Hard Drive Failure

[Ryan Joseph]

Over the weekend, the hard drive in my mom's computer (an 80GB Seagate) completely crashed. We sent it to Seagate and they analized it and said there was nothing they could do to get any of the data back. :cry:

They said there was a scratch around the edge of the platters and, as such, nothing was retreivable. Something about that doesn't seem right to me.

Do any of you know of a way to get the data off the drive? Is there another data rescue company we might be able to send it to? I'd really appreciate any thoughts or ideas any of you might have. Thanks!

[Jason Dunn]

Please don't tell me you didn't have a backup of that data....!!! 8O

If Seagate says it can't be recovered, well, I'd tend to believe them. But some places won't charge you unless they recover your data. This place seems reasonable:

http://www.data-r-us.com/pricing.html

I seem to remember a place that charged $99, but I can't seem to find them in Google right now.

[Mark Kenepp]

Like Jason, I would tend to believe Seagate as well.

Have you tried to put it in another computer as a slave drive and see if it comes up?

I have had drives fail here in the office and have typically been able to retrieve the data by sticking the drive in another computer.

Admittedly, I don't know if they failed in the same way.

Good luck,

[Ryan Joseph]

Yeah, we have backups, but no backup gets everything, you know? :?

Anyway, yeah, I'd tend to believe Seagate too, I just wanted some more opinions. They're going to send the drive back to us and we're going to try a few things here and probably try sending it to another recovery service. If you guys can think of anything else, I'd be grateful. :)

[55Kevy]

I had a hard drive failure last October. It turned out to be a mechanical failure, with the heads touching the platters and so no recovery. However, I did find a company in Novato, CA, called DriveSavers (I think - their logo is a life ring) that came highly recommended, and expensive. If they'd been able to recover my data it could have been in the $2,000's. As it was it cost me $80 and the price of shipping.

Kevy

[Steven Cedrone]

After exhausting all efforts, I would as a last resort, try slaving it in another machine and running Restorer 2000 on it. Restorer 2000 has a demo and it will show you the list of files it can recover if there are any!

http://www.bitmart.net/r2k.shtml

Good luck!