work on 2 drives, and 2 dvd's. With a once a week total back up of every thing that I need to make money.
I have had success with the drive freezing trick, but not every time and not on drives that have been damaged by an impact with any thing.
Good Luck.