Apple laptop hard drive failure not under warranty - any chance of recovery?

By law, is australia, if the product is faulty, then you MUST be given a refund. However............... In the case you described, there has been a whole 11 months, between the actual purchase of the item, and the time when it failed. This means, because there has been a large gap in time, between purchase and fault (11 months). They are entitled to have it repaired, and you do not have a choice in the matter. You will find the laptop , will be examined checked and repaired, and the results of what they find, will determine whether it was an actual part failure, or a mistreatment by the customer. Part failures are covered by warranty. Mistreatment is not covered. If you had bought the computer, and the next day, or a week later it failed. Then you would be entitled to a full refund , without question. Even a replacement given. But your talking about a whole 11 months of it working, and then failure. The seller is entitled to investigate how it happened and what was at fault. Consider a virus being downloaded onto a computer and wiping the hard drive. Is that the stores fault, or the maker of the computer. They did not download the virus, could have been in any number of files, that were downloaded after purchase. If that is the case, they will fix it, at a cost to you, reload the windows or whatever you had on there. And you will have your computer back. A part failure, after 11 months, is highly unlikely. If that were the case, then every model of toshiba would have been affected by the same problem and they would already know about it anyway. Thus covered by your warranty. Theres too many reasons, why it could have happened and for that reason the law recognises, they are entitled to find out why it happened before your reimbursed.

I am wondering just how valuable a file could be if it wasn't even backed up? It sounds as if these files are important enough to attempt recovery somehow. I believe if I were your friend, I'd take the computer to a repair shop and see if they can work some magic to get the material off of the old hard drive and onto a new hard drive to be installed in the computer. It's possible for a professional to be able to get a hard drive to boot up when you've tried everything at home. If the material is important and the hard drive has to be sent away, that's some serious cash outlay! However this turns out, do yourselves a favor and religiously back up your files every week, month or whatever you decide! Because you just never know! Good luck with your project and I hope your friend is able to get his files recovered!

dont know the cost, but i heard it is expensive. U can call around. Thats why people need to back up their important files (thumbdrives, external drives, or internet)