Can anyone recommend a data retrieval company

[AmyInTheBoonies]

My external hard drive has died - I have some photos on it which weren't backed up on anything else . I'm really devastated to lose these as some are of dd as a baby.

I have spoke to the guy who usually helps me with my computer and he can't do anything. He suggested going to a place that specialises in data retrieval.

Has anyone used a company online - any recommendations?

Thanks

This happened to a colleague of mine whose daughters laptop gave up suddenly "her entire life being wiped out", the laptop was only a few months old so it was a bit exaggerated, but anyway the dad bought a rack at a shop for computer components and plugged in the hard drive in the rack and retrieved all the pictures. A quick search for "retreive photos from crashed hard drive site:uk" threw up this article. www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/advice/9842711/Ask-Rick-how-can-I-retrieve-my-data-from-crashed-PC.html and I think what he did is what's described as "...buy a new PC, remove the drive from your old machine and pop it into a USB drive 'caddy' ". Don't know of anybody doing this, however, but obviously it was quite easy, a DIY thing.

Thanks Eva, you're absolutely right with your advice. We have just had the disk in a caddy (at are friends house). Apparently 9 times out of 10 this does the trick. Unfortunately for some reason ours is the 1 in 10 which still can't be saved.

I'm now in the process of getting a quote from a data retrieval place! So stressed about it and hope they can save the day.

Moral of the story make sure your pictures are backed up on a disk and uploaded somewhere too.

You might want to check out Iperius backup (a program) if you don't have some other idea, like using Dropbox or putting it on (a) secondary hard drive(s)... If you have posted your pictures on Facebook you'll be able to download them too.