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Hard Drive Recovery

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by hartwith

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Having had my fair share of HD failures very often as a result of psu burn-out I wonder if there is any technology available to access the data on these drives. I arranged a data recovery for one customer and whilst completely successful it did cost?580 and of course that did not include the cost of a new drive! I did once manage a complete and speedy cure, myself, by being able to replace the drive's controller card because I had a similar make and model of drive in stock.
Most customers whose drives fail cannot afford vast expense to recover their data, but that data is still valuable. I know that they should have backed up but sadly the average domestic user never dreams of doing that.
The likelihood of having an identical ide card as spare is to say the least unusual.
A local,rival,repairer reckons to be able to recover data for a much lower fee ?60 but will not say how they do it and certainly on the one occasion I tried them (the ?586 one) they failed and I had to go to a specialist.
Is it possible to obtain some sort of controller card that could be programmed to a particular drive's spec or .... well any ideas? Obviously a mechanical breakdown would be far more difficult I suspect but these ar fairly rare.
Let me know what you think.

9 replies

by fenaikh

Hi

I. FREE Data Emergency Guides

1. Original Guide
(300KB PDF file)

2. IT Professional Edition (411KB PDF file)

http://www.actionfront.com/af501red.asp

warrning:
they may have the same file name so download them with a diffrent name or location.

II.software Damage

software trial will only show files. license software will recover.

EasyRecovery 6 (repair & recover)

http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecovery/

III. Physical Failures and Logical Damage

http://www.actionfront.com/drives.asp

Good luck

Mohamed

Note1:
***Very Important NOTE *********
After you copy the URL a space or a %20 maybe gets inserted in the URL when you paste it into your browser. Delete any spaces or such characters from the URL for the page to be loaded.
***Very Important NOTE *********

by hartwith

Thanks for your reply but, as I explained in my question, I wanted alternatives to spending a fortune on professional data recovery clinics. I am not suggesting that they don't have their use but only where the customer has data worth the huge cost.

by bobho

If the drive is corrupted and not physically damaged probably the best product out there is Easy Recovery Pro. I have used it many times to recovery crashed hard drives. Even if the drive is physically damaged the program can recover most existing data.

Since you cannot recover to the original drive you will need a spare drive laying around to transfer the data to. Once the data is recovered, if the original drive is simply corrupt you can reformat it and transfer the data back. If it is physically damaged or failing then a new drive is in order.

Recovery is at best a hit or miss. There are so many factors that could affect the process that recovery and reliability in each situation is unique. It basically boils down to: what is thedata worth?

DrBob:>)

by hartwith

Data recovery software is great if the drive is accessible but I am looking for alternatives to having to involve specialists, and their costs, when a drives electronics have failed.

by cglrcng9

This may sound strange, but I have used it on occasion and been sucessful w/ it. If the drive will spin up at all, take the drive out of the case, insert it into a anti-static bag, then insert that into a ziplock bag & seal it up, then put the driveinto a freezer for an hour or 2 or overnight.

Get the puter set up to back up the info in whatever manner you will use normally, remove the drive from the freezer, re-install it into the case in a hurry, power up the computer and transfer the info as fast as you can. If the drive stops responding after heating up to normal run temp. repeat the process of the cool down in the freezer routine until you recover all the necessary data. Replace the drive w/ a new one, format the drive, restore the data files.

This is usually a last ditch effort, and sometimes fails to work, but is always worth a try as is replacing the board from an exact duplicate model drive and costs a lot less than the higher rate recovery methods.

by hartwith

I like this answer if only because it is "quirky". I have not had chance to try it yet but will let you know if it does the job. I know that the freezer technique was said to be capable of wiping data from some firmware or other but I cannot remember just what.

by hartwith

As I said,in my reply to drbob,I have great belief in recovery software but it is no use where the drive does not "spin". Is there an alternative to sending a failed drive to a data recovery specialist in such a case?

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