Broken hard drive "beeping sound". Fair price to recover data?

[misterdeez]

My girlfriends laptop died recently and it was somewhat old so all she wanted was the data on the hard drive (she also lost the external hard drive that I backed her data up on as well). Hoping it was something else, I removed the hard drive from her laptop and put it in an external enclosure. It didn't start spinning and I kept hearing the dreaded beeping sound which I've been told is a mechanical problem.

It's a typical laptop 2.5" SATA hard drive, 500GB. There's probably less than 250GB of actual data on the laptop.

My question is what is a fair price to get data recovered from a hard drive failure like this (if possible)?

Also if anyone knows a good place in the Atlanta, GA area that would be a great help.

Thanks!

 

[fzabkar]

First try a USB Y-cable. Sometimes a single USB port cannot provide enough power to spin up the drive.

Otherwise it may be that the drive has a stiction fault (heads stuck to platters). That's usually a 5-minute repair, but data recovery companies in the US will charge around US$650 for this simple job.

It could also be a seized spindle bearing which is a major repair, or a smashed headstack. The latter sometimes happens when the heads crash into the loading ramp instead of parking gracefully on it.

If you have access to a cleanroom, observe whether the heads are on the ramp or on the platters.

BTW, $1200 per GB, or even per TB, is absurd. The most you should pay, for any capacity, is US$800 plus parts.

 

[misterdeez]

The external enclosure actually came with a Y cable and it didn't work with both USBs plugged in. Thanks for the more realistic price check, I was thinking there's no way it is going to cost me the same price as a 4 bedroom house to recover all the data on my hard drive.

 

[misterdeez]

Best answer selected by misterdeez.

 

[Kalonya]

Watch this, it may be your solution buddy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5Y7BniaRXg