Data Recovery from Hard drive

[hemi68charger]

Hey gang....
Was wondering if there are any standard questions to pose to a company specializing in data recovery.. The disk (SeaGate SATA 300) will probably have to be dissected into.....

Thanks..
Troy

[Charger74]

Hey gang....
Was wondering if there are any standard questions to pose to a company specializing in data recovery.. The disk (SeaGate SATA 300) will probably have to be dissected into.....

Thanks..
Troy

Not much really.  Just ask the basics, how much it will cost.  What is the procedure for retrieving the data.  What happens if they can't and how much will it cost.

Question, is the drive just dead???  What happened to it???

[hemi68charger]

Hey gang....
Was wondering if there are any standard questions to pose to a company specializing in data recovery.. The disk (SeaGate SATA 300) will probably have to be dissected into.....

Thanks..
Troy

Not much really.  Just ask the basics, how much it will cost.  What is the procedure for retrieving the data.  What happens if they can't and how much will it cost.

Question, is the drive just dead???  What happened to it???

This past Sat. I was messing around in the garage,  normal day with no storms...... The computer was on like usual. The HD was a new 3-month old SeaGate 300 SATA. I even have a USB connect to the power source.. Well, came into the house and the dang "Unbootable volume" error message was up. The machine just died......

[terrible one]

Hey gang....
Was wondering if there are any standard questions to pose to a company specializing in data recovery.. The disk (SeaGate SATA 300) will probably have to be dissected into.....

Thanks..
Troy

Not much really.  Just ask the basics, how much it will cost.  What is the procedure for retrieving the data.  What happens if they can't and how much will it cost.

Question, is the drive just dead???  What happened to it???

This past Sat. I was messing around in the garage,  normal day with no storms...... The computer was on like usual. The HD was a new 3-month old SeaGate 300 SATA. I even have a USB connect to the power source.. Well, came into the house and the dang "Unbootable volume" error message was up. The machine just died......

Do you have another drive you can make primary? Or better yet just someone else's computer? My first move would be to put your Seagate in someone else's computer as a secondary drive so that you can simply explore the files on it using the other computer and see what you can salvage. It may still be all there and the boot sector on the HDD is just corrupted. I'd try that before shelling out money.

[Charger74]

TO,

That was going to be my next suggestion.   You might even be able to take it to a shop if you can't find a friend and see if they can test it.  Trust me when I say if you go to a hard drive data recovery place, it's going to cost big time...

[dd44068]

the local staples by me charges 1500 but its gaurenteed to recover all data so if the info you have on it is that important then give them a try

[hemi68charger]

thanks guys....... I already tried the slave approach.... I needs a data recovery specialist.. I'm taking it for a free diagnostic.. It could range anywhere from $350 to $3000.............. They will tell me what the extreme is before servicce.................. I has all my family's pictures on it fro Julie's birth to all my mopar stuff with Iraq, Jacob and my wedding in between................... A lot of memories............ Yes, I now have a 500G backup external drive.........

[69_500]

Ouch. same thing happened to me a few months back. Which is why now I have 4 external hard drives. 1 250 gig, 1 500 gig, and 2 TB, and I also burn a DVD of every picture I take so that if one of the hard drives crashes i still have all the information on a DVD. Then I burn a second copy of the DVD, and store it at my dad's house. That way if a fire or tornado or something destroys this house, I can still get a copy of the pictures from my parents house. I know its definitely overkill, but memories aren't easily replaced.

[hemigeno]

Troy,

Sorry to hear that.  I had a hard drive crash back in April, and it's no fun.  There is a place about an hour from me that specializes in hard drive recoveries, where they crack the case open in a cleanroom environment and examine the platters separately.  Unfortunately, the heads on my hard drive reader were making contact with the platter, so it scratched up the surface so badly that nothing was recoverable at any price.  So, there is no place that can guarantee they'll always be able to get everything back from a drive failure.  Hopefully yours didn't do something like that.

Here's a link to the place I used, and if you do the "standard" service they do free estimates:

http://www.essdatarecovery.com

Plus, here's the terms from the quote they sent me for the "standard" service:

Standard Data Recovery Service:

The evaluation for Standard Service is free and will be performed on your hard drive within 48 hours of its arrival. The evaluation will provide you with the cause of your data loss, a not-to-exceed (NTE) price quote and the expected turnaround time. The cost of Standard Service for IDE and SATA drives is $995.00 or less per recovery. Pricing depends on several factors, such as the time required for the recovery, the cause of data loss, condition of the platters, the manufacturer of the hard drive and the file system. The turnaround time can range from 5-10 days from your approval of the evaluation. Standard Service features our "No Data/No Charge Policy," which means that if you do not receive your data, your only charge will be for the return shipping of your drive, subject to the terms and conditions found at the link below.

Good luck, Troy...

Geno

[Big Lebowski]

  My computer is acting up too, the screen said "disc boot failure, install start disc, press enter." And for sure burn a copy of every picture you have so the computer crash won't eat your pics.

[The70RT]

I don't keep much important data on my PC. 350-1500 thats nuts. Unless you have a buissiness I guess you would have no choice. I do have 2 tech people that will do mine for just for almost nothing.....maybe a few beers or dinner    but I don't bother them unless it is someting I cant figure out. Good luck.

[Tilar]

Can you hear the drive power up at all? If so, Chances are you can change the power board and get all your information back. I did it with an 80 gig WD that had something go wrong with the PCBoard on the drive. I had to change the PCB from another drive with the exact numbers and then transplant the chip from my old board to the new one. Shaking like a whore in church when I did it but I got it working and got my stuff off of it. It cost me roughly $50

If you can find someone that can reprogram the firmware, you can take both boards and they can take the firmware from your old board and put it on the transplanted board.

If it's not powering up at all then you need someone that knows more than I do, which won't be hard to find 

[bakerhillpins]

Sorry to hear about your disk crash. May I suggest that you invest in a network storage system (NAS) that supports a RAID array.

I'm thinking of picking up this one as it also has a USB port that will support a printer so I can network it too. Mixed reviews, friend of my has it and likes it a bunch. YMMV, yada yada yada
http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-DNS-323-Network-Storage-Enclosure/dp/B000GK8LVE/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1219845206&sr=1-4

Search for NAS or Network Storage and you will get the whole shooting match.

Using it as a RAID array you can protect all your files and data from HD crashes... Most folks I know say that you should just get 2 1TB drives rather than the 500G that seems to be standard now.

Bryan

[hemi68charger]

Thanks guys........
Well, the problem seems to be much deeper than thought... The harddrive will have to be "rebuilt" for there is a mechanical probem and corrupt firmware. I have the disk over at a  professional data recovery service now.. Cha Ching.. $1,350 !!!!  But, that's my family's history to this point on there, not to mention all my mopar stuff.................  We'll see what's recoverable.. I just purchased this, I learned my expensive lesson...

Maxtor back up external drive

Troy