laptop hdd data recovery - recommendations?
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after a few crunching noises from my otherwise very reliable laptop, my hdd promptly died on tuesday (while i was attempting to GHOST it, i might add!). anyway, i've - needless to say - lost a considerable amount of data, and was wondering if anyone can recommend a good - affordable - data recovery company in Brisbane, Australia. The quotes i've been getting so far range from 1,000 to 3,000 AU$ to _try_ to recover the data. Mostly they are performance based, so its about $100 initially, and the rest if they get the job done. any recommendations appreciated.
nicko
since i haven't had a look at it, i can't say for sure, but i'm assuming it's a bad actuator motor on the arm thing...sometimes if you are willing to take the risk and the problem is that the arm is sticking in the "holder" thing, you can tap it with a screwdriver once you open up the drive...but if it's a head crash you are talking about, then chances are you are out of luck and have to have the pro's do their electron-microscope style scan while you scramble to find the money to pay for it.... Roswell
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CA -
after a few crunching noises from my otherwise very reliable laptop, my hdd promptly died on tuesday (while i was attempting to GHOST it, i might add!). anyway, i've - needless to say - lost a considerable amount of data, and was wondering if anyone can recommend a good - affordable - data recovery company in Brisbane, Australia. The quotes i've been getting so far range from 1,000 to 3,000 AU$ to _try_ to recover the data. Mostly they are performance based, so its about $100 initially, and the rest if they get the job done. any recommendations appreciated.
nicko
Sorry, no, but for future reference, I have one of those tiny external USB hard drives, I plug it into the PC or notebook and with the push of a button, all my most vital files are backed up. Which means I'm safe from HDD crashes, fires, thieves, you name it. That HDD is always where I am.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog
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since i haven't had a look at it, i can't say for sure, but i'm assuming it's a bad actuator motor on the arm thing...sometimes if you are willing to take the risk and the problem is that the arm is sticking in the "holder" thing, you can tap it with a screwdriver once you open up the drive...but if it's a head crash you are talking about, then chances are you are out of luck and have to have the pro's do their electron-microscope style scan while you scramble to find the money to pay for it.... Roswell
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CARoswellNX wrote:
since i haven't had a look at it, i can't say for sure, but i'm assuming it's a bad actuator motor on the arm thing
just heard back from one mob - apparently its a fried controller circuit...whatever that means. data is recoverable - which is a relief.
RoswellNX wrote:
while you scramble to find the money to pay for it....
that about sums up my week.
nicko
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Sorry, no, but for future reference, I have one of those tiny external USB hard drives, I plug it into the PC or notebook and with the push of a button, all my most vital files are backed up. Which means I'm safe from HDD crashes, fires, thieves, you name it. That HDD is always where I am.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog
Christian Graus wrote:
I have one of those tiny external USB hard drives
yeah. lesson learnt the hard way on the importance of backups. i've just bought Norton Ghost 10 and an external 250GB USB hdd - i'm taking images daily now (from my new hdd of course) onto the ext. hdd - full backup cycle which should give me daily, weekly and monthly regression. And to think that i could have saved myself ~$1500 now by spending $250 about 6 months ago. :sigh:
nicko
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That sounds about right. "Affordable" and "Data Recovery" are mutually exclusive terms. Since there is usually a clean room involved along with some very specialized, and expensive, equipment. Plus the time it takes to maybe get the platters out of the drive without damaging them, if needed, ...
Dave Kreskowiak Microsoft MVP - Visual Basic
Dave Kreskowiak wrote:
"Affordable" and "Data Recovery" are mutually exclusive terms
the agreement i had to sign with the mob who are looking at it sets out their hourly rate at $393/hr. :omg: I guess that allows for the expensive equipment they need, and the continuity of work...but still, wow.
nicko
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RoswellNX wrote:
since i haven't had a look at it, i can't say for sure, but i'm assuming it's a bad actuator motor on the arm thing
just heard back from one mob - apparently its a fried controller circuit...whatever that means. data is recoverable - which is a relief.
RoswellNX wrote:
while you scramble to find the money to pay for it....
that about sums up my week.
nicko
nicko wrote:
apparently its a fried controller circuit...whatever that means
I was half-right then...i think he is talking about the circuit that controls the "arm" movements. It's a piece of orange plastic that acts as both a ribbon cable and a circuit board and has a little chip on one end and plugs into the "arm" on the other... here's one... http://www.pcdoctor-guide.com/wordpress/images/6 - open2.jpg Roswell
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CA -
Sorry, no, but for future reference, I have one of those tiny external USB hard drives, I plug it into the PC or notebook and with the push of a button, all my most vital files are backed up. Which means I'm safe from HDD crashes, fires, thieves, you name it. That HDD is always where I am.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog
I learnt that lesson a long time ago too (fortunately from the mistakes of others rather than my own!). My laptop runs an overnight backup to a DVD-RW (I rotate four of them, with one always off-side) and to an external USB drive. I also keep a spare 2.5" HDD enclosure handy in case we have to pull data off one of the laptop drives at short notice. I don't keep anything significant on either of my desktop systems so they aren't backed up automatically....the source code on both is a copy of that on the laptop and its backup disks.
Anna :rose: Currently working mostly on: Visual Lint :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "Be yourself - not what others think you should be" - Marcia Graesch "Anna's just a sexy-looking lesbian tart" - A friend, trying to wind me up. It didn't work.
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after a few crunching noises from my otherwise very reliable laptop, my hdd promptly died on tuesday (while i was attempting to GHOST it, i might add!). anyway, i've - needless to say - lost a considerable amount of data, and was wondering if anyone can recommend a good - affordable - data recovery company in Brisbane, Australia. The quotes i've been getting so far range from 1,000 to 3,000 AU$ to _try_ to recover the data. Mostly they are performance based, so its about $100 initially, and the rest if they get the job done. any recommendations appreciated.
nicko
if the data isn't worth several k you can try this, but be forwarned you'll significantly reduce the chance of a pro salvaging anything if it doesn't work. Buy an identical model harddrive, open it and your dead one, xfer platters to the new drive, immediately copy the data off. Pros will do this in a clenaroom environment, your house/office/etc has dust that will get into the guts of the drive and probably fubar it permanantly in short order.
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if the data isn't worth several k you can try this, but be forwarned you'll significantly reduce the chance of a pro salvaging anything if it doesn't work. Buy an identical model harddrive, open it and your dead one, xfer platters to the new drive, immediately copy the data off. Pros will do this in a clenaroom environment, your house/office/etc has dust that will get into the guts of the drive and probably fubar it permanantly in short order.
Thats not as bad an idea as some people may think. Back in college (a fair few years ago) we took the casing of a drive to see how sensitive it was (after being told all the bull about a grain of dust screwing the whole drive etc). In reality its almost impossible to cause a head crash by pulling the power (the arm swings back to park so fast) and we had to physically gouge one of the platters before it failed to read/write (a few scratches didnt make to much difference). Jon
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Thats not as bad an idea as some people may think. Back in college (a fair few years ago) we took the casing of a drive to see how sensitive it was (after being told all the bull about a grain of dust screwing the whole drive etc). In reality its almost impossible to cause a head crash by pulling the power (the arm swings back to park so fast) and we had to physically gouge one of the platters before it failed to read/write (a few scratches didnt make to much difference). Jon
jonathan15 wrote:
Thats not as bad an idea as some people may think. Back in college (a fair few years ago) we took the casing of a drive to see how sensitive it was (after being told all the bull about a grain of dust screwing the whole drive etc). In reality its almost impossible to cause a head crash by pulling the power (the arm swings back to park so fast) and we had to physically gouge one of the platters before it failed to read/write (a few scratches didnt make to much difference).
You're right about it generally being safe, buf if you're in the small percent that aren't lucky you've basically lost any chance of being able to recover the data. You probaly will get away with it, but if your data's actually worth a kilobuck you should just bite the bullet and send it to a pro. The freezer trick to get data off a drive suffering clicks of death (differential shrinkage lifts the head enough it stops smacking off the platter) is another matter all together since the problem will return in short order once the drive thaws out even if you don't kill it via frost/condensation first.
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if the data isn't worth several k you can try this, but be forwarned you'll significantly reduce the chance of a pro salvaging anything if it doesn't work. Buy an identical model harddrive, open it and your dead one, xfer platters to the new drive, immediately copy the data off. Pros will do this in a clenaroom environment, your house/office/etc has dust that will get into the guts of the drive and probably fubar it permanantly in short order.
yeah, i actually had the same suggestion from a colleague. unfortunately the data is worth more than several k - in time it would take to replace, regenerate, etc. it seems that my only real option, given the above, is to fork out the exorbitant amount the pros are asking. i guess it could be worse - i could have lost the data with NO chance of recovery...
nicko
