Can anyone recommend a good data recovery service for a dead hard drive? I have a Windows XP machine whose two hard drives died. Ironically, the drives died the day I was going to make my quarterly backups. I took them to a local computer shop and they said the hard drives died ("unreadable") and it would require a specialist (but did not name anyone specific). I looked up some businesses via Google but am not sure if any one is better than the other and am a bit paranoid about chosing a fly-by-night one. The smaller drive is 40G and contains Win XP and the other is 120G and contains data (documents, photos, videos, music). Thanks in advance!
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Data Recovery Recommendations
- Thread starter weberm
- Start date
Usually the company that builds the drive offers that service, be aware, they are very expensive. If you go that route use a reputable company if your data is that valuable. Might think about making your backup a little more often to avoid this problem. good luck
goombawaho
MIS
Gillware. The IT company I used to work for used them to send customer hard drives to. You don't pay if they can't recover your data. HOWEVER, you will pay for a partial data recovery. The main thing, they are trustworthy and professional with a clean room to do the dirty work on your drives.
Yes - NOT cheap. Think $500 range. But don't give your drive to some idiot on Craig's List "I recover data....."
"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.
Yes - NOT cheap. Think $500 range. But don't give your drive to some idiot on Craig's List "I recover data....."
"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.
I have referred customers here. Results have been very good.
Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.
Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.
rclarke250
Technical User
Drivesavers. They are very good, Had Alcoa send a 2.75TB raid 50 to them, and they were able to recover over 90% of the data. We won't talk about the tape library next to the 6 node server that wasn't hooked up and a backup run, after I did the install 6 months earlier. But very expensive.
Unless there is something vital you need from the 40Gb XP drive I wouldn't bother recovering it. Recovery Services will usually not recover system files, as its just not worth the effort, when a re installation is faster and easier.
When I worked in a recovery firm, we where charging around the 400 to 600 US dollar range on regular software based recoveries. That is the drive is still (mechanically) functional but the data simply can't be accessed.
If any mechanical repair needs to be done it would go up to over 1000 depending on what needed to be done. Usually plate swapping and or direct plate reading is quite expensive because it takes a lot of time to do and notably, at least back then, was a very hands on job. Which meant technicians tend to be wrapped in one job for a long period of time.
Make sure whatever it is you want to recover is not reproducible much easier, and that you don't already have at least 40 to 50% of the data to be recovered in your backups.
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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
Web & Tech
When I worked in a recovery firm, we where charging around the 400 to 600 US dollar range on regular software based recoveries. That is the drive is still (mechanically) functional but the data simply can't be accessed.
If any mechanical repair needs to be done it would go up to over 1000 depending on what needed to be done. Usually plate swapping and or direct plate reading is quite expensive because it takes a lot of time to do and notably, at least back then, was a very hands on job. Which meant technicians tend to be wrapped in one job for a long period of time.
Make sure whatever it is you want to recover is not reproducible much easier, and that you don't already have at least 40 to 50% of the data to be recovered in your backups.
----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
Web & Tech
- Thread starter
- #7
Any comments on these I found these in Florida?:[ul]
[li]DataRetrieval.com[/li]
[li]ADRDataRecovery.com[/li]
[li]krollOnTrack.com[/li]
[/ul]
[li]DataRetrieval.com[/li]
[li]ADRDataRecovery.com[/li]
[li]krollOnTrack.com[/li]
[/ul]
I have some data on the 40Gb XP drive, but I'm more concerned about the 120Gb XP one with data and backups of some of the smaller drive's data.vacunita said:
goombawaho
MIS
Don't focus on close, go for quality.
"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.
"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.
FredWagner
MIS
I had excellent results with OnTrack Data Systems back in the last century - they provided me a CD-ROM of the data from a hard drive which would not even boot if installed in a PC.
Fred Wagner
(retired, but still involved!)
Fred Wagner
(retired, but still involved!)
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