How to recover data from a dead hard drive?

[Captain Satellite]

Not mine! This is a friend's hard drive. The hard drive was diagnosed as having no power to it and a new hard drive was installed. The new hard drive powered up without any problem so it must have been a power problem with the older hard drive. He still has the old drive.

How could I go about helping this guy out? I don't believe hard drive recovery services deal with dead drives and software obviously wouldn't be of any help. What would you do? Unfortunately, he has a lot of pictures on there he didn't back up. I swear it's not me!

[Bjs]

Data recovery services do cover such events , but charge like a wounded bull .

Last time I check , the charges were

$450 up front
$50 mpeg megabyte recovered , $80 if specific file format required ... ie , data base , word , excel , ect

The catch is in the mud though

They keep both drives

A: The drive they had to purchase in order to exchange the platters to proceed with data recovery .
B: YOUR DRIVE ... the whole thing

They send you a cd or mulitples with recovered data on them .

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Talk about security issues ... no bloody way mate ... I want the old platters fragged using a deguass system ... never recover anything again ... instant nuke .

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I did this before : https://forum.videohelp.com/topic280628.html

You need another drive , same model in known working condition , basic tools , and a very clean work space , and steady hands .

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Now this is why backing up data is important ... isnt it .

[Captain Satellite]

"Now this is why backing up data is important ... isnt it ."

Yep, that's what I told him. Thanks for the reply.

[TBoneit]

A Data recovery service such as Ontrack @ www.ontrack.com has a clean room to rebuild whatever is needed to get the data back.

The last time we used them we got the drive back plus cds of the data. When they were done the drive also worked, 6 months later it died again however. I do not remember if we requested the drive back. Most likely we did. Normally if the drive still spins up I use their recovery software, Easy Recovery Pro. It just works. I'll probably have to order a newer version for Vista...Darn it.

This page has more details http://www.ontrack.com/hard-drive-recovery/

[Captain Satellite]

Really? Thanks. Do you remember how much you paid? There are pictures that he'd like to get back.

[Bjs]

Hmm ... a 1800 number , wonder where that is



Bugger it ... I said zoom and nuke ... lol

[fLYtRap]

Not mine! This is a friend's hard drive. The hard drive was diagnosed as having no power to it and a new hard drive was installed. The new hard drive powered up without any problem so it must have been a power problem with the older hard drive. He still has the old drive.

How could I go about helping this guy out? I don't believe hard drive recovery services deal with dead drives and software obviously wouldn't be of any help. What would you do? Unfortunately, he has a lot of pictures on there he didn't back up. I swear it's not me!

If this is an electrically dead drive than replacing PCB board should fix the problem. You can get a PCB on eBay for any hard drive.

[TBoneit]

Professional Data recovery isn't cheap. >$1000

[redwudz]

so it must have been a power problem with the older hard drive.

I would examine the power socket on the old drive, maybe a loose pin. Then plug it into a different connector and listen closely and see if it spins up. Leave it hooked up for 5 minutes or so and see if it warms up. All that may narrow the problem down somewhat.

If it seems to be just the controller board, you could buy exactly the same brand and model and exchange boards. That's probably the first thing a recovery company would do. Changing out the platters to another drive should be a adventure. I don't know that I would try it, but at some point you would have nothing to lose.

You can call one of the data recovery companies and they may be able to give you a price quote if you have enough info about the drive and the files. But I would expect it to be expensive with any good recovery company.

[EddyH]

Data recovery is EXPENSEEV

But Redwudz has a good idea there... I've had a HD go down on me recently that was often plugged/unplugged from the power connector (testing various motherboards with it, etc). The connectors must have been weak from the factory, and certainly look to be a rather crappy design... a couple of them simply broke away from the PCB one time when I was inserting the power plug, and that was that.

However, once I figured out what had happened, it was like 5 minutes work with a soldering iron (3 minutes to find it and warm it up, 1 minute to solder, 1 minute to let it all cool down ) to stick them back on.

Fingers crossed it's something as stupid and simple as this, because if it's full of precious / necessary data, I don't fancy your chances of getting it done cheaply. I have a couple Iomega Ditto backup tapes (a whole whopping 3Gb each or something awful like that) in the cupboard that contain my entire computing life circa 1998 that we never could quite afford to have recovered until such time that it didn't really matter any more... Thanks to a HD going kaput, and the drive/tapes (both the 'father' and 'son' copies!) eating each other when we tried to bring the data back on a fresh drive... gahhh!
(ah, CD, far better for insurance against such shenanigans - non-contact media!)

(Also there's the controller board idea; they're all churned out from the factory in much the same manner, so getting hold of a known-good identical unit (same part no. etc) from ebay and swapping them over shouldn't be too hard - only connected to the actual drive mechanics with a couple of ribbon cables in most cases. A few moments with a Torx driver to undo the screws holding the PCB on (taking an example from the 185Gb deskstar sat next to my laptop on a discombobulated USB2 link dongle), a little moderate brutality to pull it off, remove the cables, repeat for the donor, and then the same in reverse to attach the replacement board.)

Good luck

[TBoneit]

I actualyy revived two thumbdrives that way a 512Meg and a 1 Gig. Turns out that either plugging and unplugging or the flexing from being carried around in pants pocket broke the cconnections on the USB plug. A simple resolder and they are fine again.

[Captain Satellite]

Thanks, guys. I emailed Ontrack.com this morning and they want 100.00 up front. If my supervisor decides to use their services, they say it could cost 500.00 to 2600.00. I'm not sure how much he's willing to spend but they are family pictures.

I wouldn't even crack it open myself because it isn't mine and I'm not going to be the guy to finish it off. If he says he's not willing to pay that much and asks me to give it a shot, I'll do it.

I guess it's on him from here. Personally, I would pay that much, but I've always inserted a blank CD EVERY TIME I've transferred pictures from my card to the computer and backed them up.

I've already got a gift idea for Christmas.

[TBoneit]

That's the smart way to make sure you don't lose your pictures.

The other way of just add them to the computer and never make a CD or DVD is a surefire way to either lose them or end up paying big bucks to get them back.

That a digital camera makes it easy to snap, copy to computer and reuse the memory is my biggest reason for being down on them. The other safe way is copy to the computer and put the memory card on the shelf and start with a new one. Sort of like digital rolls of film. Just rather expensive.

My younger brother prefers film, he does digital camera too. He keeps complaining he can't get good B&W film anywhere. All he seems to find is a color process B&W. I'm sure the color process isn't as fine grain as true fine grain B&W.

[TBoneit]

Ontrack will send a list of what they can recover and he can select just the pictures to keep cost down. You don't have to do everything. I believe they even off e-mail or ftp access if you are in a rush.

[Captain Satellite]

The other safe way is copy to the computer and put the memory card on the shelf and start with a new one. Sort of like digital rolls of film. Just rather expensive.

I do that too! Hell, I bought a new 4gb card, a Lexar Pro for $89. I love technology.

Ontrack will send a list of what they can recover and he can select just the pictures to keep cost down. You don't have to do everything.

I'm pretty sure he's going to do this. When I asked him what he was willing to pay, I believe he said something like 1000.00. What I don't get is that once they get it to power back up, they'll have everything. Why the charge per file? It's not like they'll have to work hard to get back each file, right?

[TBoneit]

That depends... If it is only get the drive spinning and you can copy off of it freely......

There is still the cost of the media and the time to burn or if they FTP site it the cost of running the site and bandwidth costs. If Emailing it means it would have to be broken up into small parts. to keep it a size that the email service used by the recipient won't reject. Once again labor costs. Plus I believe they copy it to their storage server.

BTW instead of keeping the expensive Camera card... Why not buy the thumb drives when they are on sale. Most likely that will be cheaper and universal and avoid obsolesence unless you have a seperate external card reader for your cards.

[Captain Satellite]

Must be important pics, he says he'll go to 2500.00 if he has to. I'll bump this when and if he gets them back.

What are you calling a 'thumb drive'? A Flash drive? Yes, I have a card reader. Thanks for your help, TBoneit.

[TBoneit]

Just think how much money would have been saved by backing up to a few dollars worth of discs.

Yup Thumb Drive = Flash drive. I call them thumb drives as these days they aren't much bigger than my thumb. Sorry about that. BTW not sure what media you use but Best Buy had some 4 Gig SD memory cards on sale @ $49.99 and other sizes in XD and And Sony Memory Stick Pro and 2Gig SD @ $24.99.

That reminds me I should tell my brother his camera takes SD.

Lucky stiff, just won a 8gig Ipod Nano in a drawing at a union meeting. Guess who gets to show him how to use it? Yup. I had to download Itunes. No disk in the little plastic case and no room for one either. I remember what all came with earlier Ipods from when we were refurbing them at work. Now just one earbud set, one USB cable and the Ipod Nano and a cheesy fanfold little sheet of instructions that presume you already know how to use it. Hmph.

[Captain Satellite]

"Just think how much money would have been saved by backing up to a few dollars worth of discs."

I've reminded him. I don't want to make him feel worse than he already feels. He's not too computer savvy so I'm going to show him how to burn a CD.

I use Compact Flash. I use Mitsui gold discs myself and still back those up every couple of years. Probably about ten discs of family photos.

Thanks for your help, I appreciate it.

[Bjs]

Just as a note .

replacing the pcb board wont help if its an issue with the drives head actuator ... thats a complete platter swap required .

[Nelson37]

The PCB swap is quite viable if the drive is absolutely dead, no indication of power whatsoever. In fact, this has worked EVERY TIME I have tried it, 4 to 6 or so, I haven't really kept track. IDENTICAL drive and board, examine carefully, any difference is a no go. It's really pretty easy, main trick is to be VERY gentle with the Mylar cable.

What kind of drive is it, any identical PC's with the same drive available? This is very common with company purchases, and is very important, depending on the age of the drive. The matching drive will still be OK once the PCB is put back on, though it would be wise to back it up first. This is really a 5 minute job, for a thousand bucks I will go buy a matching drive, ship you the padded shipping container, do the recovery and then put it onto the brand new drive and then ship both back to you.

What is Ontrack charging, $2000.00? Half price, you buy the new drive and I'll deduct that from my $1000.00. If the platter swap does not work, I'll send yours back with the case unopened and pristine, and either buy the new drive or send it to you. Shipping is on me.

You could easily do this yourself, the PCB exchange is extremely unlikely to cause damage to the actual platters, at worst you screw up two HD you can replace for less than $200.00, and one of them is already broken. It's six screws and a ribbon cable. Piece of cake.

To move or even access the platters outside of a "clean room" is something I have seen done successfully, but could not recommend.

[ahhaa]

Yeah CS, you should also consider whether causing your boss to spend a G when it could be done for $50 might not be an issue too. Good luck!

[RoundTop]

Not mine! This is a friend's hard drive. The hard drive was diagnosed as having no power to it and a new hard drive was installed. The new hard drive powered up without any problem so it must have been a power problem with the older hard drive. He still has the old drive.

How could I go about helping this guy out? I don't believe hard drive recovery services deal with dead drives and software obviously wouldn't be of any help. What would you do? Unfortunately, he has a lot of pictures on there he didn't back up. I swear it's not me!

I had a similar problem recently.

Is the HDD SATA?

Hook up the adapter cord into the motherboard, then the power into the middle of the new HDDs power cord.

Enter the BIOS and set the old HDD as a slave.

Boot up and copy the files onto the new HDD or a memory stick.

[Nelson37]

If that works then you had a loose or defective power cable.

R and R the cables is standard practice, so much so that I often neglect to mention it.

[sbcheli]

I had a situation once where my hard drive would not work anymore as the master drive but was able to get it to work as the slave drive - so you might want to give that a try.

[Captain Satellite]

Ontrack sent the hard drive back. They said the platters were physically damaged and could not retrieve the data. Thanks for all of those who took the time to offer suggestions, I appreciate it.