INSIDE OF A HARD DRIVE

All hard drives will eventually fail.

This is a fact. When your hard drive does fail it is quite possible that you could lose all of your precious data on it if you do not have that data backed up.

If you don’t have a backup and you are experiencing a problem with a hard drive, seek out an experienced professional such as ProMacNYC as soon as possible!

We do data recovery from SATA and IDE hard drives.

Taking it to the Apple Store will not help you as Apple does not do data recovery. They will just tell you that your hard drive has a serious problem and that you need to seek out a place that does data recovery like ProMacNYC. Indeed over the years, the Apple store has referred many customers to ProMacNYC for hard drive issues or data recovery.

Over the years I’ve done a lot of data recovery jobs for many many clients with hard drive problems, so have a good deal of experience dealing with funky hard drives and with rescuing user’s precious data in one way or another. Many a grateful client who half expected to never see any of their family photos again, has thanked me for accomplishing a “miracle” in recovering their Pictures, Documents, and other files.

Successful recovery depends on many factors. The chance for success is usually best when the client got the drive to me early enough in the game and didn’t stress the drive too much. DO NOT keep messing with a suspected bad hard drive. In fact the more you continue to stress a hard drive that has a problem, the more you may lessen the chances of successfully getting your precious data recovered easily. Additional stress on a funky hard drive (like trying to read one bad sector over and over unsuccessfully, which it is stuck on and will keep attempting) can decrease the potential success of  data recovery.  Just turn it off, leave it off, and get it to a professional like me ASAP. Sometimes when someone has kept trying to boot up their computer over and over and over for hours when it wouldn’t start properly, by the time I see it, they’ve stressed the hard drive so much its now at it’s breaking point, essentially “killing” the drive, which can make it almost impossible to recover data with normal drive recovery means.

If thats your case, when you think all hope is lost, it is not “lost”. But it might be more expensive. There’s still hope of recovery but its beyond the simpler, “normal” type of data recovery. It may now be a greater problem (like a dead non-spinning drive) and its going to cost more because at this point the only hope will be to send the drive out to very specialized high level data recovery businesses that use super expensive equipment and have Clean Rooms. An example are Drive Savers in California or We Recover Data in NY. While this type of data recovery service is not cheap, REALLY need that data back off that dead or severely damaged hard drive its going to be your only hope, and they charge for this level of service. On the plus side, ProMacNYC has a business relationship with these firms, so if you are in a position when you require Drive Savers services, by going through ProMacNYC  I can get you a 10% Discount off the cost as an Authorized Partner. 

Hopefully you will never need to use Drive Savers or another high level data recovery service provider but if you do, talk to me first, as this could save you hundreds of dollars than if you sent it to Drive Savers on your own!

So your take away in reading all this? Backup, backup, backup! If you don’t have a backup drive, buy one today…. and use it! I actually have many clients who I ask, “do you own an external backup drive?” quite a few have actually said to me, yes I do, “but I haven’t plugged it in a few years. Its in a drawer”! Its almost laughable! That won’t help you much. A backup is only as good as the last time you did it, which means its current and up-to-date.

Apple’s Time Machine is a great backup system for 99% of Mac owners as it is automatic. The only thing you have to do is buy an external hard drive and plug it in!*

External hard drives are cheap. Your precious data however is priceless!

Be aware, all hard drives will fail eventually. They are machines with moving parts and as you know all machines will at some point eventually fail. Hard drives are generally expected to last 5-8 yrs. If yours is older than 5 yrs…think ahead.

Have a backup plan in place so your data is safe and protected. With a Mac, it is a simple as buying an external HD and plugging it in!

If you don’t have any backup in place as you read this, I would strongly urge you to ORDER A HARD DRIVE THIS INSTANT! Here’s a link to a decent portable external HD at a decent price which should be big enough for most users (1TB Western Digital USB HD – on AMAZON) *

This is what you do with it to setup Time Machine on a Mac. Its easy

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250