Dear Dayre,

I'm heartbroken 💔💔💔
I dropped my external HDD backup the other day by accident, and it stopped working, effectively leaving me with 500gb of digital memories from the past 5-6 years rendered completely useless and unreadable.

Fingers crossed, I sent it to a data recovery workshop in Sim Lim, which quoted me advanced data recovery for 850-1500. I told them to go ahead to try to retrieve the data, because 5 years of memories is surely worth more than that amount.

Suay has never felt worse because the dude from data recovery just called me to tell me that the HDD is more damaged than initially diagnosed and now requires Lab level recovery, which is quoted at 2500-3500.

Now that is A LOT of money. But every freaking digital memory I own is in that thing. Photos from all my overseas trips, videos, photos of my family, dogs, YZ and I from 8 years ago til now, working files for TVD since 5 years ago, all my pre-wedding photos, EVERYTHING.

💔

Would you proceed to attempt with the data recovery and pay up to 3.5k to have all these back?

3.5k could create so many more new memories.

A lot of those old photos, I hardly ever look at, but there are also many that are just as recent as 2015 (for instance my wedding photos and Japan trip photos). Many of these images I've never put online even in low-res because they are gigs and gigs worth of images.

I still do have memories preserved on my blog and social media, but it's perhaps only 5% of everything there in that HDD.

All this data is seriously priceless, but now that someone has put a price tag to it, it's really very 心痛 to think about throwing away $3500 just like that! 😞 $3500 is like… Maybe a Celine bag. Or a trip to Japan. In terms of material possessions.

According to the shop, it's hardware damage. The drive needle is broken and in order to recover the data, they need to find the exact same model to replace the part and then get the HDD to work.

Also needle broken means the HDD may be scratched/damaged beyond recovery.

Would you do it?

On a side note, I've decided not to wait for something to happen to my 128gb of iPhone memory and bought myself an iCloud subscription of 200gb to back up my phone memory for a few bucks a month.

I've already had two memory cards and one HDD fail on me in the past few months. Cant imagine if I lose everything in my phone, I would be devastated. (Not that it hasn't happened before)

This Dayre also 一个讽刺. 😭

Any opinions, advice or recommendations from tech gurus would be incredibly appreciated! 🙏🏻