Hard Drive Crash

[chappy1]

Hey everyone - I need some help. My hard drive has crashed and I've got just about my entire portfolio on it. I only have about 15% of it backed up on DVDs. Can anyone reccomend a data recovery company? I've looked at a couple, but the ones I found charge a couple grand and some want money up front just to look at my drive (no guarantee that they can even do anything with it). Any suggestions....PLEASE!

[OiPaz]

I'm afraid you shall be prepared to spend a lot of money: recovering a HD is a really expensive operation! :-/

[tommykjensen]

Thats really unfortunate.

For this type of work Idon't think it is wise to go for the cheapest company, they might end up destroying everything instead.

I think these are the experts to goto: http://www.ibas.com/

I am not 100% sure but I think they only charge if they can rescue data.


And welcome to POTN.

[tiziano]

Are you sure that it is the hard drive that is phisically broken, or is just your operating system that has crashed? In it's the latter, data can be recovered easily.

[chappy1]

I'm pretty sure it's physical. It's making a "ka-chink, ka-chink, ka-chink" kind of sound. I know enough not to keep running it becuase that can cause further damage.

btw - tommy, thanks for the lead. I'll post again with what I find.

[Pekka]

If the data is valuable, then do not try anything yourself. Just take the drive off and let a pro take a look at it.

Maybe you could try asking your insurance company if this is covered by your insurance?

[FlyingPete]

I'm pretty sure it's physical. It's making a "ka-chink, ka-chink, ka-chink" kind of sound. I know enough not to keep running it becuase that can cause further damage.

btw - tommy, thanks for the lead. I'll post again with what I find.

What model of drive is it? I know of several that have this issue that data is probably still recoverable by a professional with the right hardware (not software!), as it most likely related to the drive motor/bearings or the head movements. The IBM Deskstar 75GXP was the worst (aka DeathStar), in the case of failures with those, data could usually be recoved by a professional.

[Crypto]

What kind of problems are you having with the HDD? Can you boot in safe mode? I would replace it with a new one and use the old in a USB external case to try an access the files. Have you tried the freezer trick? Where you put it in a freezer for a few hours then try it. I've heard it works for some.

[FlyingPete]

What kind of problems are you having with the HDD? Can you boot in safe mode? I would replace it with a new one and use the old in a USB external case to try an access the files. Have you tried the freezer trick? Where you put it in a freezer for a few hours then try it. I've heard it works for some.

Freezer trick often works with 75GXP.

[tommykjensen]

Have you tried the freezer trick? Where you put it in a freezer for a few hours then try it. I've heard it works for some.

You have heard?? What kind of suggestion is that? You wan't him to risk loosing everything?

chappy1 You didn't mention if the lost photos are customer photos or private photos.

I personally would NOT try a freezer trick. I would start out by contacting IBAS for example and get their free advice before doing anything.

[Crypto]

You have heard?? What kind of suggestion is that? You wan't him to risk loosing everything?

chappy1 You didn't mention if the lost photos are customer photos or private photos.

I personally would NOT try a freezer trick. I would start out by contacting IBAS for example and get their free advice before doing anything.

it's just that, a suggestion. Unfortunately, There are no guarantees with any of these ideas.

[Anteros]

The freezer trick does indeed work sometimes. Take your hard drive out of your computer. Make sure it is at room temperature then put it in a freezer bag. Squeeze all of the air out of the bag to avoid condensation build up and then put it in the freezer for a few hours. The reason why this works sometimes is because it cools down the hard drive platter making it contract. This will in turn reduce read errors.

If there is any condensation on the drive (there shouldn't be if all the air was removed from the bag), do not plug it back in.

This trick is actually used as a last resort by the hardware support guys at the company I work for.

[Big_B]

If my data was important to me, I'd pay a professional to try and recover it. Thanks for the link tommy, I'll save that for the future (hopefully won't need it though :))

[tommykjensen]

I have not needed their services but I just remembered it because they actually have a local office in the same building where I work.

This says it all:
This trick is actually used as a last resort by the hardware support guys at the company I work for.

I would NOT do that unless I had the backups and just wanted to try and save the time it takes to restore from the backups. With no backup and valuable data -> off to the proffesionals and get at least an analysis report to see if the data is worth the cost of recovery.

[FlyingPete]

I guess at the end of the day, this is a reminder to all to do their backups!

Unfortunately for chappy1, the horse has already bolted :(

I am running my backup now...

[joe_elway]

My recommendations to anyone who asks about preventative measures:

1) 2 matching SATA hard drives and SATA Raid 1 apadter. Configure the 2 dirves to use RAID 1 (mirroring). If one drive fails, the other has an identical replica.

2) Backups. You cannot beat backups. If you lose data for s/w reasons on a RAID mirror then both copies are gone. DVD/RW is an economic option but if you are dealing with a lot of data and don't want to handle multiple disks then external disk or tape are other options. You can "build" an external disk cheaper than buying one. Just get a tray/cradle kit and an ordinary IDE drive. That's all a pre-built one is. If you are using an external disk then learn to use Windows Backup to automate your backups at night.

If you are lucky enough to be storing photos on a Windows 2003 Server machine then enable volume shadow copies on the partition with the data. That's a software backup that you can schedule to take snap shots of your data.

[chappy1]

Hey everyone! Thanks for the suggestions so far. A couple quick comments:

The photos are mostly personal (thank God I'm not in danger of losing anyone else's stuff), the non-personal are pictures for other family members.
I've heard of the freezer trick too, but I've also heard that it is just a myth. Either way, I'm not going to turn my drive on again for fear of causing further damage. I'm letting the pros handle it.
I posted my situation on some other forums, and I got multiple reccomendations to send my drive to www.gillware.com (http://www.gillware.com). They are a lot more affordable than the places I previously found, and they only charge if they recover the data I want. I'll be sure to post again with the results.
And a gentle reminder - BACK UP YOUR STUFF OFTEN!! Don't get caught up in this like me.
Have a good day everyone, and I hope to share some good news soon.

[Anteros]

That's probably the best bet. I should have mentioned with my previous post that if you don't feel comfortable doing it, do not do it. The freezer method is a last resort. If you can take it to professionals, do so. If professional recovery is too expensive AND you have no other recourse, then giving it a shot won't hurt.

Anyway, good luck getting your data back. I know what it's like. My laptop hard drive died while I was on vacation last summer and since I was using it as a drop point for vacation pictures, I lost all of the pictures from the previous week.

[jukas]

If you are using an external disk then learn to use Windows Backup to automate your backups at night.


I never had much luck with the Windows backup utility. I had configured it to do what I believe was a nightly incremental backup, instead it just stared blankly at me and did nothing.

Is there a trick that I need to do to get the MS Software to comply, like threatening it with a penguin?

[rklepper]

it's just that, a suggestion. Unfortunately, There are no guarantees with any of these ideas.

Actually there is always a way to get the data back off. The college where I teach has a computer forensics program and the instructor can get the information off of a dive in any condition, even if it has been shredded.

[Blue Deuce]

The college where I teach has a computer forensics program.

No kidding. Computer forensics. Learn something new everyday.


BTW Chappy, good luck. Its an alwful feeling.:cry:

[Jaymz]

I have used GetDataBack in the past when one of my HD's crashed, it worked extremely well. Atleast for nothing more than a future reference. http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

[Citizensmith]

M$ have recently released a fairly nice little backup tool called SyncToy. It is actually better than the name makes it sound. You can set up a number of paired folders and have it routinely synchronise them in one way or another.

I'm using it to pull the three folders that really matter to me on the 2nd drive in my computer to an external USB drive. That and DVD backup of all new stuff for that month and I feel reasonably safe.

[FlyingPete]

M$ have recently released a fairly nice little backup tool called SyncToy. It is actually better than the name makes it sound. You can set up a number of paired folders and have it routinely synchronise them in one way or another.

I'm using it to pull the three folders that really matter to me on the 2nd drive in my computer to an external USB drive. That and DVD backup of all new stuff for that month and I feel reasonably safe.

Some of the guys I work with here use that, and like it. Testing it out is on my 'ToDo' list, but for now I am using Robocopy, which works well, as it has a file based sync funvtion, easy to find on the web and free, happy to provide the script (very simple) to anyone who wants to have a play...

[joe_elway]

I never had much luck with the Windows backup utility. I had configured it to do what I believe was a nightly incremental backup, instead it just stared blankly at me and did nothing.

Is there a trick that I need to do to get the MS Software to comply, like threatening it with a penguin?

An incremental backup will only backup anyfiles that have changed since the last full or incremental backup.

So... if you only do incrementals and your machine fails... you will have to recover from every single backup you have ever taken.

There are 3 strategies you can take with a backup system (I'm excluding the newer and omre exotic options you see in enterprise solutions).

1) Do a normal or full backup every time. Always takes a long time but you only need to do one restoration.

2) Do a normal/full once a week and an incremental every other night (or a similar schedule based on a month). This educes the time taken for the more regular backups. To recover, you must restore the last full backup and then every incremental since then.

3) Do a normal/full backup once a week and a differential every other night. The differential backs up everything since the last full backup. This means that to recover, you restore the last full backup and the last differential backup. This balances time/amount to backup and time/amount to restore.

Windows backup is basic but it does work. If it doesn't do the trick for you then there are a plethora of other solutions but they will all use the concept of full, incremental and differential. Some offer a "synthetic full" method which is a cross between full and incremental that is normally done to a hard disk storage system.

WIth backups you must test to ensure your strategy is working.

[Crypto]

Just to share my back-up process:
I have three additional drives connected to my main computer. One internal and two external (usb).
-The secondary internal is a shared resource drive for my network. Contains all my pictures and files (excluding personal files). I usually copy my pictures from this drive over to the PC or laptop to postprocess them, leaving my originals alone on a seperate drive.
-One external (shared) is used for a temp back-up. I use this drive to transfer all my pictures. I never download pictures to my pc, in fact, I never keep any valuable files on any of my computers. Any of my four PC's can crash today (I hope they don't) and I lose nothing. This makes it so nice when you get a virus or have other problems. All you have to do is reinstall the operating system and it's like a new PC (excluding hardware issues). Granted, you do have to reinstall drivers and applications. But totally worth it, IMO. I've had to do this few times.
-The second external (shared) is used as my back-up. This contains all my files including encrypted personal files. ENCRYPT your personal files incase you ever have to send your HDD somewhere for repair. I learned this the hard way! PGP 8 is a free program that offers great encryption algorithms.
Now, once a month (sooner if I take a lot of pics), I drag all my new files and pictures from my temp back-up drive to my Internal share drive and my back-up drive. This actually gives me two copies of my files (until I burn to DVD), none of which reside on any PC/HDD with an operating system.
Once every month or two (having two copies on other drives, buys you some time, IMO), I burn all my files to DVD from my external back-up drive. I use DVD-RW's (I know this is contraversial, but its my preference given the frequency I re-burn) and reburn all my files. I usually have to re-burn 6 DVD's.
-What's this give me..A copy of my files on two seperate drives and on DVDs.
The couple autobackup programs I have tried generated proprietary files on my back-up drives which required their sofware to open them. I hated this. I don't want to have to have a certain program on my PC just to open my files. I'm sure there is software that will back up an exact copy without proprietary files, but I would rather do this manual process. It's really just a simple drag and drop process to back up your files and so far, I've been fortunate to lose nothing in a catastrophic failure.

[chappy1]

Hi everybody! I just wanted to let you all know that I'm much better off now. Gillware was able to get just about everything back for me. There are a couple scattered files/pictures lost, but I was told that is normal (getting back 100% is pretty rare). I got back about 95% of everything.
It turned out that the heads on the drive were shot. I could explain a little more what that means, but I don't really remember enough of what they said.
Thanks again for the suggestions, and please learn from my mistake everyone! While these guys were really nice and helpful (and a lot less expensive than others), you still don't want to have to deal with the stress of it all.
So I went out and bought a new hard drive and will be backing everything up on DVD from now on. (Merry early Chistmas to me).
Take Care everyone.

[R Hardman]

Could you post the amount you paid to recover? Do they charge by the GB? It would serve as a cost comparrison to buying X-amount of CD's to DVDs in backing up images as a preventive measure.

[tommykjensen]

Good to hear You got almost everything back.

[EoSD30fReAk]

i'm glad everything worked out for you chappy ;)

[Citizensmith]

Could you post the amount you paid to recover? Do they charge by the GB? It would serve as a cost comparrison to buying X-amount of CD's to DVDs in backing up images as a preventive measure.

Absolutely, I'd be interested to know how much it set you back too.

And please go by yourself a UPS (about $40 worth for a 3 minute supply is all you need) and an external USB/Firewire Harddrive.

Its much easier to back up to another hard drive, you can even automate it. It sure beats backing up to DVD for ease and that means you will do it more.

And, thanks for sharing the problems with us. Its a good reminder as you said. I was a bit behind on my DVD back ups, and my script for hard drive backups wasn't working and I hadn't fixed it. Now I'm all back in order again.

[tommykjensen]

I store my photos on my main photo editing pc.

I backup to this box: http://www.stardom.com.tw/SR3000.htm with 2x 300GB

I also backup that box to a maxtor one touch II.

And from time to time I also backup to DVD.

[chappy1]

They charged $379 for recovery. No money down, nothing up front. You only pay if they recover the data you are looking for. If your hard drive is really messed up and needs clean room work, then it is up to an additional $300 (for parts and time); and again you don't pay anything if they don't get the data you want back. The only other charge was for the DVDs they burned the recovered data onto (those cost a few buck apiece).
Becuase my drive did have physical problems, it needed the clean room, so my cost came out around $700. But other places wanted $1500-2500 with $250 non-refundable up front just to look at it.

[R Hardman]

Thanks for the info. Even at that price you can recover the money by selling a few prints that were recoverd at your local art gallery or shows.

[FlyingPete]

They charged $379 for recovery. No money down, nothing up front. You only pay if they recover the data you are looking for. If your hard drive is really messed up and needs clean room work, then it is up to an additional $300 (for parts and time); and again you don't pay anything if they don't get the data you want back. The only other charge was for the DVDs they burned the recovered data onto (those cost a few buck apiece).
Becuase my drive did have physical problems, it needed the clean room, so my cost came out around $700. But other places wanted $1500-2500 with $250 non-refundable up front just to look at it.


All given, I think in the long term it will be worth it, you will always be kicking yourself in the future ig you didn't do it, not much money really in the big picture.

[HJMinard]

And please go by yourself a UPS (about $40 worth for a 3 minute supply is all you need) and an external USB/Firewire Harddrive.

Its much easier to back up to another hard drive, you can even automate it. It sure beats backing up to DVD for ease and that means you will do it more.

Another thing to keep in mind is fire and theft proofing your backup system. I have a backup external hard drive (as well as RAID 1), but I still make DVD backups that I take offsite (bring to work) just in case of the (hopefully) slim chance of a house fire or break-in/theft. I've thought about taking the external offsite (or getting a second one and rotating them), but that seems like just as much hassle as burning a few DVD's.

[rklepper]

If there is material on your computer that you would really miss you should at least have a RAID 5 configuration. I have one and had a drive go bad. Popped out the bad drive, popped in the new one, and the RAID rebuild all the data on the new drive. Lost nothing except for 2 minutes to do the swap.

[Citizensmith]

Another thing to keep in mind is fire and theft proofing your backup system. I have a backup external hard drive (as well as RAID 1), but I still make DVD backups that I take offsite (bring to work) just in case of the (hopefully) slim chance of a house fire or break-in/theft. I've thought about taking the external offsite (or getting a second one and rotating them), but that seems like just as much hassle as burning a few DVD's.

That is also a really good point and something personally I'm probably lacking on. I keep my backup DVDs a long way from the computer and just in a black CD wallet. It is exceedingly unlikely they would ever get stolen, but a fire safe or off site storage would probably be a good idea. Not sure how hot it gets inside a fire safe? Wonder if DVDs would survive?