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John Pratt
04-13-2011, 6:07 PM
Does anyone have any experience with any of the multitude of data recovery services on the web. Loml decided not to listen to me and back-up the hard drive and it crashed. I went to the local computer repair center and they said it will have to come apart to recover any data (and of course they don't do that). There was a squeking noise as it died, so I don't know if anything can even be recovered.

John

Jerome Stanek
04-13-2011, 6:50 PM
Try putting it in a plastic bag and freeze it. the put it back in the computer and see nif it will work. I have had some work for a short time doing that. If it starts get bthe data off fast.

John O'Brien
04-13-2011, 9:51 PM
I used a company called Gillware a few years ago. We had just returned from a vacation in MT and had all our pictures on the computer. It crashed without a backup. My daughter in law is a computer techie and she tried recovering the data by making my hard drive a slave drive off her pc without success. I sent it to Gillware and they recovered about 90% of the pictures and other data. He said they could have gotten more, but I think my DIL's efforts caused some issue.

I'm not sure if I can post the link for Gillware here but if you google Gillware data recovery it should come up. I also think you only pay if they successfully recover. They called and gave me a percentage estimate of what they could recover and a price which I thought was quite reasonable. The pictures were not replacable and well worth the cost to recover.

Good luck.

Mike Henderson
04-13-2011, 11:28 PM
This won't help you now, but when you get back up, use a web based backup - I use Carbonite. If your drive ever crashes again, you can get your data back.

Carbonite backs up your files whenever you change one - it's not a system that takes backups once per day. And since the storage is offsite, even if your house burns down the data is protected and available. The data is encrypted so it's not visible to others while being communicated or when stored.

There are other companies out there but I don't know their names. Maybe others will make some suggestions.

Mike

Tom Esh
04-14-2011, 10:00 AM
Check out Ontrack. Not cheap, but they're generally the go-to folks when all else fails.

Derek Gilmer
04-14-2011, 10:17 AM
My FIL used Ontrack I think a while back for a severely damaged drive. They were able to get back around 80% of the data and the total price was near 3 grand if I remember correctly.

The data most likely can be recovered. The question is how much is the recovery worth to you.

John Pratt
04-14-2011, 11:10 AM
Thanks, I will give these companies a call.

Bryan Morgan
04-14-2011, 11:35 AM
There are a few good ones and they may have to crack open the drive to repair it. If the heads or bearings are bad in your drive they can take the platters out and put them in another chassis. This is exacting work that has to be done in a sterile environment of course so the price reflects this.

Stephen Tashiro
04-14-2011, 1:48 PM
There are YouTube videos that feature Scott Moulton's presentations on hard drive recovery. I think he owns a data recovery service, but he is candid about the business and he advises you about the pros and cons of "home remedies". One thing he says is that if you send your HD to a company for "evaluation" and they quote you a price to recover the data, then they probably have already recovered it.

Raymond Fries
04-14-2011, 10:29 PM
I have has excellent results with www.gillware.com (http://www.gillware.com). They have never failed me.

Good Luck!!