External Hard Drive Crash, Help!

[DontTauntOrtizMe]

I have an older Seagate Free Agent Pro 500GB external hard drive. It froze up on me a while back and as a result, I don't have access to about 10 years worth of my life in digital pictures. It started clicking and eventually, when I would plug it into the USB port on my 2012 macbook pro, it would cause the whole computer to crash. The Geek Squad told me I was SOL, but what do they know?

Is there any hope for any sort of data recovery? Does anyone have a good resources? Sadly, there were no tasteful nudes stored on the drive so I can't offer that as a reward for good advice.

 

[Bergs]

https://www.fields-data-recovery.com/?gclid=Cj0KEQjwpNm-BRCJ3rDNmOuKi9IBEiQAlzDJHxHpd1S8dyA1YwuvvBBhId15ZoyEqPfY1QnTeYmMdTgaAr8U8P8HAQ

 

[djbayko]

I am not an expert, but I've looked into this several times.

Clicking is never a great sign. It almost always means something is mechanically touching the disk that's not supposed to. If you really care about the data, you stop plugging it in as soon as you hear clicking, as every click is potentially more damage. Your best hope is a data recovery specialist who would likely extract the physical disk and mount it in another drive. That's typically expensive because people who are in that position are either companies with a deep pocket book or desperate laypeople. You might be able to find a mom and pop shop who will do it for a few hundred dollars. They won't have the certified clean lab and processes that help protect against further destruction, but it'll usually be good enough if you're on a tight budget.

Good luck!

 

[HriniakPosterChild]

I got religion after I paid Drivesavers more $1000 to rescue data on a crashed drive. I recommend an AirPort Time Capsule for a Mac and Crashplan for everything else.