Right Answer: Find a data recovery expert who can retrieve the information for you.

Wrong Answer: Mess around with it and possibly damage the hard-drive.

Experts have different tools and software programs to retrieve the data. If there is no damage to the hard-drive, your cost will be much more reasonable. If you do something wrong and overwrite the data it makes it more difficult to retrieve, which in turn will make the cost of retrieving the data go up.

In the case of a hard-drive being damaged, you are looking at a much higher cost. When a hard-drive is damaged, it will need to be taken apart in what is called a clean room –a sterile environment that is expensive to rent. So before doing anything “creative” with that crashed hard-drive, think twice. You don’t want to pay a lot of extra money if you don’t need to.