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I had a friend ask me about companies that can recover hard drives from Macbooks. The hard drive went out (According to the Apple store their hard drive failed, fyi.) and they didn’t have anything backed up so they were wanting to know if there is a place that might be able to recover any of the data. I know there are places you can send failed hard drives and they try to recover the data but I never had to use them. So I am asking my fellow Spiceheads if they have any that are worth the money to send the drive to. Yes I can google and get a list but I want recommendations from people who have actually had to use them.

8 Spice ups
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I’ve used Ontrack a number of times over the past couple of decades. Worth the money? Depends on how important the data is. Probably not much since there was no backups. Price depends on the price of the failure. Prices for the recoveries I’ve had done in the past ran from $800 to over $5K for a borked Raid array. Some places will do an eval for free. Some charge a fee to look at it but will apply that to the recovery if you choose to proceed.

@johnchristopher0600 has a presence here.

3 Spice ups
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I’ve used DriveSavers in the past as well, and had good success. The price was where it needed to be, and management learned to make a backup of it if they thought they’d ever need it again.
Being a personal device I doubt that its worth the spend on recovering the data.

5 Spice ups
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The two places I have used are

and

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I don’t think price will matter. This is for one of the partners at the law firm I work at. His wife is a big corporate lawyer for a multinational corporation so money is not an issue. It was their home computer with family photos on it. Thanks for the recommendations. I passed on the information and I believe they will go with DriveSavers.

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Is money going to be an issue when it comes to backing up data from here on out? Hopefully they learned their lesson.

4 Spice ups
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If you haven’t called us already, we can take your call 24/7. Use the SpiceWorks discount number when you call: DS 98006. We have worked with Apple and with Apple devices for over three decades. I’ve been here for almost 23 years and there is no doubt how valuable family photos are since it’s the digital life of so many kids and life events.

Good luck!

3 Spice ups
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I have been using DriveSavers for 15+ years and have always been pleased with the results, time frame, and cost. Being a reseller of their services has also been a great thing. Don’t need them often but glad they are there when I do!

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About a year ago I used DriveSavers to recover data from an iPad that was literally run over by a pickup truck. It wasn’t cheap, about $1600.00 in total but they went to the extreme of removing the memory from the mainboard of the tablet and transplanting into working hardware to read the information. It took about two weeks for the whole process but they were able to get nearly 100% of the data from a completely destroyed device. 10/10 would recommend.

2 Spice ups
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Do assertively get them to use Mac OS’ Time Machine feature. It is the free backup.option for those who don’t do backups. Handier in having an option for multiple Time Machine mount points &/or drives.

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Dan MacFarline- I remember your iPad 2 that came in. It was completely shattered and the PCB was actually bent!!! We came up with some pretty inventive techniques to work on these types of failures and it’s paid off on my more devices since then.

FYI - I’ve been at DriveSavers for a lot of years and as the shift from hard drive to flash, SSD, tablet and smart devices has been an amazing journey. Your device, along with some others actually made it so that a whole wing has been dedicated to R&D and I’ve pulled engineering talent from each group, including customer support , IT, soldering and more. There are so many innovations yet to come and it’s totally necessary to have quick answers to tough questions worked through immediately by different minds to accomplish this. Thanks for the shout out.

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I’m late to reply, but have also had success with Drive Savers in the past both personally and at the office.

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Honestly, that is freaking amazing! wow!

1 Spice up