General > General info Somewhat hot tub related
My Hard Drive Crashed
Gomboman:
My primary hard drive crashed last week. I have a backup hard drive installed in my PC but I lost about six months of backup data--mostly digital photos.
I took it to a local PC repair shop but they didn't have any luck restoring the data. They said my hard drive is mechanically functional but it has a boot sector failure.
The PC technician told me to go to Drive Savers. He said it would be about $700 to restore my data--ouch. Do I have any other options before I re-format my drive?
wmccall:
Typically with boot sector failures you can put the drive in as a second drive somewhere else and copy the data off. I would assume they tried that. Datac recovery places to charge about that much or more.
Gomboman:
--- Quote ---Typically with boot sector failures you can put the drive in as a second drive somewhere else and copy the data off. I would assume they tried that. Datac recovery places to charge about that much or more.
--- End quote ---
No, I tried that before I sent it in. I think it's going to take a higher level of repair. The disk won't even respond to the System Repair through Windows. The technician said that it will have to be opened in a Clean Room to salvage the data. I'm not sure how sharp he is. I think he was a year out of high school. I'll probably have to take it in somewhere else for a second oppinion.
NE-Phil:
Gomboman,
I've had some success with Steve Gibson's SpinRite. You can find it at http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm. This product has been around since 1988. Originally, just for FAT but now also NTFS formatting. For a new user, it costs $89 so it's not cheap but it has been useful at home and work.
Phil
jeremy:
If it's a boot sector failure you should be able to pull data off it as a second disk. If that's not the case you have a controller error/failure or a head failure/crash.
If the BIOS detects it, you may be able to use SpinRite and recover data. I've had decent luck with it.
http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm
$700 seems fair. The last time I had to use a recovery service like that it cost $1000 for a 60GB laptop hard disk. They were able to recover everything.
I've heard of some ghetto hackers being able to recover data in situations like these by placing the drive in a ziplock bag then putting it in the freezer over night. Hook it up while its still cold, pull the data off it, then put it in the garbage. Also, sometimes you can get the disk to read if you place it upside down before powering it on. Regardless, the best thing to do is not use it until you have a recovery plan in place. You'll have to decide if the value of the data is worth ghetto or pro. I'm not responsible either way! ;D
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version