Dead Hard Drive (Motor)

[filterxg]

GF's Hard Drive bricked last week...and of course her ph'd dissertation is on there. She does have an earlier draft, but has lost about 3 months worth of work.

Anyway anyway does anybody have any experience with one of these hard drive recovery firms? Seems like the cheap ones are in the $200-$300 range for a single laptop drive, which would be what I'd be most interested in (I played the cocky bf perfectly).

 

[MadAmos]

I used dave mason a couple years ago and was happy with the outcome, but if it is a failed motor I think it is actually going to be more like 700-1000+ the teaser rates are for drives that do not have a hard parts failure but give him call and see what he says.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: filterxg
GF's Hard Drive bricked last week...and of course her ph'd dissertation is on there. She does have an earlier draft, but has lost about 3 months worth of work.

Anyway anyway does anybody have any experience with one of these hard drive recovery firms? Seems like the cheap ones are in the $200-$300 range for a single laptop drive, which would be what I'd be most interested in (I played the cocky bf perfectly).

Bear in mind with these data recovery firms you're likely to get what you pay for. You're asking for someone to take apart your currently screwed drive and reseat the platters in a new drive casing (which may require a clean room to do safely), it's not something that's going to come cheap if you want it done right.

 

[0roo0roo]

yea low prices=recovery using software. basically they run spinrite or whatever on it and charge ya
hardware failure ..well costs balloon from there and takes expertise+$$$


makes stuff like apples time machine look like a bargain.
ah well, learn..the expensive way.

 

[Billb2]

tried the "freezer trick"?

 

[filterxg]

Hadn't heard of the freezer trick until now....a little worried that it will do more harm than good, but I'm tempted.

 

[Blain]

1. Freezer trick (sealed in anti-static bag, in freezer for a few hours)
2. SpinRite 6.0

I had a WD drive that hard locked after a few minutes of running.
I did the freezer trick to give me enough time to burn data off the drive.
The drive never acted up after its trip to the freezer. I continued to use the drive until I installed it in a freebie box for someone.

 

[redbeard1]

If you want a real recovery shop, try this place. They have a clean room and are authorized to recover drives under warranty with prior approval from the system maker. We've sent about 10 drives to them and have recovered what we wanted each time. The costs ranged from 1200 to 2000, but the last time we talked to them they had lowered their pricing somewhat.

Drivesavers

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
yea low prices=recovery using software. basically they run spinrite or whatever on it and charge ya

Well, it's not likely to be SpinRite, which performs writes to the drive. Any data recovery place would make an image of a drive before attempting any writes to it.

 

[zixxer]

Originally posted by: Blain
1. Freezer trick (sealed in anti-static bag, in freezer for a few hours)
2. SpinRite 6.0

I had a WD drive that hard locked after a few minutes of running.
I did the freezer trick to give me enough time to burn data off the drive.
The drive never acted up after its trip to the freezer. I continued to use the drive until I installed it in a freebie box for someone.

I had a drive that would work until it warmed up. I used a trash can full of ice and quadruple insulated the frozen drive with anti-static bags and was able to get all of the data off.

 

[magreen]

Hey, you could do that with the whole case and OC the hell out of your cpu that way too.