If you told him it was a virus then he shouldn't have still been trying to boot the computer with it?
If you want the laptop back then tbh get an SSD instead
normally he will have a recovery machine that clones the hard drive without booting anything, a driver is not required. Then the recovery is done with that clone mounted as a data drive, and the original drive kept untouched in case it's just a dead PCB
he should also have been able to identify what virus it was to be able to asses the damage
Do you know any IT literate people? It shouldn't be hard to find someone better than that guy, they could mount the drive and tell you what the virus is, then you'd be able to assess whether it's worth the fee
alternatively, no fix no fee companies exist
personally I'd be asking him what steps he took to recover the data, what the virus was, and refuse to pay if he doesn't have a clue
He wasn't able to recover the data and told me to ship it out to some specialist company in California which would cost anywhere from $200-800.
Apparently he's putting a new (used) SS HD in now for $150 and the diagnosis was free. Said he took the HD out to test it and it froze his diagnostic test kit/tool.
He still has my laptop and I haven't paid him any money yet.
New 1TB SSD is somewhere in the $85 range. External hard disk drive(hdd) enclosure is like$15. You should be able to recover data from it. I would go the Ubuntu on a USB flash drive route as mentioned, but you probably need someone to walk you through that if your not a pc geek. Edit: I have done this a few times. Last time I was only the get 3/4 of the 3TB hdd recovered.
Of course, the only sane thing to do is backup data. A single copy is just asking for data loss. Tiny 4TB external USB 3 drives are cheap and make it trivial to do regular backups.
Said he took the HD out to test it and it froze his diagnostic test kit/tool.
hmm, if drive is dead then it's just not visible to the system, the main PC will boot regardless. The cabling is independent of the rest of the system so a dead SATA interface would not cause any problems. A theoretical short might, but a PSU would burn out any short.
The BSOD code would have been useful to determine why it's not booting
some need an AHCI driver loaded, you can bypass this by hot plugging or using a different SATA port (or a separate PCI SATA card)
it could have a corrupted MBR
it could have a non responsive controller which will stop the boot
it could be seeing bad sectors and looping trying to read them then aborting
What makes you believe a virus caused this and not say just a dying drive?
. Ask the techie to put it into a USB drive caddy and see if that makes it readable, it's an abstraction from the SATA interface
An SSHD isn't nearly as fast as a SSD. I think I have one in a PC somewhere, it's just a HD really
I used to work in a repair shop years ago. It's all about just get it running quickly and get paid. Even if it means reformatting and causing customer to lose family photos and other irreplaceable shit, just lie and say there's nothing we could do.
Go get your computer asap. They know damn well you don't need a specialist recovery company for this drive.
I wouldn't put much stock in their diagnosis, unless you have money to blow. Friend took his PC in and they said he needed a new PC. When my friend declined and had me check it out, I just pulled the PCI card out first (eliminate all unnecessary components when narrowing down the cause) and it booted fine. PC tech shop couldn't do this simple step of finding a shorted PCI card.
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