Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Data recovery services

Anyone had to have a service recover data from a failed hard drive? My wife's has gone kaputnik, and it seems to be beyond my skills to recovery anything off of it. I'm curious how much money it costs to use one of these services and if someone has one they would recommend.

What have you tried so far? You can download a trial version of Data Rescue II that will tell you whether or not the paid version can recover files for you.

I've only ever dealt with Drive Savers, and you already know they're good, but pricy.

Diskwarrior. The thing is going clack clack clack, so I figure I'm completely out of luck.

I don't imagine you have another drive of the same make and size around? I have heard of people swapping the discs and getting the info.

Did you try Spinrite? I've done it on some downed Tivo drives and I was able to get it to the point that it was usable for another 6 months.

I had an external Mac HDD that failed recently. I used Spinrite to recover it to the point that I could get at least half of the data off before it tanked again.

You'll need a PC tower because it's a PC command line program that boots off a floppy. Or you could burn to a CD. It's worth a shot.

Caveat, it can take several days depending on what level of recovery you use. I've used the lowest level on the worst drives with some level of success.

Even as a converted Mac guy, I highly recommend this to anyone. In fact, Spinrite is probably the only reason I keep a spare PC tower around.

http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

Have not tried spinrite, although I've heard of it. I've used Data Rescue before, and that's worked ok. I just need to get her ~/Library folder; it would be nice to grab photos, too, but at least I have those elsewhere (otherwise I'd be freaking out a whole lot more.)

Does Spinrite work with disks that are making that clack clack clack noise? I couldn't even get the system to recongize there was a disk, although MacOS seems to have a higher bar for that than Linux, for example. I really only tried once, and the stuck it back in the freezer. I suspect I'll be trying a bunch of stuff tomorrow at work, with the available towers and time.

Gillware.com they are very good and fast. It's free for them to look at the drive and then they will call you with details of whats recoverable. The service for recovery is usually a flat fee of $397.00 (plus shipping and media to put data on)which is very good. If you use my affiliate code (9516 i think i will let you know when i get in the office) when filling out the form you will get free return shipping and up to 7 dvd's(thats what they put the data on unless you have other requests) for free. I'v used them probably 10-15 times over the last year since switching from the other company i dealt with and all have been good experinces.
Jake

I've had amazing results with Active Undelete in the past. I don't have their current product, but I was able to use their software to recover about 95% of what I wanted to from a disk drive with "platter splatter" (klack, klack, klack as you put it).

My wife freaked out when all of our pictures (we went fully digital in 2001) were on the drive and not backed up anywhere. I got all of the pictures back, and most of the other data on the computer.

I will say this, with Active Undelete at least, it tries over and over to get the data that in my case it took DAYS of it working before it had a record of what was on the failed drive and another day or so recovering the data. Well worth it though.

Now, after 2 failed hard drives in the past 6 years, I have a 320GB main drive and a 160GB backup drive and I do weekly full backups and nightly incremental backups (to get just the changed files). I also have things like our pictures on 2 sets of DVDs for each year. One stays at our house, and the other is at my parent's house 200 miles away. I've heard it said that in case of a disaster, like a house fire or something, the most wanted thing that is lost (assuming nobody was hurt) is memories and photos. I'm not planning for a doomsday, but I just don't want to ever deal with not having a set somewhere when it costs so little to make my own "off-site copy".

So if you haven't already, go buy a new hard drive (unless you have an extra laying around or already bought one), get the base computer up and going, run one of these tools, get your data back, and then get another drive and do backups to prevent this nightmare in the future. Drives are so inexpensive anymore that your time is worth more than the cost of a drive.

Good luck, and let us know which product you end up using and how it goes.

After that, another last ditch try , and this sounds awful,

Pull the drive out, put it in an air tight freezer bag and put it in the fridge. Get it cold without any condisation.

Slap that sucker back in and quickly get your data.

As these things fail, it is due heat and wear. Cooling them down helps contract some of those excessive tolerances and can buy you a few more minutes.

Then when replacing the disc, go ahead and spring the extra bucks for a RAID system, or a backup system that you will use regularly.

Yup, tried the freezer thing, no love. Gonna do it again today, this time with various recovery tools.

Sadly, a raid array won't fit in a Macbook.

But getting a backup system of some variety up and running is now a major priority.

Let us know if you find anything that works. I have a dead drive from a little while back that I haven't tossed yet, and would like to recover so pics from it (as well as my wife's most recent version of her resume). I tried the freezer, but it didn't help.

I think I'm going to try spinrite. It has a money back guarantee, so I think it's probably a safe bet.

I checked and my affiliate id is 9516. ***Disclaimer i do get a referal fee (small) from them. i only mention the affiliate code to get you free shipping and DVD's.

No luck with either Data Rescue II or Spinrite. I'm thinking this thing is well and truly hosed. Neither even saw the hardware, although the hardware was making plenty of noise.

Hmm, keep us posted. I have a drive in similar condition so I'm curious how you get it back.

By the way, Snakeyes, I'm not ignoring you, and I appreciate the pointers. However, I think that we're probably just going to give up; I'll have to double check with my wife, but...

I still have the drive from the one hard drive crash I've experienced. It's got a bunch of pictures and documents I'd like to get back.

Just for giggles, have you tried plugging it into a different controller?

I helped someone a bit ago with one he swore was dying as it was making noise. Well it turned out it was the controller was causing eratic behavior of the disc.

oh, it's been in 3 or 4 different controllers by now. Definitely the drive. I've been getting quotes on data recovery this morning. Gillware is the best so far, but there's a pretty significant premium for it being a Mac.