dead raptor

[Sust]

After being teased for 2 weeks by recent intel X25-M deal, I was finally able to resist spending more money on stuff I didnt need. Then my main OS drive died yesterday with a horribly repetitive click after 4yrs of faithful service and it's been about a year since my last OS wipe/reinstall so I need the data accumulation in the My Documents folder.

Has anyone ever used a data recovery service? If so then any words of wisdom for what you know now that you wish you'd known then (other than doing data backup more often)?

I might suck at searching, but what I saw in this AT subforum didnt have recent threads that were relevant.

/le sigh

 

[dave_the_nerd]

My only experience has been giving bad news to people I know and asking what their experiences were after the fact.

ADR Data recovery has helped out a couple people. They're hideously expensive, but did the job.

 

[blastingcap]

That's awful timing; my condolences. I don't have any specific advice for data recovery, but if you re-setup your stuff, I would recommend a redundant setup. My own setup is powered by SSDs for OS/Steam folder, but all of my really important stuff is on my NAS4Free box with a lot of hard drive space. All I'm missing now is off-site data backup, and my needs are huge so I don't want to use a cloud backup provider like Crashplan or Backblaze... but if you have more modest needs, I hear good things about those services. Mozy and others too, but they are more expensive. Of course the cheapo way is to get two big external HDDs for backup: one on-site and one off-site, and do periodic backups.

 

[tweakboy]

I used to run data recovery service with my old man 10 years ago.

Is the hard drive making a clicking sound ? Does it show in the POST ?

If its tickin and its physically dead then its gonna cost you minimum 1500 dollars. Then it depends how much data they need to recover,, Im guessing 2 to 3k at the most. There are a lot of companies that do that now... bing it lol gl

 

[Sust]

Oy vey.

It clicks, but after rebooting computer, it doesnt show up in BIOS.
Ive had similar experiences with the infamous IBM deathstars so when I heard the click and saw nothing on post then I knew I was hosed.

Now ive really gotta think about how badly I need those documents...

On the bright side, it's still under warranty so can RMA afterwards...

Thanks for all of the replies. Id appreciate any other suggestions or experiences with data recovery?

 

[Sust]

Here's just one example of costs if anyone is curious.

Lookin like $650 for me...

God, I should have just bought the damn X25-M. I knew there was a reason why I kept on obsessing over the thread.

 

[rgallant]

just saying
-buy your new ssd -load windows get it up and running
-after try new cable on the old drive ,might be feasible to access as a data drive
-plan B , try it in a another system with a new cable
-then look at data recovery if you still need it.
-also post #6 here
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2280328