Community Newsletter: Q&A: A Question About Hard Drive Recovery Services
A Question About Hard Drive Recovery Services
by sample3 - 8/15/07 9:22 AMI work as a network admin for a local school district here in Colorado and on the side I run my own computer repair business. Lately I've had several people approach me (both customers and fellow admins) about hard drive data recovery. I have never had to send out a hard drive to recover data (I've always been able to do that in house with Trinity Rescue Kit and/or a hard drive to USB adapter) and I was wondering if anybody had any personal recommendations for companies that do data recovery for dead hard drives suffering from mechanical failures.
Thanks!
Spinrite 6 is tops
by skycatcher - 8/17/07 6:53 PM In reply to: A Question About Hard Drive Recovery Services by sample3As long as you can actually get at the drive - and by that I mean, either get the BIOS to recognise it as a slave drive or by fitting it into a USB caddy (set to Cable Select), it's not too bad. There are DOS drivers available for getting at USB HDDs via a DOS boot.
I have recovered ton's of stuff with Spinrite 6 - http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm - this has got to be the top tool for the job. There are also loads of excellent Free stuff on the site as well. If you haven't purchased Spinrite before, it will cost you $89 (US) or $69 for an upgrade from a previous version. You can also download the manuals free, in .pdf format.
Personally, I always try to boot from a Win98se floppy disk and use Spinrite on a second Floppy disk (yes it's that small - pure machine code). Sometimes, if the HDD's Smartdrive tells the program that the HDD is on it's way out, it does not recommend a Number 5 recovery but, if you don't get this warning, use number five (run it overnight - it takes a while). You can also bring old HDDs back to life with this program and use it for 'preventive maintenance'. Don't worry about booting from Win98se boot disks, Spinrite will still work with NTFS from a DOS boot. It does a kind of non-destructive formatting.
If the actual circuit has blown, the only chance you've got here is to get an identical HDD, open both HDDs and put the platters from the wreaked drive into the working one. I have heard people say that it sometimes needs the heads aligning but I have Never found this problem. HDDs are made to a fairly accurate standard.
RE: Hard disk recovery
by martingreg3 - 8/18/07 2:19 AM In reply to: Spinrite 6 is tops by skycatcherI shall put Spinrite on my purchasing list. It sounds excellent. I still think changing the platters is a bit iffy, the track widths are very fine.
martingreg3@aol.com
Duff drive recovery
by martingreg3 - 8/18/07 1:51 AM In reply to: A Question About Hard Drive Recovery Services by sample3I am afraid that disks with mechanical failures are virtually unrecoverable. If the media has failed then you are going to damege your heads when the drive is spun up. If the spindle bearings have gone then the media and heads are going to be damaged. If you are fortunate enough to get to the drive before this happens, it is theoretically posible to fit the platters on a new shell, but as the alignment is critical I do not think it is practical.
If you have critical dta use a Mirror drive or 3 or 5 or more RAID system.
Thuis is the best advice I can give, if any body can do better please let me know.
martingreg3@aol.com
Data Recovery for mechanical problem
by brf50b - 8/19/07 9:07 AM In reply to: A Question About Hard Drive Recovery Services by sample3A friend sent her hard disk to Sales@ReStoringData.ca (at least this is the contact email address). Hard disk had a head issue and could not be read or recognized. Full data was recovered and burned to DVDs at a cost of $485 CDN.
RE: Data Recovery for mechanical problem
by sample3 - 8/19/07 9:14 AM In reply to: Data Recovery for mechanical problem by brf50bMay I ask how long the turnaround time was?
Drive Savers
by TheBigWhiteWolf - 8/21/07 2:47 PM In reply to: A Question About Hard Drive Recovery Services by sample3We've used DriveSavers a couple of times, since the university I work for has an affiliation with them. We have had success a few times with getting data recovered. They will either put the data on a new HDD and/or burn it to CD/DVD. Turnaround time has usually been 2-3 weeks.
Then again, I have sent a drive or two to other locations, and I've been told that if there's a head crash, the data has basically returned to dust.
Plug the hard drive in and listen. If it sounds normal, it probably is normal. Try switching around the jumpers if possible. (You can put jumpers on laptop HDDs as well!)
Keep in mind that data recovery is usually EXPENSIVE, but sometimes, it's worth it. It's an expensive reminder to "BACK IT UP! TWICE!"
ESS Data Recovery
by usernamekevin - 9/23/07 5:10 PM In reply to: Drive Savers by TheBigWhiteWolfThe company I work for has had success with ESS Data Recovery. One of our sales guys needed his .pst file (Outlook) from the laptop he dropped and they recovered the entire drive for around $950. The whole process took about 4 days.
I'd use them again if the situation came up.
Before sending your hard drive to a data recovery company
by Data Recovery Guru - 2/15/09 12:36 PM In reply to: A Question About Hard Drive Recovery Services by sample3You people should really do your research, these posts about ESS data recovery or drive savers or any other companies. All of these companies have a reputation in the data recovery industry, and you should really do your research by reading past customer's reviews on their data recovery experiences. There is a website that does this called www. datarecoverycomparison.com and it is a free review site that allows you to see the data recovery company's reputation from their past consumers. Also it is independently run and apparently the web designer does independent investigations on different data recovery companies once they gain enough bad customer reviews. I would suggest using this site as it helped me choose the right data recovery company to recover my data.
datarecoverycomparison.com
by systemstec - 2/23/09 3:33 PM In reply to: Before sending your hard drive to a data recovery company by Data Recovery GuruMake sure that you check this site our thoroughly before you believe a word that is said about any of the companies listed there. It appears that it is owned by a data recovery company that is just engaging in liable and defamatory statements so that honest hard working data recovery companies look bad. If you look at this website you will notice that there is no real way to contact them if your company has been wrongly bashed by one of their so called reviewers. The site is a total scam and has been created for the soul purpose of bashing other data recovery companies. Like everything on the internet doesn’t believe everything you read.
If you really want to know if a company is capable and legitimate ask some questions about your data recovery situation. If they know what they are doing they will be able to give you information about what is wrong with you drive, how much it will cost to recover the data, and how long it will take to get your data back to you.
Data Recovery Comparison
by Data Recovery Guru - 2/24/09 5:29 PM In reply to: datarecoverycomparison.com by systemstecObviously you have not checked the website at all, the reviews that are on datarecoverycomparison.com are geniune reviews from customers, and the admins on the website actually screen reviews from past data. Also they are posting their own investigation on a company that got many complaints within the next day, you must obviously work for one of the companies that has bad reviews as your claims are both false and ignorant. Regardless, I would still recommend this site if you are thinking about going with any company whatsoever, as you can read what other data recovery consumers have to say about their experience with these data recovery companies. Also if you notice they are not recommending any companies, so how can they possibly be a data recovery company that is engaging in liable and defamatory statements? Systemstec you are a biased ignorant poster, please feel free to leave these forums and retract your prior statement.
One more thing
by Data Recovery Guru - 2/24/09 5:38 PM In reply to: datarecoverycomparison.com by systemstecObviously systemstec is rather illiterate too, as every review that is written on that website has a report abuse button, that allows you to explain why you believe the post was abuse, along with a CONTACT US button at the top of the page, so obviously your statements are false and possibly fraudulent.
Re: A Question About Hard Drive Recovery Services
by HDRecovery - 3/31/09 1:21 PM In reply to: A Question About Hard Drive Recovery Services by sample3We are a IT Consulting firm and we use Data Analyzers http://www.datanalyzers.com for our recovery needs. They have a pretty good partner program and the prices for the recovery are decent.
hard drive recovery
by davisonwarr - 11/19/09 1:32 AM In reply to: A Question About Hard Drive Recovery Services by sample3I am a programmer and due to power fluctuations , my hard disk gone crashed. A great tension for me since all the files became inaccessible. I didn't know much about data recovery software so googled and found so many names . I found the Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software in the top and tried it. I think u should also search for this type of online support.
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