portable external hard drive!!!!

[SCHWARTZ]

Anyone any good with hard drives? I have a samsung portable external hard drive that has decided to stop working It has loads of old pix etc... that i want off it couldnt care less about the hard drive working again.
I turned it on one day and it just clicked and made a space invaders type noise only way i can describe it and hasnt worked since.
I have sent it off to a couple of companys who either cant get the data off it or want to charge near £1000 and still not possibly get all the data off of it They say the heads have come into contact with the discs and damaged something.
Is there anyone in the data recovery game or someone who knows a decent company they have had experience with? as all i seem to find is rip off merchants

[Slim]

sounds like how much it roughly would be. some places are much more... and they never will be able to garuntee how much they can recover,,, sometimes hardly anything,, yet u still pay $$$

[markg]

Have had experience of a company called Vogon in the past, now called Kroll Ontrack but don't believe its going to be cheap.

[SCHWARTZ]

On track in Epsom will be the next place il try as I hear some good things, still pricey tho, I'm not expecting to get it done for nothing, but can't warrant spending that sort of money if I'm not gettiing more boost

[SirSamuelOfBuca]

When I worked in IT support I used to retrieve data using the following http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-SATA-I...ht_2528wt_1141

It would let you get most stuff back as long as harddrive could spin.

There does come a point where it is unreadable though.

[SCHWARTZ]

Cheers matey il have a look into that. Not sure if it spins tho and the report states that the heads have gone but they couldn't get the parts

[markg]

Had a similar issue today with someones laptop. We plugged the drive into a SATA to USB converter and then plugged it into a PC. We then had the dreaded clicking noise from the drive so normally it's game over. I picked the drive up off the desk and for some reason had it held at about a 45degree angle. Low and behold the ticking stopped and we could read some data off the drive, enough to get the users documents off although there was some corruption. Now I strongly believe it was a fluke but possibly worth a try with tilting the drive.

[SCHWARTZ]

I have tried all the little tricks freezing it in a sandwitch bag, tilt, tap, think its just fubared

[andybond]

Is the disc still spinning or is it clicking?