Help Recover Pics from two failed drives; or should I send them out ?

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J

justinj

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Nov 26, 2011
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So I think I might have somehow lost all of our family photos and videos (and other stuff). It's a long story, but my 3-yr old computer somehow stopped working. It started to load Windows slowly and then freeze up and was getting worse. I then tried to install Windows on the 2ndary HDD, thinking I could pull the files from it to my 2ndary drive, but it would not install.

I thought i need a new computer anyway, so I bought a laptop and an external HDD case. It was my hope that all my photos stored on my 2ndary drive (WD Black 1.5TB) would be recoverable when I connected the HDD case to the laptop. But I've been at it with several software programs with no luck. I've tried Recuva, EaseaUS, Wondershare, Photorescue, etc.

So in essence, BOTH of my HDDs in my computer failed. Both spin but don't work. I haven't connected the primary HDD to my laptop from my desktop yet (in the case), but I wouldn't think it would work well either since it wouldn't load Windows, and it didn't even have all of the files I'd want to recover.

No idea how this happened. I've always had them connected to a very good surge protector. My guesses at the culprit include the power supply because my top case fan did stop working also (although the BIOS shows normal voltage), vibration (because it was pretty loud), or I suppose it could be a virus (although that one seems unlikely to me).

Now I know I screwed up by not backing things up.... yep, got it. I'm an idiot and that's one reason why my wife is so mad she says she's going to divorce me. But I'm hoping there's still a chance and you all can help save my marriage.

Can you please point me to the best professional recovery service that can help me recover the files? I realize I'm in for the $2k cost (or $4k if I send both HDDs), but that is cheaper than a divorce. Thanks for your help.
 
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popatim
... and people are amazed that I maintain 7 backups of my family pics & vids...2 are offsite. LoL
This is why.

Sorry for your loss and I hope you can get them recovered. it sounds like perhaps your power supply overheated and crapped out taking the two HDD's out too. If thats the case theyn the files are usually recoverable after a board swap and shouldnt be too expensive (just regular expensive <grin>)
Best wishes to you and your wife.
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renners

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due if your being serious about your wife divorcing you over this you need to get the hell out of that marriage while you still can lol but really i dont know about hard drive recovery i had a similar thing happene jut had to start fresh...
 
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J

justinj

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I can't describe how awful this feels, but I know you and many others have been there. So I'm going to try to stay positive with hope that the pros can help me.

I'm in the US (Pittsburgh).
 
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popatim

popatim

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... and people are amazed that I maintain 7 backups of my family pics & vids...2 are offsite. LoL
This is why.

Sorry for your loss and I hope you can get them recovered. it sounds like perhaps your power supply overheated and crapped out taking the two HDD's out too. If thats the case theyn the files are usually recoverable after a board swap and shouldnt be too expensive (just regular expensive <grin>)
Best wishes to you and your wife.
 
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J

justinj

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Nov 26, 2011
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Wow, so I took one last go at it with Remo Recover. I got home from work today and voila!!! (is that spelled right?). All my files (I think) are there, including .doc, .xls, .mov, .jpg, .mp3, and a whole lot more. They're all missing their proper names and dates, but I just have to go through a few thousand files now (which I guess I sorta needed to do anyway).

So my HDDS and my marriage are saved (for now). Thanks as always for your help. Now I need to buy a good backup drive or two. You guys are great. I miss the Sharkyforum guys, but I'm sure they're all still on here somewhere too.

For what it's worth I had a 30 min conversation with DriveSavers Recovery, a platinum partner for WD. They seemed very good over the phone and I was an inch away from plopping down the $2k.
 
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justinj

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argh, ok, just one problem. About half of the .mpg files are broken. I haven't found anything else that didn't fully recover (including all 38k .jpgs). Do you think there's any chance that sending this to a professional would recover the half of my 1800 .mpgs that are broken?
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Probably not.
A text file with a bad bit or two is almost unnoticeable
A picture with a couple of bad bits is recognizable
A video with a couple of bad bits may be unplayable.
 
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J

justinj

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Nov 26, 2011
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Hi all,

I just wanted to follow up on this now that the dust has settled. I went ahead and spent $1,700 at DriveSavers, one of the platinum partners of Western Digital. Although some of the info lost its "date taken", they were able to recover ALL of my files.

I learned a few lessons here that others (the not so techie ones like me) might benefit from hearing. In no particular order:

1. Remo Recover was the best option for me among the free software options, but even they were not good enough in this case.
2. Paying the $2k may be worth it. DriveSavers did recover everything and they had a sort of guarantee that I would not have to pay if they could not recover my files.
3. Always back up your files. Instead of using multiple hard drives, I am using CrashPlan for $4/month. Not sure what others here think about it, but they seem good to me. It's not that much more expensive than buying hard drives, and it's much safer and easier to manage. Apple uses them. You can access your files from anywhere (e.g. photo albums).
4. Put the date of your pictures first on the name of the FOLDER. If the pictures/movies lose their dates for some reason, the folder may still maintain it and you'll know when everything was taken regardless if you know what folder they were in.

Good luck.

-Justin
 
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