Data recovery companies

**FireBrewer** · 11-25-2008, 09:20 PM

Anyone have any experience with these?

WD Support > Data Recovery Partner

I have a WD 320GB external drive that bit the dust. Luckily, it's still under warranty but I have to shell out some coin to get the data back because of their ****ing defective product!

Now I really need a beer...

**GilaMinumBeer** · 11-25-2008, 09:41 PM

They are actually the Fed IT dept, they are scanning your data for security risks.

waterse · 11-25-2008, 09:42 PM

Well, with hard drives failure is not a question but a given. They must fail eventually, it's only a matter of when. Backups are critical.

**GilaMinumBeer** · 11-25-2008, 09:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by waterse

Well, with hard drives failure is not a question but a given. They must fail eventually, it's only a matter of when. Backups are critical.

I routinely backup my files. It's just all that pirated software I lose that really bites my arse. It took me forever to find a good keygen for CS2.

brewt00l · 11-25-2008, 10:02 PM

I'll just add that the one time we considered one of those services, it was rather expensive....the data basically has to be "mission critical" to warrant the cost.

malkore · 11-25-2008, 10:32 PM

Yeah, the price for recovery is pretty wicked. There's usually an up front cost just to assess the drive to see if its salvagable. then you get the real quote for the job.

talking to guys in IT, they say it starts at $500 and just skyrockets from there.

k1v1116 · 11-25-2008, 10:46 PM

a lot of harddrive failures are recoverable without any special means. can you describe the problem,
does the system not recognize the drive at all when you plug it in?
does the drive make a ticking noise and refuse to open after a long wait from my computer?
sometimes the file system is simply corrupted and with some very basic software you can recover all your files and even save the drive, the mechanical parts of the drive can also be intact and the electronics maybe busted in which case you can get a controller board from an identical drive and fix it. while its not as common I recently recovered data from a external drive for which the disk was perfectly good but the electronics of the external case (what adapts the drive to USB/firewire etc) were busted.
when you plug the drive in what if anything shows up in the safely remove hardware program that should show up in the system tray.

**mysteryberto** · 11-25-2008, 10:52 PM

If it's an external HD consider taking apart if you feel comfortable. I've seen the HD inside the external shell come loose from it's cable. Fix is simply to plug it back in. More description of how it "Bit the dust"?

**zac** · 11-25-2008, 10:56 PM

I'll be watching this thread. I have a few 1 terabyte external drives that I have info on. It;s not like you can just back them puppies up easily...

part time GIS guy, those SIDS are huge

billtzk · 11-25-2008, 11:10 PM

Get Knoppix and the Ultimate Boot CD. The former has a lot of linux tools that might be useful for data recovery. They are hard to glom for someone who is not familiar with Linux, though. The latter has a bunch of disk diagnostic tools. There are a few other Linux-based recovery CDs out there. SystemRescueCD is another one.

If you try to recover the data on your own, be prepared to spend countless hours at it, and accept the possibility of failure. I've had successes and failures over the years.