Hi everyone. My laptop finally bit the dust a couple of weeks ago, taking with it a couple of really nice clips I wanted to share, held in a hidden file in My Documents. The local repair shop says they could retrieve all the files on the machine for me, but I'm a bit worried the hidden files might be seen. Would the hidden file be saved in it's invisable state do you think ready for me to un-hide it later, and whats the risk of these clips being seen?

I assume they have better things to do than go though your files, they would just download them to a hard-drive. And is it really that big of a deal if a random stranger did see the clips?

Might be worth seeing if Recuva can do anything with a disk caddy. If you don't want to deal with a shop in your local area, you can always try a national disk recovery company.

Depending on the local shop will depend on how much they care. One of my exes used to work in virus removal, and came across some right wierd stuff, but that was as he had to report causes of the infection/security breach to the client. Doing data recovery/private work, he really couldn't have cared less what was in the documents!

Happened to me. I bought an external HDD case, took out the drive from laptop then had to figure out how to work around windows user authorisations (plenty of sites explains how, just google them). I managed to get back my files.

Obviously we're talking about a working drive, if it's fried only specialised data recovery services maybe can do something.

I couldn't fix a computer to save my life, but if I DID work in IT, the first thing I would do with every laptop I got my hands on would be to find the owner's weird porn stash and laugh at it.

I assume you mean hidden as in you checked the "Hidden" attribute on the file properties?

Viewing hidden files in an explorer window is not too difficult, as there is an option for showing hidden files. Whether or not a recovery shop would bother checking for those sort of comes down to the motivation of the shop, but it definitely wouldn't be hard to find. In the event that the disk partition is damaged, recovery software should pick it up as well.

Unless you are certain the hard drive is the problem though, I would start by trying to recover them yourself. You can find external hard drive enclosures or docks online and basic models aren't terribly expensive. You just need to attach the drive to it, plug it into your laptop, and you should be able to navigate and find all of your files.

Failing that, there is some do-it-yourself software like Recuva that can find files lost to partition problems or files that have been deleted but not physically overwritten on the hard drive. You can use such software by putting the hard drive in one of these docks as well and running the program through another computer. If there is physical damage to the hard drive though, only professionals would be able to help, and what they are able to recover would come down to what exactly was wrong. Failed circuitry is fully recoverable, but if the heads have damaged the disk itself, there will likely be some data loss.

Fixed it for you Regis!

Years back when my PC mother board died I took the hard drive out and plugged it into another computer. Took the power and data connection from the DVD drive. Cost Free.99

The suggested ideas of an external case are excellent too and handy to have for backup in future.

If the drive has failed it is usually the heads. You can transfer the platter to another drive. There are videos on this, a serious project. The same job at data recovery will run you $500.