Members justinbass Posted January 30, 2009 Members Share Posted January 30, 2009 Off Topic. Has anyone here sent a hard drive out to a data recovery company? What company did you use? What did it cost? Were you happy with the results? I have a client with a clicking 500gig SATA hard drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members basshunter Posted January 30, 2009 Members Share Posted January 30, 2009 I had a HD crash on me, and my techie buddy was able to recover all the data and get it on the new HD in about 45 minutes. Cost me dinner and a few beers Oh, you probably wanted a helpful answer, didn't you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members misterhinkydink Posted January 30, 2009 Members Share Posted January 30, 2009 You can recover the data from your backup. :poke: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members t3ch Posted January 30, 2009 Members Share Posted January 30, 2009 Firstly, make sure the HD remains untouched and unplugged henceforth. The arm is just going to continue breaking and/or scratching the plates more. But I'm sure you know that I'll try to dig up who we use here. Depending who you use and how much data is needing to be recovered, it can range on average from $700-$1500. The good news though, is that they're almost always successful. It better be some damn important data. Sorry I don't have anything more helpful to say for now. You can recover the data from your backup. :poke: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zon5string Posted January 30, 2009 Members Share Posted January 30, 2009 SpinRite Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bluescout Posted January 31, 2009 Members Share Posted January 31, 2009 I have some pretty good tools but if I can't do it myself, the estimates I have gotten are around $1800. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members AluminumNeck Posted January 31, 2009 Members Share Posted January 31, 2009 Load a fresh copy of windows onto a new drive. See if the old drive is readable before wasting money on data recovery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members y-o-y Posted January 31, 2009 Members Share Posted January 31, 2009 I had a drive fail about three years ago. After attempting all the home remedies I could find on the interwebz, I finally took it to a place that specializes in data recovery. They quoted me $1200. I told them "no thanks" They called back 15 minutes later and said they'd do it for $400 if I paid cash. I accepted. They recovered every byte. Since the disks weren't damaged, just a mechanical failure, I think it was a pretty simple recovery for them. Now I have an extensive backup protocol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members John S. Shinal Posted January 31, 2009 Members Share Posted January 31, 2009 It's amazing the difference in 'vital data' and VITAL DATA when you get the actual quote for professional, top-grade data recovery. The guys I've used the most are Ontrack Data Recovery. http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/ If it's important accounting data, years of customer insurance data, medical or legal records, criminal case information , etc. then Ontrack are your folks. In the worst scenario they will disassemble the drive in a clean-room lab, mount the platters in a specialized device, spin them and read all the surviving data. Generally you want to specify to them specific partition/folder/files that you want instead of "recover everything". ( $ $ $ ). There is also the old "freezer" trick, which can allow a tech to recover a lot of data through several repetitions. (HD in the freezer for an hour, quickly mount it, power up and copycopycopycopy until it craps out, then repeat). A dodgy method, but can be surprisingly successful, seldom total recovery, though. I recommend Ontrack with NO reservations, they are expensive but worth it for VITAL data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dDigitalPimp Posted January 31, 2009 Members Share Posted January 31, 2009 i never had much luck sending out a bad HD for lost data. if you decide its not worth it there is one last thing you can try before you toss the drive in the garbage. put the drive in a static bag and throw it in the freezer for a few hours, sometimes the ball bearings heat up and expand causing the disks to not be able to spin. if this is the problem you can get the drive to spin up for an hour or so, long enough to copy the data (hopefully). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dDigitalPimp Posted January 31, 2009 Members Share Posted January 31, 2009 There is also the old "freezer" trick, which can allow a tech to recover a lot of data through several repetitions. (HD in the freezer for an hour, quickly mount it, power up and copycopycopycopy until it craps out, then repeat). A dodgy method, but can be surprisingly successful, seldom total recovery, though. you can tell i read every post in a thread before i hit reply Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members allan grossman Posted January 31, 2009 Members Share Posted January 31, 2009 Off Topic.Has anyone here sent a hard drive out to a data recovery company? What company did you use? What did it cost? Were you happy with the results? I have a client with a clicking 500gig SATA hard drive. I've used Ontrack several times. They're not cheap - I think the last data I had recovered ran about $1500 but that was four years ago or so. Anybody who doesn't have a clean room can't help you. The guys who say they'll recover your stuff for $300 will just run a software data recovery utility you could find on the web yourself for next to nothing. If Ontrack can't get it off the drive nobody can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jazz Ad Posted February 1, 2009 Members Share Posted February 1, 2009 My company called Ontrack a few years ago, back when we didn't have a national backup system.They sent a guy to pick up the drives out from the server. It looked a bit like a mine sweeping operation.They recovered the data and re-built the whole database structure within a couple days for out IT guys to re-install.I don't know how much was paid but it was counted in thousands. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richard22 Posted April 13, 2009 Members Share Posted April 13, 2009 I have sent my faulty hard drive to http://www.datanalyzers.com They did a good job and as I remember we paid something around $1000.00 for the recovery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mr.Mow Posted April 13, 2009 Members Share Posted April 13, 2009 I dunno who we used when our server raid system killed itself.. its cost about $3K, we got nothing back.. and we found our IT guys had never bothered to check if the backup tapes were working.. We lost 6 weeks of work.. cost us $250K in the end.. I'm sure there is a lesson in there.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wades_keys Posted April 13, 2009 Members Share Posted April 13, 2009 Off Topic.Has anyone here sent a hard drive out to a data recovery company? What company did you use? What did it cost? Were you happy with the results? I have a client with a clicking 500gig SATA hard drive. It's gonna cost you thousands of dollars to recover that data. And yeah, Ontrack are the kings: if the platters aren't shattered they can mount them on a jig in a clean room. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wades_keys Posted April 13, 2009 Members Share Posted April 13, 2009 IThere is also the old "freezer" trick, which can allow a tech to recover a lot of data through several repetitions. (HD in the freezer for an hour, quickly mount it, power up and copycopycopycopy until it craps out, then repeat). A dodgy method, but can be surprisingly successful, seldom total recovery, though. Yup, I've used the freezer trick myself. I've also used the "fonzi" trick of tapping on the top of the spindle to free the seized bearing. (kids don't try this at home...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zeromus-X Posted April 13, 2009 Members Share Posted April 13, 2009 Ontrack is definitely the way to go if it's critical. We've also dealt with Phoenix Technologies and they did fine. Before you send it out, when we do basic recovery at work, we use a program called ZAR. You'll need to install it to another drive (obviously), but it does a decent job at accessing the files even on a drive where the partition has been deleted and the drive has been reformatted (but not zeroed out). It's relatively cheap, too, and you can try it for free (but only recover three files). I believe the site is http://www.z-a-recovery.com -- we haven't found anything that works better, and we've been doing this a long time. If the drive is clicking, it probably won't have much luck, but it does monitor drive temperature and if it starts heating up (an indication that the platter isn't spinning properly, or that the head is physically resting on it and damaging it), it'll force stop the recovery or pause it to see if the drive cools. If it's not clicking constantly, it's worth a shot. Just be aware that each time you hear a "click" you're most likely removing more chance of any form of recovery. That click could be the head resetting itself, or it could be it touching the drive platter, which is going to cause damage not even Ontrack can fix. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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