HD Recovery?

[cjm]

So my hard drive died and stopped working. And the computer place I brought it too could not do anything to get my photos back. Does anyone know of a place I can send my hard drive to have everything recovered?

[Todd Lambert]

Are you prepared to spend the money it will cost to get them recovered? How big is the drive?

Two that I know of:

http://www.dtidata.com/
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com

[cjm]

I think it was 250 Gigs but I lost stuff on the desktop. Kinda sucks but whatever.

[Todd Lambert]

Yeah, that does suck. You're looking at at least $400 and quite possibly more to recover the drive.

I hope you institute a back up regimen once you get your data back.

Good luck!

8-)

(btw, did they try and mount the drive either with a sata cable outside of the computer, or put the drive into an external enclosure? Hopefully the drive is not dead, just the computer.)

[cjm]

Thankfully it was only about 4 photo shoots and some edited photos previously backed up. So I might not even bother then.

Sad thing was I was going to buy a external HD but I couldn't find the price at the store so I put it off. Argh. But really what can you do when this sort of thing happens beside cry a bit, it happened, its done, whatever. Nothing I can really do.

[BeritOlam]

If you were a Canucks fan, you wouldn't have those problems! ;) ;)

Seriously, though....just so we're clear, is the drive *completely* dead, or can you just not get it to boot? Sometimes people have called on me to fix their 'dead' hard drive....when, in fact, it's simply some bad sectors AND/OR a messed up boot sector.

Whatever you do as far as recovery goes, it's going to be expensive for 250gig. Unless something has changed in data recovery technology in the last year that I don't know about, there's no way for them to recover *just* those 4 photo sets (while scrapping the rest). Data recovery doesn't work that simply, unfortunately! :( :(

[cjm]

Hahaha that's why I am in oilers gear ready to go. I live in Calgary now.

CanSucks suck. hahahaha

Yeah I will have to see what it really is. They just tried to load it a few times and gave up.

[BeritOlam]

Yeah I will have to see what it really is. They just tried to load it a few times and gave up.

Easiest way to 'test' the drive would be to find a buddy that has a desktop....and just plug it into his system as a slave drive. If you're 'lucky' (i.e. best case scenario), it'll register your drive and you'll be able to 'drag and drop' the files/photos you need onto your buddy's drive (and then presumably you'd burn them to a CD/DVD).

I've seen it work at least 4 or 5 times when my friends have called me with a drive that won't boot.

If the partition of the drive is hosed, then it might not read at all....in which case there's a program called SpinRite (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) than *might* be able to re-write the partition and save the existing data.

If something is physically wrong with the drive......get ready to sell some of those Oiler jerseys to pay for a recovery!! ;)

[cjm]

If something is physically wrong with the drive......get ready to sell some of those Oiler jerseys to pay for a recovery!! ;)No way jose! :p

But yeah I have a desktop computer. Maybe I should try that. Good idea.

[Jon Foster]

We use OnTrack for the data recovery we can't do in-house. The price will vary depending on how much work has to be done. In most cases 100% of the data can be recovered. A price of $400.00 will generally get you a good estimate (it takes a lot of work and time to see if data can be recovered). The high side for recovery would be around $2,500.00. All recovered data is returned to you on a new external hard drive.

This is why it is so critical to have a good backup routine in place.

Edit: If the drive isn't physically dead, just the partition or boot partition is smoked, you don't really have any trouble. Is this a PC? The quick easy fix is to boot the computer from a Ubuntu Live Demo CD. Then just copy all the data to a external drive, CD's, DVD's, memory sticks or another hard drive. After that reload the system... The suggestion to slave your drive onto another PC is a good one except for the danger to the PC you are slaving it to. If your trouble is due to a virus that could be the end of your buddies system too. Using Linux is a better option (either on your system or another one) because Linux won't be effected by virus attacks. And, you can clean virus trouble from your files with Linux.

Jon.

[BeritOlam]

Edit: If the drive isn't physically dead, just the partition or boot partition is smoked, you don't really have any trouble. Is this a PC? The quick easy fix is to boot the computer from a Ubuntu Live Demo CD. Then just copy all the data to a external drive, CD's, DVD's, memory sticks or another hard drive. After that reload the system... The suggestion to slave your drive onto another PC is a good one except for the danger to the PC you are slaving it to. If your trouble is due to a virus that could be the end of your buddies system too. Using Linux is a better option (either on your system or another one) because Linux won't be effected by virus attacks. And, you can clean virus trouble from your files with Linux.


Jon,

Are you sure Ubuntu can read/access a *smoked* NTFS partition? I've used Ubuntu do something with a hosed MBR (master boot record), but I was not aware there was something that could also recover a botched master partition.

This certainly the 'safer' way, CJM, to go.....if you are worried that your problem could be virus related. From the way you describe it, it doesn't have the 'sound' of a classic virus/spyware problem....but I could always be wrong.

~Matt

[Jon Foster]

I use the Ubuntu Live Demo CD's all the time. Once in a while they won't work but I keep extra CD's in my truck, my coat pocket, my work bag and several at the office because they are so handy and quick to use. They will also get you online with the native drivers (wired or wireless). I also keep extra utilities for Windoze and Linux in my Gmail accounts to make downloading regularly used apps quick and easy.

On the occasions that they won't get the data I will use a Ultimate Boot CD. They work ok too but you need a valid Windoze license (which shouldn't be a problem) and they use several gigs of space on your computer to make. Basically you create the CD build on your PC then burn a working CD from it. They have lots of good utilities on them but they are extremely slow to boot. Once they are running they are a bit slow too but still workable. Most of the time you can get online with the CD as well but it's usually a bit flaky so you need to work fast.

As I mentioned before, we use Ontrack software to trouble shoot dead drives before sending them out to Ontrack for the physical restorations. The software works ok but it also needs to be run on a Windoze based system. That system is basically devoted to data recovery because you never know if it will get hit with a virus from a customers drive being slaved to it. So, again, be careful when you plug a "damaged" drive into another machine.

On a side note, I made a bunch of Ubuntu 9.10 CD's yesterday so I can start using them instead of my 9.04 CD's. But I've already had some trouble with the Network Manager in 9.10 so I wouldn't suggest carrying one of them as your goto fix all backup CD just yet. I'm really bummed about it too.

Jon.