2 HDDs Failing To Power On

[DaveK]

I recently moved house and set up my PC yesterday but 2 of my hard drives aren't bootig up at all. My main 1TB Samsung F1 is fine, but my 160GB WD Caviar and 1TB Samsung EcoGreen F2 are both failing to power on.

All was fine the other day, I took the 160GB out and tried different power and SATA cables but nothing happens, though it was smoking earlier and there was a horrible smell though no visible damage.

I looked at a data recovery service here and to be honest, I'm not paying €550 to get it fixed, if possible. The website said the motor/heads have probably failed, but I'm assuming all 1000GB of my data is gone.

The 160GB is 4-5 years old but wasn't making any strange noises, the F2 isn't even a year old.

Please tell me there's a cost friendly solution to this? I've got 100s of videos and 1000s of pictures on these drives...

 

[brandonwh64]

hmmm thats a hard thing to swallow but it happens to the best of us. the 160gb drive wouldnt be worth the money to get the data recovered but the 1tb maybe unless the data is data that can be downloaded again. If you can get everything back by downloading it then i say RMA the drive and start downloading away.

 

[DaveK]

There's got to be something I can do, how can 2 drives just stop working when the other one is fine?

I quickly Googled for data recovery and got one company saying "€550+" for "Advanced Data Recovery" which they say "Time-consuming research work had to be completed to find a donor drive, the stripping down of the drive and reassembly of the drive with replacement parts was an intricate and time consuming process which had to be completed in a Class 100 clean room."

And another site is quoting €225-€300 for drives that are physically damaged.

I don't see how these prices are fair, seeing as how that second company charges €100 to set up your WiFi dongle and €100 to remove malware...I'd like if there was somewhere that wasn't a rip off.

Maybe if it was €100 or so I'd do it, as I need to buy a new hard-drive for the files to go on.

 

[newtekie1]

Considering most of the work they would need to do requires a clean room, which is expensive to setup and maintain, those aren't terrible prices.

 

[Deleted member 3]

hmmm thats a hard thing to swallow but it happens to the best of us. the 160gb drive wouldnt be worth the money to get the data recovered but the 1tb maybe unless the data is data that can be downloaded again. If you can get everything back by downloading it then i say RMA the drive and start downloading away.

How is the size of the drive relevant to the value of the data?

 

[DaveK]

How is the size of the drive relevant to the value of the data?

True, the 160GB has more valuable data, all my photos I took of family/friends, parties and car shows etc are on it.

Gonna post on a local forum see if there's any other options for getting my data back at a cost friendly price, I doubt it :S