Data Recovery

[Ryan]

Any have a hard Drive fail and have to send out to get data recovered from it?

[brandon]

Oh man that sucks! Sorry to hear that. We have ours backed up by an external then another one. So cheap now a days you can store everything for a couple hundred bucks. Next is to back it up online as well on our server in case of fire.

I have heard of putting it in a ziplock bag then in the freezer overnight, take it out and you got about an hour to get your data back. Not sure how that works and sounds like an urban myth to me.

[inkbrigade]

Data recovery places can be really expensive. In the 25 years I've done IT I've never found it worth it.

Each of our computers is backed up via backblaze.com

Our client art is backed up / shared via Dropbox

[inkbrigade]

The freezer trick might work. If its a hardware problem the metal expands as it gets hot. Cooling the heads may make it work long enough I rescue the data... Until it gets hot again.

If its a software problem a filesystem repair utility may be all you need.

Disk warrior if your using Mac. Maybe file salvage if your on windows

[mk162]

it really depends on how bad the disk is.  will it spin at all?  The place I used about 10 years ago was $2500...it was worth every penny.

I just switched to backblaze from carbonite.  backblaze is a tone better.

[Gilligan]

If you want to send it to me I'll take a look at it for free.  If I can do it in house, it would be cheap... $75 bucks and I can sell you a nice External to dump it all unto below retail.  If I can't and you just want the drive back all you have to do is give me a UPS account to ship it back on or send a label with it or something like that (or I could toss it).

Now, if I can't do it and you still want the data, I have a local guy that has a clean room and the equipment to recover serious stuff.  Replace heads and all that stuff.  But as it's been said... not cheap.  We've already talked about it and if I can't recover it then we are STARTING at $800 bucks to do it and can easily get into the 2k+ range.  They would put your data online and you could download it from where ever you want if you need it back ASAP or I can bring them a drive to dump it to.  They will give me a free estimate on your data if you are interested, I only ask that you don't jerk them around and be serious about paying that sort of money before I drive it across town and make them go through the trouble of finding out what is wrong with it.  I think they typically charge like $150 just to diagnose the problem.

Let me know,
Kevin

[Ryan]

Disk won't spin. sent it to "my computer guy" and he couldn't do anything. Found a local place to send it too. Worse case is $1900, best case is $800. Lesson learned the hardway today. I do usually back up the critical stuff (shop software data file and artwork) but its been a couple weeks on the art so I'm missing stuff, shop stuff was 2 days ago. Time to bite the bullet and get some off site back up I guess

[Ryan]

Oh and thanks for the help and offer of help

[vicb]

I had a Segate hd that crapped out and I found a guy on ebay that was able to get it working enough to clone it to a new hd.
He charged me $250 including the new hd.

[Gilligan]

I had a Segate hd that crapped out and I found a guy on ebay that was able to get it working enough to clone it to a new hd.
He charged me $250 including the new hd.

I wouldn't trust "a guy on ebay" for $250 bucks (w/ hd) to get important data.  If it's some family photos or something that you don't care if they are lost forever then by all means knock it out.

If you do the wrong thing to a hard drive in this sort of state you can totally lose everything.  At some point you have to stop fiddling and give it to a pro.

[vicb]

I had a Segate hd that crapped out and I found a guy on ebay that was able to get it working enough to clone it to a new hd.
He charged me $250 including the new hd.

I wouldn't trust "a guy on ebay" for $250 bucks (w/ hd) to get important data.  If it's some family photos or something that you don't care if they are lost forever then by all means knock it out.

If you do the wrong thing to a hard drive in this sort of state you can totally lose everything.  At some point you have to stop fiddling and give it to a pro.

Actually the guy new exactly what hd I had, pulled it apart, put in a new controller and new heads and was able to clone the entire drive. If that ability isn't professional
enough, I don't know what is. After calling many (from the looks of their websites) large professional companies and getting a $1200-$2000 sure we can do it, I found him and he seemed more knowledgeable, had many references from others that used him and if he couldn't recover my data, there would be no charge.

**If one of us uses a "guy from ebay" and gets great results for a fraction of the cost, you better believe I would take your word for it. That's a big part of what this forum is for.**
I definitely wouldn't chime in the discussion if I didn't have first hand experience.

[vicb]

This is his link. My drive wouldn't spin up but he was able to get it working. Not sure what type of drive you have but he has a list of the ones he works on.
His price is $55 but I paid him extra for a new hd and cloning.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/330469185821?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

[Gilligan]

I had a Segate hd that crapped out and I found a guy on ebay that was able to get it working enough to clone it to a new hd.
He charged me $250 including the new hd.

I wouldn't trust "a guy on ebay" for $250 bucks (w/ hd) to get important data.  If it's some family photos or something that you don't care if they are lost forever then by all means knock it out.

If you do the wrong thing to a hard drive in this sort of state you can totally lose everything.  At some point you have to stop fiddling and give it to a pro.

Actually the guy new exactly what hd I had, pulled it apart, put in a new controller and new heads and was able to clone the entire drive. If that ability isn't professional
enough, I don't know what is. After calling many (from the looks of their websites) large professional companies and getting a $1200-$2000 sure we can do it, I found him and he seemed more knowledgeable, had many references from others that used him and if he couldn't recover my data, there would be no charge.

**If one of us uses a "guy from ebay" and gets great results for a fraction of the cost, you better believe I would take your word for it. That's a big part of what this forum is for.**
I definitely wouldn't chime in the discussion if I didn't have first hand experience.

I think it was more so the verbiage which is why I put it in quotes.

You said "I found some guy on ebay".  That doesn't sound like it was a professional shop with references and certainly not a clean room.  Sounded like a guy no better than myself that was possibly over confident when playing with other people's data.

I was obviously mistaken in my understanding of the situation.  I certainly wasn't trying to discredit your testimonial, just putting things out there about the fact that if someone that is just over confident tries something stupid with your data, you could lose it.  If it's just "some guy on ebay" it's possible that he has no insurance or anything.  Not that I know if there is such an insurance thing for the "big boys".

In the end definitely no skin off my back, I don't make a dime when I bring those drives over to the guy in town... the price is already too damn high in my opinion.

[mk162]

Yeah, he sounds knowledgeable, but the wording could have been better.  "I found a guy on ebay"  sounds a lot like "Hey, hold my beer while I do this"  it just doesn't sound like it will end well.

I am glad it worked and it sounds like a good resource.

Backups like carbonite or backblaze are a safer and cheaper alternative.  Also, I prefer backblaze because they can backup external drives...like my new RAID.  Carbonite won't, but I think it's coming for an upcharge.