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Corrupted hard drive advice

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I have 1TB of wave encoded music files on an external WD hard drive. I transferred the files from CD's a few years ago. I plugged the hard drive in yesterday and got the "hard drive corrupted" message. Question: Am I screwed or could a data recovery service restore my drive? I don't want to go through the hassle of mailing a hard drive to a recovery service if it's a hopeless cause.
 
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Just be careful. I've had a fair amount of luck doing amateur recovery off drives that still spin, but it's often a destructive process. If the drive has a hardware issue you can usually get at least some of the data off with tools that just grind away and keep retrying... but you're going to beat the shit out of the disk in the process. If you are considering professional recovery try to do as little as possible with it between now and handing it over to the recovery company. Only attempt your own recovery if you're willing to risk losing the data outright.

-Charles
 
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Thanks guys. I sent it to a recovery service that won't charge me unless they can recover it. I just pay shipping. Much of the music on the drive is from CD's that are rare or out-of-print, otherwise I would not even bother to try to extract.
 
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