Help me, please. Lady friend dropped my Toshiba and the folks at Geek Squad tell me the hard drive won’t spin and there’s no way to recover the drive or its contents without spending $$$$$$$$$ They said to just buy a new 'puter!
There MUST be some way for a non-hack like me to recover my info on that drive.
What do YOU say?
If the drive will not spin up, then you are basically out of luck recovering anything from it yourself. There are companies that specialize in recovering data, but you will spend many times the cost of a new laptop doing that.
It is possible to replace the hard drive and reinstall the operating system. Most laptops these days have a recovery partition on the original hard drive, so you’d need to purchase recovery media (a DVD) directly from Toshiba, as well as the new hard drive.
But it may not be just the hard drive that died. You’re assuming it was just this one component, and while that is probably the case, it is not something anyone without direct access to the laptop can tell you for certain.
Was the Geek Squad sure it is the hard drive ?
Did they test the hard drive by itself in another computer or external enclosure that would use the laptop hard drive?
If you don’t know it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
Absolutely… remove hard drive, test in external enclosure / external lashup cable (basically a USB drive case without the case bit!) or another computer.
If the drive will not spin up or access, then it’s dead - and the price of professional data recovery on a dead drive is massive and may still not be successful.
The real question is, is it JUST the drive, or is other damage present - if it has a functioning DVD/CD drive, then testing with a Linux live CD will allow the rest of it to be tested, with a careful examination of the screen for any problems.
On a dropped laptop, you have to be asking “is it worth trying to fix” - and also, do you or possibly your friend have insurance covering accidental damage