Data recovery is if the drive head crashed, or the controller board failed. If the only issue with the notebook is the charging port, you don't need true data recovery.
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That said, you're totally correct about pulling the drive. Look up the owner's service manual for that model, remove the hard drive, and connect it to another computer with a hard drive dock (here's one chosen at random).
Seems like you tried everything in the book. Perhaps try to get a 2.5 inch drive dock (something like this) and plug in the drive from the laptop into it and then the dock to your desktop. Then you should be able to access the files.
Or you could send it to the manufacturer or a laptop repair place.
First .. if its bad (but not broken) get a harddisk cradle (only a few bucks) and hook it up to a laptop/other pc with the SSD in the cradle. See if you can get to your files and save them. It its bad & broken look up a good recovery place and ask them what it would cost to get stuff back from the disk.
Now some SSD's write the data encrypted so it will get harder to get the data off for said company. This can increase the costs of the recovery significantly. Just saying its a scam.. might be very unfair as there is a lot of work involved.
Well, not physically "unplugged" but rather suddenly losing the electrical connection, or the driver hiccups and loses it. Something like that.
It is possible that it's an incompatibility between that drive and your motherboards SATA ports. That'd be weird but not the strangest thing I've ever seen.
Here's an idea, get an external box or adapter for it and plug it in via USB. I have one of these, SATA USB Dock, not that brand but same idea. It's pretty useful on it's own. I do a lot of fixing for friends and such, I can just pull their drive, pop it in the dock, and connect it to my machine for backups, testing, etc.
Maybe the MB will like it as a USB where it doesn't as a SATA.
only got my ps4 last black friday, hah, allready have the 500gb pretty full, so probably going to get that 1tb sshd i mentioned elsewhere.
(i allready have a use for the current one in ps4 has, as i have just general external usb reader for drives type of, stick it in, its an usb drive now)
everybody should have one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Docking-Station-Support/dp/B0099TX7O4
mine is not that exactly, but you know what i mean, stick in any 3.5 or 2.5 drive, and its usb drive.
mine was literally 15€
Seconding this - I use one of these at work to recover data from dead computers all the time: https://smile.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Docking-Station-Support/dp/B0099TX7O4/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1545232377&sr=8-3 (edit: assuming your hard drive is SATA, most are, would check the model of the computer on the manufacturers website though)
If you have an old computer at home that you don't use anymore, you can take the hard drive out of that and put it in one of these toasters https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Drive-Docking-Station/dp/B0099TX7O4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498598418&sr=8-1&keywords=hard+drive+toaster. That's what I did a couple years ago, and it's worked great.
I use this. It is an external HD reader. This one is SATA. While its out of stock at Amazon, there are others at the bottom of the link that perform the same function.
Cable Matters USB 3.0 SATA Hard Drive Docking Station - Supports up to 6TB Drives https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0099TX7O4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_90joybRRNK63N
I would probably pull that drive out and just plug it into the computer you want to transfer files to as a backup as a secondary drive. If there's no space in your second computer or you're going to store the files on a laptop, try a dock like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Drive-Docking-Station/dp/B0099TX7O4/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1472841654&sr=8-7&keywords=external+usb+hard+drive+reader
Either way you'll be able to pull all of your files out and store them safely until you format the disk and can transfer them back.
Its possible that the enclosure that you HDD is in has failed, but the HDD is safe.
You can try removing the hard drive from the enclosure and connecting it directly to your PC and see if windows recognizes it. Alternatively if you can put it into a dock and then connecting it to your computer.
Oh that's good to know. I have a backup drive in a dock kinda like this on my desk, and it's warm to the touch. It didn't occur to me that it might need more cooling.
Yep. There may be other things preventing you from accessing the data (BitLocker or other file permissions/NTFS security), but I would bet on power. I've got a SATA to USB that only works on SSDs because HDDs require more power to spin the platters and control the arm that reads the data from them. So for those, I have a dock that supplies power separate from the USB. For what it's worth, most USB3 ports supply around 4.5-5 watts; some HDDs need up to 25 watts to spin up. Also, a 2.5 inch drive only needs 5V, but the 3.5 inch drives need 5V and 12V. These guys discussed it: https://superuser.com/questions/323452/why-is-my-3-5-sata-hard-drive-not-spinning-up-via-usb If it's definitely spinning up, I'd try connecting it to a different computer. If you still can't get your data, try a dock like this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0099TX7O4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_SufyFbPF9E2J5
I have a 918+ as well. Get a USB dock, I use this one:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0099TX7O4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I have two 8TB drives for my important shares. One sits in the dock, one sits in an offsite location.
Every night HyperBackup does a backup of the important shares to the drive in the dock. On day 1 of each month, I swap the drives, putting the most recent backups into offsite and taking the 30-day old drive and putting that in the dock.
Works like a charm.
My tiers are: Live data on NAS, up to 24 hours old in the dock, and up to 30 days old in the offsite location.
I also mirror to the cloud, but that is not backup as you pointed out.
I bought this one in 2018 and it works really well, I still use it when I do work for others or for personal use.
Just happen to come across this earlier:
Cable Matters USB 3.0 Hard Drive Docking Station
>USB-C Cable Included for Thunderbolt 3 & USB-C Computer
I'd been looking at cheap ones like the BitFenix Comrade which has three slide out ones, but it's sold out in the US as far as I'm aware (Amazon UK still has it). Another one I looked at was the Corsair 100R which has four.
A better alternative might be a USB caddy though. Or maybe use a USB adapter. I assume these will allow booting from USB.
I've also seen adapters for 5.25" bays that allow the mounting of two 2.5" drives (they may be fixed, but it could free up space).
Since nobody else linked you, something like this.
The only thing that I am affraid is if one of the power supply (well the first one) might have caused this. On the other hand, the same power supply is also running the one that works. I even have tried it with a USB HDD docking station like this one (https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Docking-Station-Support/dp/B0099TX7O4) without success.
Nono, don't buy me gold. This is a throwaway account anyway that I only use at work during downtime to help people at r/techsupport :D
https://imgur.com/n9nC5M6 this is the HDD.
And yes, unless the drive is encrypted, anyone can very easily extract all your data off of it. Since you seem a little bit inexperienced (no offence) and by default Windows does not encrypt the drives (AFAIK), I would say that it is very likely that the disk is not encrypted.
Now I am not sure if for example modern internet browsers encrypt the stored passwords somehow with the Windows login credentials, but I would not count on that.
So in conclusion: it's 99% likely that people can retrieve data off of your HDD.
But if I were you, I would order a cheap USB-HDD dock/bay (for example https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Docking-Station-Support/dp/B0099TX7O4/ref=pd_lpo_vtph_147_bs_t_1/130-2512858-9360532?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=JYVNWK5GT0EDJNRRDD83 ) and check whether the HDD contains anything valuable that you might want to recover :) After that, you could safely wipe the drive and recycle or reuse the HDD too. (You might find even cheaper docks from local PC stores, or some other online stores.)
Also, keep in mind that the Bitcoin price has risen during the past few years like ten folds. If there is even a tiny chance that you have your wallet.dat stored in the drive, and it might have Bitcoins, I would definitely look into recovering it! But keep in mind, that because the prices have risen so much, there are a lot of people with malicious intents around! So I would approach all recovery solutions with a healthy dose of paranoia!
I use a dock like this. https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Docking-Thunderbolt-compatible/dp/B0099TX7O4
I do have another laptop but I'll have to check, do you think something like this would work? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0099TX7O4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_7KGjAb94Y0H1A
Oh, USB 3.0 ones exist. I have one. Here's a cheap one.
You'd need something to boot/install the OS from once you replace the drive. Here's a link for how to do that. http://osxdaily.com/2015/09/30/create-os-x-el-capitan-boot-install-drive/
Then install the new SSD, boot the USB drive, and install the OS. You'll need to move data/programs; either hook up your TimeMachine drive (assuming you already make regular backups) or your old hard drive via a USB adapter like this. Then use migration assistant to bring data over.
You say you used an iMac to install El Cap on the hard drive and verified it works but I don't really understand what you mean. If you got the OS on there, it shouldn't be showing that black screen saying no bootable device because that's Windows talking, unless you only reformatted the OS X partition and the computer is still set to boot to the Windows partition by default. Hmm..
I would recommend booting the computer in target disk mode (hold "T" on startup) and connect it to another computer so you can format the drive completely to 1 partition and install OS X that way. However, if the computer keyboard isn't responding and external keyboards don't work either, then I'd say to remove the hard drive from the computer, mount it on a hard drive dock, connect it to a computer, and proceed to format and reinstall OS X that way. It seems really strange to me that the computer wouldn't respond to keystrokes AND external devices aren't being powered.
If you're able to install OS X on the hard drive it should at least be able to boot and you can see if the keyboard and/or USB ports still function correctly.
Shuck the drive and toss it into a toaster and hope it's the controller that's causing the issue ?
Probably what I would try since paying someone is out of the question it seems.
If you wanna try:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0099TX7O4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_cr2eBbTBZDRZ4
Obviously if you have no idea what you're doing you can fuck shit up. It's really not all that risky as you can see in the video though.
I'm not suggesting recovery software unless it's needed once you get the drive stable in Windows or offline.
Would you recommend something like this?
EDIT - or something fancy like this is pretty neat, or is it gimmiky?