hard drive knackered help

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mercmanuk

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can anyone help a member who is sat at a desk crying,yes crying.my hdd has given up the ghost,made a loud grinding fan noise then silence.
can anyone recommend a good company to use to try and recover the data from a dead hdd,its not lost files but a dead hdd.as usual im good at giving advise on backing up data but dont do it myself..
the way im going the tissues are costing me a fortune
please please help
 
Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but....

If it really has "crashed" there are companies who specialise in getting data back. However it is REALLY expensive. As in REALLY, REALLY, REALLY expensive - we are talking in the big hundreds and there is no guarantee :(

How valuable is the data? You need to make a decision on that and if it is worth paying I'll speak to my engineers on Monday and find some companies that may be able to help.
 
Mercman, recovering the data can be expensive. If there are things there which are worth money to you, go to a company. However, if you're of a technical bent, you might want to read the story on http://www.deadharddrive.com/. I've fixed a hard disk in a similar manner before - it's worth trying if you're vaguely technical and can easily access an identical hard disk (I was lucky, it was a laptop drive and I had a couple spare).

Another option is to use a professional company. I've heard good things about http://www.easyrestore.co.uk/ - they charge £100 and only charge you if they can recover data. However, I've no personal first hand experience of them; good luck. There are many others around - these have the reputation of being the cheapest "reasonable" company, but if there is say business data there you might want to pay more if you think you might get more.

Hope that helps (backup backup backup!).

-simon
 
Steve's right it is phenomenally expensive and you pay by the MB of data recovered even if it is no use. You need to decide how much it is worth to you in terms of cold hard cash. If it is all of your CD collection ripped then it's not going to be so serious as the only digital photos of your kids that exist.

If you don't go down the daya recovery route you could set the drive as a slave to another machine and freeze the drive before connecting it. If there's a mechanical problem it can help (despite how bizarre a solution it sounds).

Take drive - set jumper settings to slave
Put in polybag and suck out the air
Put in freezer for at least a few hours
Take it out connect it to the controller cable and power and boot

See what happens (!)

I've used this on at least four separate occasions, once with no success at all, once the drive recovered (and despite my advice to the contrary is still being used by its owner) & both the other times I managed to get a couple of hours at a time with refreezing in between and manged to get most of the important data off. It'll only work if there's a mechanical problem, if the drive contoller or PCB is dead forget it!
 
Come on guys, it's not *that* expensive. The site I linked to for instance charges £99 for the recovery (and that only if it can actually recover data), and that includes 2 DVDs worth of data - after that they charge you £4.50 per DVD disk. I think that's pretty damn reasonable really.

Don't whatever you do stick the drive in the freezer. That might hurt for a very minor issue, but almost never if your drive is not responsive at all. It will also make recovering data more difficult.

-simon
 
Well, if they do what they say at the cost they say then I stand corrected. My information was based on experience in a professional capacity - but a couple of years ago and we all know how fast things change.

Good luck - and let us know how you get on so we all learn?

Cheers

P.S. I would add that if it actually made a grinding noise like you say then it could be a "headcrash" If that is the case, my opinion would be to not try any of the rescue tricks yourself as even if you do get it to fire up, it could make the retrieval of data even more unlikely. Get it straight to the disk shop. This is just IMHO!!
 
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try hddreg.exe

cant find it on my website - im sure i have it on there somewhere.

get the shareware version. load it onto a floppy. reboot (with only that hdd in there) run prog. retype 'hddreg' everytime it kicks you out...
 
mercman,
You could try GetDataBack for FAT/NTFS from http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm. I've used it before and managed to recover some of my data. You can download a trial version and give it a go. Trial edition do not have option to recover your data but allow you to see what data can be recovered from your crashed harddisk before you part with your money. Hope this help and good luck.
Eric
 
I've had this happen three times, and my eventual solution was to buy an external HDD, and run a weekly backup job so that the next time it happens (and I'm sure it will), then I won't be too bothered.

I've lost photo's, music, savegames, address books and so on...:mad:

PJ
 

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