Anyone know of a good harddrive recovery company?

sidewinder770 · #1 06/05/2007, 04:07 PM

I have an external HD that took a dump and I have hundreds of photos on it I need to get off (lots of the tank of course). Anyone know of a good local company?

Philwd · #2 06/05/2007, 04:08 PM

Data Doctors helped us out.

Kentanner11 · #3 06/05/2007, 04:11 PM

Yea they are good. You could also try Geek Squad at Best Buy or demand that the mann. pay for it, or do it them selves. I had my hard drive on my tablet notebook go down so now I have an external one aswell. ! Good luck!

widefx · #4 06/05/2007, 04:13 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Philwd
Data Doctors helped us out.

Ditto

Have worked with them in the past and they do good work.

sidewinder770 · #5 06/05/2007, 04:16 PM

cool- that's who I was probably going with (data doctors) but figured I'd see if anyone else had a better idea. I'd love to get the mann to pay for it but I don't feel like waisting my time dealing with them.

Thanks all!

feenixphish · #6 06/05/2007, 04:20 PM

I can do data recovery.... trade for frags???

sidewinder770 · #7 06/05/2007, 04:22 PM

Trade for frags? that's a no brainer

of course!

aztbs · #8 06/05/2007, 04:40 PM

Is it making a click of death or strange grinding noises? Does the computer recognize it is there, but can't read it, or does the system not even detect that it exists?

If you care about your data, take it to a professional before you try anything else, especially if odd noises are involved. (not saying feenix is not a pro, but I could offer to do basic software recovery too.. just not in a clean room or any advanced method)

Recovery is not cheap, but the more you mess with it before you take it in, the more you may lose! Hope you get it all back.

iboard2 · #9 06/05/2007, 06:00 PM

I read a trick a while back....

If you put it in a freezer and let the drive chill for a while often you can get one last run out of it.

Not sure of all the details, but I am sure if you do an internet search you can find more info on it.

soni · #10 06/05/2007, 06:22 PM

i'll look at it for free. send me a pm

also if you want any attempt to get your data don't take it to data doctors OR geek squad. they are like the used car salesmen of the IT industry.

frontosa_man80 · #11 06/05/2007, 06:46 PM

my computer here at work went down and it cost around $600 to recover everything from the hard drive. i dont know who they sent it to but it wasnt data dotors.

-jesse

tmorey · #12 06/06/2007, 12:49 AM

Let us know the results of your HD problem, cause I've got the HD problem. 3 years of family photos and I can't get the drive to boot. And my backup, well, I didn't do one... I've already tried the freezer trick and I set it up as a second drive and that didn't work either. I'd love to get my pictures off of it.

Good luck, Tracy

soni · #13 06/06/2007, 12:51 AM

jesse if they sent it out you got off cheap. Data recovery from a true recovery company can run from 500-5000 dollars. They actually take the drive apart, pull out the platters and then stick the platters into a 2 million dollar machine. It spins them up and rips them to another media. Pretty cool.

dream54ing · #14 06/06/2007, 01:01 AM

i have 3 -200gb hard drive crash on me. not sure if it is true, but i was told most hd fails because of the arm that reads the disk breaks. dont think the freezer trick would work in that case.

frontosa_man80 · #15 06/06/2007, 01:02 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by soni
jesse if they sent it out you got off cheap. Data recovery from a true recovery company can run from 500-5000 dollars. They actually take the drive apart, pull out the platters and then stick the platters into a 2 million dollar machine. It spins them up and rips them to another media. Pretty cool.

yea, they only needed half the stuff, i rest i saved to the server. im still learning all this IT stuff and didnt know all that info got saved on my hard drive. they said i learned a cheap lesson this time.

oh well. people like me keep the IT guys busy.

-jesse

Saddler · #16 06/06/2007, 01:46 AM

For the freezer trick you're suppossed to put the drive in a non-gas permeable freezer ziploc. You can also tap the drive down on it's side to loosen a stuck head. But either can lose more data so only try if you can't recover w/ software recovery or can't afford the biohazard suit guys. There's a company that scans your drive remotely through the internet and lists the contents of your drive and then you select files by name to recover and you pay by the MB for only the files that you recover.

ipwizard · #17 06/06/2007, 10:33 PM

We use Ontrack www.ontrack.com exclusively at work. We probably use them 2-5 times a year and have always had good luck with them. They are expensive but if your data is worth the $$$$ then its a good deal. The only time they could not get data back was a head crash witch scratched the the platter so bad it couldn't be read even in a clean room.

They can try the recovery remotely, or you can send it to them for recovery where they can actually disassemble the HDD to read the info off the platters in the case of a mechanical failure (that did physically damage the platter(s))

This is why all my important personal data is in a hardware RAID either a mirror, or Raid5 config.

good luck, be ready add to your credit card balance!

corivus · #18 06/06/2007, 10:52 PM

after reading some things on geek squad I'd say go to data doctors, they aren't owned by a retail company out to get you to buy more stuff. And I've used the tap on the side method but this was on hd's we usually wiped 30 times a week. Personally I always keep backups of everything, its much easier to get a cheap 40 gig hd and put it in a external case then it is to loose that data, especially if you know how to compress your files