Hard Disk Data Recovery

[jlmns]

Hi all,

Can anyone recommend a good company for hard disk recovery? I have a client who has knocked a desktop external drive onto the floor. It will not connect to the PC anymore - just has a horrible death rattle!

James

 

[HarveyIT]

Being into PC repairs, I guess you'll know all of this, but I'm thinking, do they have a backup of the external drive at all? Do you know what sort of data is on the drive? All I'm thinking is, data recovery can be expensive, is it worth it?

 

[jlmns]

Oh I really wish they did!

Unfortunately a home user with classic scenario of photos moved from laptop to external drive - no copies. Breaks my heart when this happens as I know how expensive the recovery can be.

I have warned them to expect a large bill

 

[HarveyIT]

I know you didn't specify, but I thought it was a business client. Personally I warn people about this ALL the time. I would get the external drive AS a backup system. Quite why they needed to move stuff FROM the laptop, I'm not sure. Take up too much space or something? No USB sticks in sight I guess. It is possible by sheer persistence that you might be lucky enough to get something off the disk. Try disconnecting the power from the drive for an hour or so, and see if that makes a difference. From what you describe, personally I dont think it will, but you never know.

 

[jlmns]

Unfortunately you need to know they've done it before you can tell them they shouldn't have! Given that there is a knocking sound I really don't want to keep trying the disk - it does spin up but as soon as you try to connect it to a PC it starts making a nasty rattling so I have no idea whether it is doing more damage to the disk surface.

 

[glenwheeler]

Having a similar issue myself > http://www.glenwheeler.co.uk/uploads/harddrive-issue.MOV cannot get it to boot at all. Theres half a TB on there. Photos from my Singapore Grand Prix trip and my first visit to Venice with my girlfriend all gone. Also lots of projects on there. If anyone has any advice i'm all ears. I've had this into a data recovery centre and they couldn't do anything with it really annoying.

The question is..how far do we go with backups? I really think USB External hard drives are the bane of everyone's lives for backups. In my opinion they are so unreliable. If I ever buy hard drives now, they are always solid state. I hope to buy a NAS system with mirroring in the near future for the office.

 

[HarveyIT]

I've never had to go down the specialist recovery route, because so far, if a client has lost data, then it has always been a case of 'oh well, doesn't matter'. In other words, it was never vital to get it back.

 

[The IT Dept]

We use CloudCare Backup for data recovery of "dead" hard drives. Call Gavin Johnson on 0845 116 6983. The death rattle may well just be part of the drive mechanism that has come loose, rather than the drive itself, if you're lucky.

CloudCare should decide whether or not they can fix it, before giving you a quote which you can accept or reject. Good luck!

 

[UseYourWeb]

download hirens 10.2 and use hdd regenerator on the drive. Also, can you open the enclosure and remove the internal drive? doing this wil let you connect to a differenct device as it possible that
the caddy might be damaged although the rattle sound isnt really a good indicator but Hirens is best way to go

 

[MikeJ]

If the rattle is a physical issue (and I think it is), all the time you've got it plugged in you're risking additional damage to the drive.

 

[leemason]

As has already been said this sort of data recovery can be very expensive. However what makes it worse is trying lots of things yourself that can and does cause more damage. Have a word with http://www.comgen.co.uk/. They are not cheap but are very honest and up front about costs. They will give you the run-down on what needs to be done.

 

[lynxus]

The rattle may just be something in the enclosure?

Normally a harddrive doesn't have much that can come lose ( not easily anyway! )
Hell, ive thrown em at the floor before and they still dont rattle..

So..
Maybe if its just the enclosure you could take the drive out of the enclosure and plug into a normal PC's SATA port / Internal drive connectors ( like it was a normal drive )

It may just come to life!

 

[Comspec]

Before you go down the very expensive route of a specialist Data recovery company (who usually charge a large upfront fee with little guarantee), there are many things a smaller PC repair company can try, so might be worth getting it looked at.

We do quite a lot of Data Recovery from small business/home users, and we tend to find that there are a few things that can be tried before you have to look at the Data Specialist route...... from software-based recovery, through 'freezing' the drive to swapping the 'pcb' components from another drive etc. External drives can sometimes just need the disc taken out and installed into a PC to get at the files (assuming it's a problem with the enclosure rather than the disc itself).

If your drive is making a lot of noise, clicking etc, it could suggest the heads are stuck....... tends to be a 50/50 whether or not that can be recovered tbh.

 

[NetwiseHosting]

Hi there,

To add to the replies above, we have clients who relatively often approach us for recommendations as to companies to approach for data recovery and the first rule is: stop using the drive.

Every time you spin it up, move it and attempt recovery you dramatically reduce the chances of successful data recovery - no software will recover if it is a hardware issue which if you dropped the drive it will be!

Apologies if the above is a little blunt but it is worth abiding by in order to increase your chances of recovery.
All the best,

Matthew

 

[jlmns]

Thanks for all your replies.

The first thing I did was take the drive out of its enclosure and connect up via SATA. The rattle is something to do with the drive mechanism itself not the enclosure so as Matthew says, I really don't want to risk doing more damage to it, so it definitely isn't being plugged in again!

I shall make some phone calls!

James

 

[Elies_1969]

HI..
I got a very perfect solution regarding this situation as I have used myself and succeed 3 times. Just go for Data Recovery Software from Unistal.com and that's it....Thnx

 

[Paul_Rosser]

If the hard disk is physically damaged so the system can't see it then no software solution is going to be much use. As Dale said Hirens HDD Regenerator may be able to help, but you do run the risk of doing even more damage by continuing to use the device.

Sending it off to a specialist firm will cost a lot, last time I used one was about £2k for a 1TB drive and they only managed to get pieces of files back.