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How do you recover data from a compromised portable drive?
Is there any way to recover data from a portable drive that has 'crashed?' There is some pretty important information on there. Do I have to take it to an expensive recovery company?
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3 Answers
Eric,
In what way has this hard drive "crashed"?
A data recovery company will almost definitely be able to get the data, but, depending on the state of the equipment now (can it power up?), you can use several inexpensive data recovery tools to get access to the data yourself.
Tools like the following will give you a chance to recover your data so long as the drive is not physically damaged:
-- http://www.salvagedata.com/recovery-software/
-- http://www.runtime.org/
-- http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm
The biggest thing will be to get an image of the drive as soon as possible, if it is truly failing.
Your use of the term "compromised" appears to make it a security issue, which would change the matter a little bit. If you are trying to do some sort of forensics, make sure you are working off an image of the drive, and ensure that you are not invalidating the evidence by your handling of the storage and its data.
If you can clarify these points, it may be easier to provide guidance.
-ASB: http://about.me/Andrew.S.Baker
Well, that depends on what kind of "crash". Usually there are two kinds of hard drive crash: logical crash and physical crash(similar to physical damage).
If it suffered logical crash, some data recovery ulities like Andrew Baker said have chance to recover(but not 100% sure as there are many factors affecting). I once experienced this software called Wondershare Data Recovery and it's good.
For Windows - http://www.wondershare.com/data-recovery/index.html
For Mac OS X - http://www.wondershare.com/data-recovery-mac/index.html
If the drive suffered physical damage, then the only option is to take it for data recovery services. Data Recovery companies such as Ontrack and DiskDoctor are famous. But I recommend you go to a reliable local one as it's more secure. Regards!
Yes, it depends on what kind of crash. How about restart your computer and re-connect your portable drive? Sometimes this helps to clear the buffers. Otherwise use a data recovery software to recover the files right away, take a try this http://www.datarescuetools.com/data-recovery.html
Download the personal version, it's free.
Remember – Do NOT try & write anything back to the drive until you can retrieve your files safely!
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