Actually if all the tips, hints, tricks don't work for you the "end user" then it's off to some retrieval service. YES, they have to open it up if they can't do that prior with their magic wands. Opening the HD is not going to lose data as if it drops out. You literally take the HD discs and place them on new spindle(machine) for data retrieval. In most cases, under a good service, usually that's a 95% recovery up to 99%. I exclude fire damage but even that can be in the 80%+ range. However, they may try the electronics PCB swap before any opening of HD and/or repair the PCB.
<span id="INSERTION_MARKER">I read through the
different articles on many websites but to no avail. As such I was hoping
anyone here might have some advice for us. <span id="INSERTION_MARKER"><span id="INSERTION_MARKER">The issue: We had an external HD which was copying some fotos to a different HD when the power went out. Once we powered the external HD again it no longer started or showed up in the list of drives. We tried both in the casing and after taking it out and connecting it to an internal SATA connection, but it doesn't work on our MAC or our Windows 7, nor WINXP computers.
When we tried to take the hard drive out of its casing we also found that the BIOS no longer detects the drive. However, when listening closely it is possible to hear a soft spinning sound after which it stops, so it doesn't seem to start properly.
Now here is a problem: We are based in China and this is also where we bought our drive. Unfortunately it appears that our drive is also made in China... and fake! The casing on the external HD said MSI and it was sold to us as being so, but the logic board says SAMSUNG, and who knows if that is real.
We approached different local data recovery specialists but they are (like everything in China) doubtfully capable and said that they will have to open the HD in order to retrieve the data.
After having read different articles it seems pretty risky to do this if they can't be sure what model it actually is and need to replace parts.
Does anyone have any suggestions to things we might be able to try with our hard drive?
Some of the websites/articles/posts suggested shaking the drive, increasing or decreasing the temperature, which I have not done yet. I am afraid that it might break the hard drive further and we have a lot of fotos on the disk we would like to have back.Alternatively, if the HD does really need to be opened up, what would people suggest?
1. We can try in China. Perhaps the locals know more about dealing with fake HDs, since they make them here after all.
2. We can try in Europe. We could find a more trusted in an established data-recovery specialist but they might not know how to handle fake-HDs or which parts to get.

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