Recently my external Hard Drive went ballistic and now it says that i must 'Format the Drive before use' I have about 400GB worth of stuff on there - nothing irreplaceable it's just a pain in my ass to replace it - and I don't want to lose it.
I also don't trust myself to fix it (last time I did the program I usd forced my whole laptop to be rebooted!!!) so I was wondering if anyone knew of anywhere in Kunming that'd be good with the Data recovery of it?
Because of how much it'll save me in time money isn't really a problem so the better the place the better it is for me.
Thanks in advnce guys =D

Someone named "julytiger" posted in GoKM Classified 30 September, offering all kinds of computer related services. Check it out, maybe he can help you.

Thanks very much for the help aiyaryarr - hve contacted julytiger and given him the faulty HDD so will post here with results after the holiday =D

i've used a program before called 1st NTFS. It has allowed me to recover hundreds of gigs. You can torrent it. I have had the same problem you did with a couple of hard drives. The only problem is to recover that 400 GB you have to have an extra 400 GB lying around somewhere in order to copy the files. Other than that it works like a charm

Magichedgehog, I'm also interested in knowing about the results. I also had the same problem and I also contacted julytiger but for me the money is a problem. I don't want to spend that much money if the results are poor.

Thanks!

I'll check about this NTFS program... Is it easy to use? I'm not that good with computers...

you need to fix the FAT table and/or the boot sector. This may or may not be possible, depending on what really happened to your hdd. If the controller went bust, there's little chance of every finding anything back. Is it an SSD (solid state drive) or a plain old platter drive?

Most of computer service shops on 121 street and Yuantong dong lu can do that, I did once, back then it cost 800rmb.

I don't know if it's SSD or plain platter drive. It's an old LACIE 160GB.
When I connect it, it just makes noise but nothing appears on my Mac screen.
Is there a program to try to recover the Data?

If I take it to a place in 121 street, how do I know they are going to steal me? They may charge a lot of money to recover just a small part of the data, for example.

Thanks

That's a tough break there, but it's actually good that you are getting that "Format Drive Before Use" message. That usually means that you just have a corrupted file system rather than actual physical damage to the hard drive. Of course, if your drive is making any strange noises or clicking sounds, then you're pretty much out of luck unless you want to hire a professional data recovery firm. It's $300 an hour in the U.S. I would not have any idea what it would cost here in China.

If you formatted the drive on a Mac, then it would probably be using HFS+ rather than the factory default FAT32 or NTFS file systems, meaning that the NTFS recovery tools would be of little use to you. However, you can always try Photorec at www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec, which has worked well for me before in the past. It's not designed for amateurs, but if you read the instructions carefully, it can work wonders (Us Linux guys just fire up ddrescue and let it have a go ;-). If I was in Kunming at the moment, I'd be glad to help you out, but I just got done with a two day visit and am probably not going to be back until the next holiday, so you definitely do not want to wait that long. If you have any problems though, you're welcome to email me at me@viewsfromchina.com since I don't check this website very often. Good luck with everything!