Chosen Solution
About a month ago, I updated my hard drive for the second time, orgininaly swapping the 110GB HDD for a WD Black 320GB drive back in 2009. This time I swapped it for a Seagate Momentus XT 750GB Hybrid Drive, and did the same process as before, cloning the MacBooks current OS Drive and then installing the new one. I had about 3 weeks trouble free running, then, while I was in hospital for a couple of days it suddenly crashed on me using safari, and stopped responding. I held down the power button to turn it off and re-booted it. Afterwards the system almost immediately repeated the same fault and I repeated the process once more, only to find that now I cannot get past a BLANK grey screen, no logo, no folder, no loading wheel. After eventually deciding there must be an error with the drive, I took it out, put it in an enclosure and thought that if I could atleast back up my data to another drive using my sisters MacBook I can reformat and do a clean install of OSX Snow Leopard. However, I saw no drive appear in finder, nor in disk utility, I tried a different enclosure (a newer USB 3.0) and it came up with the error message that the drive is unrecognised and I opened disk utility where I would see the listed drive. Requesting Information shows: Unformatted Writeable Ejectable SMART not supported Capacity 0 bytes http://www.flickr.com/photos/lukeysfotos… see link for all info I have/had irreplaceable information and memories on this drive, work dating back to 2008, a music collection that took 12 years to put together I would appreciate help from anyone who could advise anything I can do to retrieve the data if possible even if it is complicated. I’ve had a new idea, I’m scanning my original drive, which has been reformatted since installing my new one to try and recover the files from there, and buy a new drive to trasfer the files to if successful
Since the drive is not being see at all and it is a fairly new drive, I suspect the board. Since this data is dear to you, if it were in my shop, I’d buy a duplicate drive and replace the circuit board, then give it a try. I know this is a bit expensive but cheap compared to the alternatives.
How much that data is worth only you know. That’s why any valuable PITA to reconstruct/recreate data should be backed up on two devices kept in two different places… if there’s a fire at your house the backup drive will likely go the same place as your main drive. That being said there are data recovery programs that MAY allow you to access your drive. . . and there are data recovery services that will physically repair/reconstruct/build a way to access the platters. The first are mildly expensive and their success is random. The second are extremely expensive and, generally, only business that can write off the costs employ them. Check out the data recovery tag on the right for more/other Answers. If this Answer is helpful please remember to return and mark it Accepted.
Hey! you have tried a data recovery software then also you are not able to retrieved your data back. I would suggest you to not to tamper with the hard drive again and again as it can make you to lose your data permanently so, better consult a expert data recovery company. For sure they will help you in recovering your data successfully. The cost of data recovery services depends on the type of storage media, amount of data and severity of damage to the drive. If the data is very important for your then your should go ahead with data recovery expert option.
