Data Recovery question

[QueBert]

Neighbor's laptop crashed and she has a crap load of pics of her baby on it, of course none are backed up. I went in with my trusty old school boot cd that has recovery software on it. The files are coming up as red, which in the program means not in good condition to recover. I wanted to try any ways but the laptop, or the software doesn't see my external USB HD I have hooked up, so I can't back up the files to see if they're good. And since it's a Laptop I can't just pull the drive out and put it in my PC.

I spoke to her about this, and getting the pics back is very important to her. The system won't boot and I don't want to mess with re-installing Windows XP to try some program to do this. I think I'm going to suggest a data recovery place, I ran Spinrite on the drive and it is finding a few unrecoverable sectors. But they're where there's no data on the drive. I want to recommend a data recovery place but not sure who, don't want to suggest a big name as it might be really really expensive. I'm guessing since I'm not hearing the drive clicking and I can access it, a place with the proper equipment could recover the data. I would also recommend software she can buy for me to do it, if it's gonna work. Maybe something with a trial where I can see it is in fact finding the files. The Laptop is basically XP with all the pics of her baby on it, nothing else so there shouldn't be too much that needs recovering.

As she tells it, the Laptop crashed and she hasn't touched it since. So the data should be there somewhere.

 

[GaryJohnson]

And since it's a Laptop I can't just pull the drive out and put it in my PC.

Actually you can:
- if it's a SATA drive then the connectors are the same
- if it's PATA/IDE you can get an adapter online for around $5

This is one of the first things a recovery place will try and they'll charge you like they needed to do a full recovery, a couple $$$ at least. I wouldn't go to one of those places unless the drive won't spin, BIOS won't recognize it, and recovery software can't see it.

 

[MadAmos]

If it gets to the point of professional I have used Dave Mason and was very happy with the results, he was not cheap but a lot less than the bigger name s in the biz.

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: GaryJohnson

And since it's a Laptop I can't just pull the drive out and put it in my PC.

Actually you can:
- if it's a SATA drive then the connectors are the same
- if it's PATA/IDE you can get an adapter online for around $5

This is one of the first things a recovery place will try and they'll charge you like they needed to do a full recovery, a couple $$$ at least. I wouldn't go to one of those places unless the drive won't spin, BIOS won't recognize it, and recovery software can't see it.

it's PATA, I might pick up the adapter, as it stands the drive works (technically) but I tried some software and what it recovered was unreadable, none of the pictures actually opened up. I just got a "unknown file type" I'm out of ideas what to use, I've done data recovery for people before and never had much troubles. This is why I'm asking about data recovery centers. I'm sure they could get it off, right now I'm not so sure I can

 

[Blazer]

if its that important to her just send it out, messing around with it could cause more problems.

 

[QueBert]

it's important to her but at the same time she doesn't have money laying around. I don't think she could afford to send it to Ontrack or some toehr recovery center. My advice might be to tell her to save up, the HD won't magically get worse if it took her a year to save up the money.

 

[Laputa]

PM ya with some info.