Any way to recover data from a HD with a dead motor?

[Zbox]

topic/summary says it all. we know the motor is dead, but is there anything we can do to salvage the data apart from sending it back to the manufacturer while paying big $$$?

 

[RebateMonger]

You mean other than restoring the data from your backup ? 🙁

It sounds like a fairly easy repair for a company that knows what it's doing. If I'd spent two years working on something, I'd probably pay for an established data-recovery company to repair the drive and recover the data. You're probably talking less than $2000 if only the motor is gone. Just be sure that whoever works on it knows, FOR SURE, what they are doing. Trying to repair a bad repair job will cost a LOT more.

 

[bwnv]

You could try changing the controller card on the drive. In the old days the drive transistors went out many more times than the motor itself. Just buy another drive of the same exact model and swap the pc board. Remove from the bad drive first, so you have some practice, and be careful.

 

[RebateMonger]

Yeah, it COULD be just the controller card. I don't know if you can damage data if you get a controller board that isn't EXACTLY the same as the orginal (ROM version, etc.). Again, it's one of those things that wouldn't be hard for an experienced data recovery outfit. But if it isn't done correctly, the repair could cause its own damage.

 

[AdamSnow]

I would agree with bwnv on this one... If you are not ready for the $2000+ bill to get your data back, Go ebaying and see if you can get an identical drive and perform the swap on the controller board... Just make sure you get the same make/model of hard drive and you will be fine.

Or - if you are really daring, you could make your own little dust-free room and transfer the platters over to a working drive of the same make/model. Here is a link on how to do this on Hackaday, but at the time of this posting their site is down... Hopefully it will be working by the time you read this thread. Hard drive swap

 

[AdamSnow]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
But if it isn't done correctly, the repair could cause its own damage.

In your situation, you are going to have a risk no matter what you do. Even sending to a data recovery firm could come back with no results...

If you're not going to spend the money to get the pro's to do it... what have you got to lose?

 

[Need4Speed]

i have no pitty for those that dont practice good backups. given the low cost of hardware and the zillion backup programs, there is no excuse for not having a solid backup plan...lets see 100.00 now or a few thousand when i loose my data...gee...let me think

 

[Zbox]

I dont really care what you think N4S; the first comment I made to my friend in this situation before posting this is that some person would come along and diss on him for not making regular backups rather than offer a solution. Thanks for being that person.

To everyone else, thanks for contributing and offering viable solutions. We are pretty sure in this situation that it isn't the cc and confident it's the motor 🙁

 

[Need4Speed]

Originally posted by: Zbox
I dont really care what you think N4S; the first comment I made to my friend in this situation before posting this is that some person would come along and diss on him for not making regular backups rather than offer a solution. Thanks for being that person.

To everyone else, thanks for contributing and offering viable solutions. We are pretty sure in this situation that it isn't the cc and confident it's the motor 🙁

dont mention it. it was my absolute pleasure. If the data was that important to him, he should have thought of that earlier...2+ years of personal source code..and not a single backup? please.....

 

[Zbox]

do you take pleasure in just being around to state what is already known? you should consider giving lessons.

 

[Need4Speed]

Originally posted by: Zbox
do you take pleasure in just being around to state what is already known? you should consider giving lessons.

yes. some call me captain obvious..you can call me sir

 

[networkman]

Originally posted by: Need4Speed
i have no pitty for those that dont practice good backups. given the low cost of hardware and the zillion backup programs, there is no excuse for not having a solid backup plan...lets see 100.00 now or a few thousand when i loose my data...gee...let me think

Need4Speed isn't alone in this belief; I share his convictions, so dole out some flames to me too if you want.

Sad but true, most people don't learn this lesson until it's too late, and sadder still are the ones that still don't implement backup stratedgies afterward. Hopefully, this won't be the case here.

Your best option for recovery is to contact a data recovery service like Ontrack where they will have the parts and expertise necessary to rebuild or replace the drive motor if necessary to recover the data. I recommend this particular vendor due to successes with my own clients.

 

[Zbox]

Thing is, I don't disagree with you guys at all. At least you offered a reasonable solution, something N4S didn't do. My point was there was no reason in him to be a jerk about it.

 

[Need4Speed]

Originally posted by: Zbox
Thing is, I don't disagree with you guys at all. At least you offered a reasonable solution, something N4S didn't do. My point was there was no reason in him to be a jerk about it.

though it may seem like i'm being a 'jerk' i'm just stating the cold truth. as you are tired of hearing people say what i said...i am tired of people whining they lost all their data...and didn't have a single backup anywhere.

people need to understand that the question is not IF the drive will fail, but WHEN it will fail...becuase with 100% certainty it will fail at some point in time...so why not be proactive...spend a few minutes and a couple dollars to do it right...and all of this could have been avoided.

 

[BioPort]

Originally posted by: Need4Speedthough it may seem like i'm being a 'jerk' i'm just stating the cold truth. as you are tired of hearing people say what i said...i am tired of people whining they lost all their data...and didn't have a single backup anywhere.

im tired of people like you, who hide behind the anonymity inherent to forums and crap on other people just because they dont think like you do.

just because you have 5000 posts doesnt make you better than anyone else here.

 

[Mutilator]

DriveSavers Just be aware that they start out at about $800 if I remember correctly.
It's really not a matter of what exactly is broken, but rather how much is that data worth to him?

 

[Need4Speed]

Originally posted by: BioPort

Originally posted by: Need4Speedthough it may seem like i'm being a 'jerk' i'm just stating the cold truth. as you are tired of hearing people say what i said...i am tired of people whining they lost all their data...and didn't have a single backup anywhere.

im tired of people like you, who hide behind the anonymity inherent to forums and crap on other people just because they dont think like you do.

just because you have 5000 posts doesnt make you better than anyone else here.

whose hiding and craping on people, and i dont claim to be better than anyone else. I dont care if people think like i do or not...i just find it plain amazing that people can keep important data for 2yrs and never make a single backup...."and then be like OMFG how does this happen to me@!!"

It's 2006 and you can pick up a 200Gb drive for less than 100.00, sounds like pretty cheap insurance to me...and before you tell me that not everyone has a 100.00, there are plenty of other cheap options...not everyone needs a 200gb drive to do a backup of some important files...a 20.00 burner and some .10 cdr media will do the trick. this is one of the few topics that's black and white to me...if you dont backup, then be prepared to pay the consequences.

and just for the record...its nothing personal against zbox or his friend...but this is about the 10thgazillion post about this sort of thing maybe we should have a sticky about backups.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Need4Speed
and just for the record...its nothing personal against zbox or his friend...but this is about the 10thgazillion post about this sort of thing maybe we should have a sticky about backups.

LOL. I doubt a sticky will help. Many of those posting these problems are new to the Forums. And the rest....well....I guess they aren't READING the forums! there's at least one new request every day for help recovering lost data, either from drive failure or RAID array failure. And if they had backups, they wouldn't be posting, because they wouldn't have a problem.

A few days ago I was helping a family with their XP computer. They have tax records, etc., on their PC and haven't made a backup in two years.

Funny thing is:
Two years ago, they paid over $1000 to recover their computer's data after a drive failure. And they STILL aren't making backups!