Failed laptop drive recovery options

I have a 750 GB typical SATA HDD from a laptop, which quit being recognized in the laptop. In case it matters, it's a Samsung drive, probably from 2014.

Upon removing the drive from the laptop, and connecting to a USB SATA interface, the drive is not recognized as such. Disk Management shows "not initialized." Ontrack free software trial showed nothing; Easeus showed some level of "lost partition," but not with any of the old files or directory structure. Naturally I did nothing further. I mention the Easeus findings because the drive is apparently talking on some level to the computer, but not with recognizable files. Naturally, the usual troubleshooting, like different cables and rebooting, were tried.

Since there are enough files which didn't get backed up on this laptop to make recovery worthwhile (yes, I know the lectures about "you should have backed up" are sure to come - but most everything truly important was backed up, but this machine was just a little behind from procrastination), the question is - what are the best steps, given what was just mentioned?

This post, then, might be broken into the following questions:

1) Are there any more self-software options wise to pursue? Or is it time to hire a pro?

2) Regarding pros, do they generally try software recovery, first, I presume, which would be much cheaper?

3) Most importantly, and the main question in this thread, would be - to whom best to send the drive for recovery? There are a LOT of options and opinions on the net, and it's not obvious which is the best option for the situation. Keep in mind, this drive is worth some money to recover the data, but is neither mission-critical data which would be worth thousands to recover. It's also not urgent. What I'd like to find is:
a. Ideally, someplace which wouldn't charge (or charge much) if they fail to recover data
b. A place which would give informed estimates
c. Someplace honest and communicative
d. A good balance between reasonable price but also competence / success rate.

Also it would be great if there were someplace local (Orlando, FL) who could at least check out the data on the drive before deeming it necessary to sent it off to a clean room.


Does anyone have personal experience with such, which would offer an informed opinion? Thanks!

 

Thanks. Didn't seem to be of much use, though. It didn't even see that there was media connected. At least even Disk Management was able to see it as "uninitialized," which means there was something being seen - but TestDisk didn't even detect it.

If I were going to do something on my end, before sending out, I'd need something capable of seeing the drive much closer to the hardware level.

At this point, mostly what I'm hoping for are recommendations where I can take/send the drive.

 

Tried the freezer. No change. Except it did make a loud click after that for a short while.

Actually, I take that back. I don't remember even seeing it as "uninitialized" before the freezer. Maybe it did, but I don't recall. So maybe it did make a difference. But it's not such that the drive is recognized and accessible. Which is partly why I don't know to what degree the MBR is corrupted, or that the physical drive is faulty.

Yes, the pros can sever limbs with their fees. Which is why I'm reaching out to get some info as to remove as little of the arm and the leg as possible in the process... without removing an arm without the benefit of restoring the files.

 

I have put several in a zip lock bag and put them in the fridge overnight and had probably a 85% chance of them working long enough to get what was needed. I had one that lasted about 2 years in an old PC that the kids played on.

 

Hmm. Well, I tried several hours in the freezer, as opposed to 24h in a fridge.

I could try TestDisk again, after a clean boot, but I would wonder why a non-clean boot would interfere, whilst Disk Management managed to at least see that the drive was there, if not initialized.

 

Wonder whether this is worth a look:
https://www.diskinternals.com/partition-recovery/initialize-disk/

 

Ontrack*, DriveSavers and Datarecovery are three well-known and respected* companies that can attempt to retrieve files off of a 'dead' hard drive. Pricing typically runs between a few hundred to thousand of dollars (US).

There is no guarantee that usable data will be recovered however. If a drive is too damaged, the data is effectively gone. Also, if a drive was encrypted and the customer doesn't have the encryption key, recovery becomes extremely unlikely. Many hard drive manufacturers sell self-encrypting drives, with the decryption key on the drive's circuit board. In those cases, data-recovery requires the original, working circuit board.

Physical damage can leave a drive permanently unreadable. If the read/write heads have scraped the magnetic coating off the platter, there's nothing to recover. Dropping a drive with glass platters can shatter the platters, and no one is going to get magnetic bits off glass shards.

Overwriting files -- intentionally or otherwise -- renders the erased bits unreadable. Overwriting a sector once is just as secure as the fabled Gutmann method, which rewrites sectors 35 times. Today's drives pack data so tightly there's no room for ghosts of previous bits.

*Western Digital "Platinum Data Recovery Partners"

-- edited to add --

How Ontrack recovered data from the Columbia space shuttle disaster