(tech help) HD filled with treasures gone

Tbh i can't recommend any advice till i see what is actually wrong with it myself.... i dont even know what u mean when u said the head was bent. Do u mean the disk reader header or is it something else. If its the header and its a non halogen hdd then u can just replace the disk header from a similar model off of another broken hdd but the header still intact. Usualy if my boot sector is corrupted i always just replace my hdd coz i store my impt files on a non os partition. So i don't lose my data often except when the disk reader header is spoilt somehow. Thats how i fix my hdd. But let me tell u from ur prespective as a non hardware component fixing kinda guy... this might be too dificult for u unless u want to learn it slowly.

Btw if u can show us what u meant when the head is bent then a lot more people can help u. Or even explain it btr if u can't show us.

 

The partition table need to be fixed I recommend use hiren boot cd

 

This is why I always call for redundancy. My most important stuff is on 3 different flash drives (physically stored in different ways), on more than one HDD or computer, and on some sort of optical medium as well. SSD are nice for the G-force resistant properties but cheap ones usually are ruined by their own heat generation in a few short years which is why the models with 5+ year warranties (likely 10+ year of service) are the most ideal. For long term data storage M-Disk is the most ideal but not cheap either, it is a cost benefit issue for the consumer to consider, like how valuable with the data be in 20+ years. Stuff breaks and technology is glass on the edge of a cliff, pack things gently and keep your backup system in a Faraday box.

 

For successful hard drive recovery on your PC, external hard disk has to be able to spin up and respond. However, as long as the hard drive can be mounted onto your Mac or Windows computer, even with physical damage on the drive, for example Disk Drill can help. Once the scanning is complete, you will see the list of found files. Sometimes these files can still be corrupted. This means that another application may have overwritten a block of bits and the whole file structure is lost. Sadly, there's no way to prevent this. In reality, data recovery is mostly about luck.

 

Personally I wouldn't bother with a new enclosure, I'd just get a hard drive docking station.

If the hard drive is this messed up it's not like he's going to want to keep it around.

 

Or depending on your budget, just picking a reliable cloud service at this point.