Are there any places that will fix my portable hard drive or at least recover my files? PLEASE HELP!?
Answers:
Are you sure that it is the hard drive? It could be the external enclosure that is the problem. I had an external drive that suddenly stopped working. I opened the case and discovered that the data cable inside the case had worked it's way off of the pins on the hard drive. I plugged the cable back in and it worked fine for about 6 months and the same thing happened again. I fixed it again and that fix lasted 6 months also. I finally broke down and spent $20 for a new one. I pulled the drive out of the first case and put it in the new case. It has worked flawlessly ever since. Your situation may be different but I thought that I would throw that out there.
Does your drive make strange clicking or grinding noises? can you feel it spinning. If the drive is damaged physically you may need to send it to a data recovery house and they are not cheap. Don't waste your time with the Geek Squad or their competitors. They will charge you a bunch of money and do nothing more than you've done already. Then they'll send it to a data recovery house and add a few more bucks for doing so.
I can't recommend any one data recovery house but there are plenty of them out there. Do a search on Google for "Data Recovery" but be advised that these places charge anywhere from $500 - $2,000 for their services.
Good Luck,
Captain Computer
Geek Squad does provide some instore data recovery options you might want to try. Pricing depends on the amount of data, under 9gb is 99 and only 9gb is 159 for instore. If no files are recovered your fee is refunded. Other options get sent out to data recovery specialists that have other ways of recovering files and start at 259 to around 500 and the top level at 1500. The last one involves a clean room and taking the hd apart, so the money actually pays for a lot! SO I probably give the Geek Squad a try for the instore recovery, if it fails you pay nothing at least.
The answers post by the user, for information only, RunQA.com does not guarantee the right.
More Questions and Answers ...