HD Data recovery

i dont know names offhand but i do know that there are places you can send drives to get data recovery.....or there might be guides online that will tell you to do what you want...i would have no idea how to go about it myself....perhaps a google search will turn up some leads for you... good luck

MentalFabric said:

I trust my engineering skills enough to <i>probably</i> be able to do whatever it is... I changed the HD, anyway.

help!

Click to expand...

I wouldn't trust your engineering skills when it comes to replacing platters of a hard disk. The distance between a read head and the platter is microns - If they come in contact, you can kiss your data goodbye! Just send the disk to a company that specializes in data recovery and you should be alright.

Do oyu have access to a class five clean room? I didn't think so. That is what you need to do this reliably. You also need to know what failed on the drive, and an exact model replacement of the dead drive.

Theoretically, you could buy an exact model# replacement of the drive you have, take them both apart and swap the platters from the dead to the living drive, power up the swapped good drive and have your data. THEORETICALLY.

There is a reason these companies get several thousand dollars for recovering the data off a 20-40GB drive.

Do it yourself and you will likely wreck the platters on both drives and eliminate all possibility of recovering the data as well as be out the cost of another drive. That is what you have to lose.
If the gamble is worth it, go for it.

I assume you have developed a solid, reliable backup plan for your data now right?

MentalFabric said:

Unfortunately the only backup I can afford is copying the most valuable things to CD... how likely is it i would destroy the platter? how sensitive are they?

Does anyone have any advice on how to go about this, or any info on the internet about it? Oh, and are you sure I can't use a 2.5" platter in the same brand 2.5" HD, but a dif. model?

thanks

Click to expand...

you should listen to pncc post. you should just send to a recovery specialist. it will cost a few hundred dollars for a hard drive. one of my associates got his 2.5" hard drive recovered for around $258 about 2 months ago. you need to shop around. professional use special equipment to read the hard disk. they also do it a clean room and use a special solution to clean the platter of the drive if the crash is bad enough. the clean room is the important part in this. what it sounds like is you either don't want to pay for the recovery or the data you need recovered is for your eyes only. that basically means you are screwed because in this situation if you have to ask you shouldn't be doing it.

MentalFabric said:

Unfortunately the only backup I can afford is copying the most valuable things to CD... how likely is it i would destroy the platter? how sensitive are they?

Click to expand...

Particularly for a laptop drive, chances are near 100% that you'll destroy the platter within seconds of opening the case. These things simply cannot be fixed using the means available to an end user. The tolerances are just too small. Why do you think those data recovery places charge so much? If sufficient geekiness and mechanical inclination were enough, then every company's IT department would have someone in-house and the data recovery houses would be out of business.

Does anyone have any advice on how to go about this, or any info on the internet about it? Oh, and are you sure I can't use a 2.5" platter in the same brand 2.5" HD, but a dif. model?

Click to expand...

Absolutely positive. A different model of drive will have a different physical layout on the platter(s), and the electronics in a particular model of drive are set to expect that specific platter configuration.

I had to do some poor-man's data recovery for my sister a few months back, because she had a laptop drive to die and take a lot of her law school notes and projects with it. I put the drive into a firewire enclosure and played around with holding it at different angles, shaking it a little, and plugging it into the firewire port until I managed to get the drive to spin up long enough to mount the disk and drag off the most important stuff. Your circumstances may not allow that, if, for instance, the disk won't even try to spin up, but that sort of thing is pretty much the best you're going to do on your own.

Nobody likes to hear it, but it comes down to simple economics. If you stand to lose more money than the cost of recovery, then pay for the recovery. If not, just resign yourself to the idea that you're screwed and learn to make backups. After dealing with my sister's crash, I learned by proxy and immediately picked myself up a copy of Retrospect 6, which turns out to be pretty nice.

MentalFabric said:

how likely is it i would destroy the platter?

Click to expand...

put it this way: you will destroy the platters.

it sucks, but the advice you've been getting here is correct. there's a reason data recovery is too expensive for most of us mortals; it is that difficult to do. my roommate lost a hard drive thanks to the blackout last summer, and now we use it to keep our beers from leaving rings on the coffee table. it just wasn't worth dropping hundreds or perhaps thousands of dollars on it.

you.. could try sticking it in the freezer overnight, in a airtight bag.. though don't blame me for further data loss though if it fails. 🙂

MentalFabric said:

OK, thanks everyone, I guess I'll have to give up on the whole idea really, and just borrow a 2.5" enclosure and hope I can make a disk image... wish me luck!

I can't believe we can't say Philip K Dick on here.

-John

<edit> ok, it seems :: I :: can say his name. but Gelfin doesn't seems able to 😛

Click to expand...

Heh. The asterisks got saved in under the old boards. I didn't bother to try to fix it after the upgrade. Looks like I can refer to Mr. Dick now. 🙂