Data recovery services - ever used one?

[CalvinHobbes]

Friend of mine has a WD 400GB hard drive that was in an external enclosure (MyBook). I took the drive out of the case and hooked it up to my PC but the BIOS doesn't see it and Windows doesn't see it.
The drive spins up fine, no clicking or any unusual noises. The circuit board appears to be fine but the chips are on the underside so I can't view those.

Looking for any experiences with data recovery companies.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Denithor

Originally posted by: Blain
> SpinRite <

* SpinRite Review...
"The drives you save may be your own. Highly recommended."

* SpinRite Testimonials
* SpinRite Videos

I think Blain works for SpinRite or something, he's always shilling for them.



JK

Seriously, if you use their software please report back with results to inform us of whether it helps or not.

I'm a rabid listener of "Security Now". Steve Gibson is always reading email feedback about the astounding recoveries that SpinRite has pulled off.
Steve is also the one that gave us https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2">ShieldsUP</a> to test for open ports.


The last email testimonial for SpinRite from the show (linked here)...
"STEVE: And I have what is perhaps one of the oddest SpinRite stories in a hundred and...

LEO: Oh, come on. You've had some pretty odd ones.

STEVE: I've had some pretty odd ones. But this one may still - it's definitely up there.

LEO: Really.

STEVE: This is from Mike Roberts, whose subject looked rather benign. The subject was "SpinRite recovers from burned hard drive."

LEO: Okay.

STEVE: So he says, "Hello. I recently had one of my older computers fail to boot. When attempting to start up, the motherboard would only issue a series of beeps. I figured the first thing would be to replace each part piece by piece to determine which part was causing the problem. But replacing each piece failed to solve the problem. Next, I decided to move the jumper on my motherboard to clear the CMOS. Reasonable. As I was turning the machine back on, I accidentally dropped a screwdriver into it, and it began emitting sparks, and parts began to catch on fire. Within seconds my power was shorted, and the entire house lost power. Without even thinking, I grabbed a nearby can of Mountain Dew." He probably had been drinking too much of that. Don't know if anyone knows, that's seriously caffeine loaded. He says, "Without even thinking I grabbed a nearby can of Mountain Dew and splashed it on the burning computer."

LEO: Oh, my god.

STEVE: "I realize now that this was an electrical fire, and pouring this on earlier, before the power went out, would have been disastrous. After turning the power back on from the basement, I went to assess the damage. Needless to say, pretty much everything was destroyed beyond repair. Even if it wasn't all burned and/or melted..."

LEO: It was covered with sugar.

STEVE: "...it was now covered in Mountain Dew. The files on my hard drive were not critically important, but I wanted them. I took the hard drive, pulled the melted plastic off, and wiped the stickiness and black burn marks off. I connected the hard drive to a clip that I had pulled off an external hard drive and tried to connect it to my computers. Neither my Windows, Mac, or Linux machines could find the drive. So I decided to try one more thing. I connected the drive to a computer and started up SpinRite."

LEO: Oh, man.

STEVE: "To my utter disbelief, SpinRite found the drive, and I ran it at level 2 for data recovery. After SpinRite was finished, the drive was recognized by my computers, and I recovered every single file. Thank you. P.S.: I love the show. Keep it up."

LEO: P.P.S.: I'm going to stop drinking so much Mountain Dew.

STEVE: Oh, goodness.

LEO: And don't drop a screwdriver into your computer. It's a bad idea.

STEVE: Bad idea."

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Do they offer a demo? I'm not going to buy it no knowing if it can even detect the drive.

 

[Blain]

No Demo version...
SpinRite is a tool that can be used now and on drives in the future.
SpinRite can also be used as a drive maintenance tool.

You have three alternatives...
1. Do nothing and lose the data for sure.
2. Spend $89 on SpinRite and have a very good chance at recovering your data.
3. Spens MUCH MUCH more than $89 for a professional company to recover your data.

It's your data and your money. Only YOU can place a value on your data.

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Is it able to access drives that are not detected by the BIOS?

 

[Blain]

I haven't bought the program yet. After I get over my $1000 cable bill, SpinRite is in my future.

"The simple rule of thumb is that if drives can work and be recognized under DOS, perhaps with the addition of extra device drivers, they should be "seen" and usable by SpinRite.
The only types of drives which probably won't work under SpinRite are those which totally depend upon Windows device drives and which have no DOS support.
Otherwise, SpinRite should be able to see the drive and work with its contents."

 

[Denithor]

:laugh:

Ok, that was a great computer self-destruct/assisted suicide story!

I can see why you like it, Blain.

If I was still doing a lot of repair work on systems these days I would probably add SR to my list of "must have" software.

Too bad though that they don't have a neutered version for trial download just to test whether or not their software can detect your "dead" drive. That would probably encourage a lot more people to drop the T-bill on their program.

Blain, how the hell do you get a $1000 cable bill? Or do I not want to know...?

 

[Blain]

TV + Internet for a year.
Actually it was $1012.47. :roll:

I've got a few IDE drives laying around here, I'd like to get back in service.
I'm going to try the freezer & spin tricks before ponying up for SpinRite on them.
But I'm so sold on SpinRite, I won't be able to hold off for long.
You know how it is to be "sold" on something, yet not actually have it. :laugh:
I'm getting tunnel vision.

 

[RebateMonger]

In answer to your other question, if you can't get any PC to find the drive in BIOS, you aren't going to run any consumer-level data recovery software.

Scott Moulton's site has a lot of detailed presentations and articles on hard drive recovery. You might want to take a look at them, if only to understand what's involved and what's possible.

Here's his point of view on Spinrite. His "problem" with Spinwrite is that it does a LOT of reads and writes on the damaged hard drive. It attempts to "repair" the drive. In data recovery, the goal is to get the needed data off the drive as quickly as possible.

 

[Blain]

Look Ma... No clean room! :shocked:

But his HD repair tool video does get my inner-geek jazzed. :thumbsup::laugh:

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
In answer to your other question, if you can't get any PC to find the drive in BIOS, you aren't going to run any consumer-level data recovery software.

Scott Moulton's site has a lot of detailed presentations and articles on hard drive recovery. You might want to take a look at them, if only to understand what's involved and what's possible.

Here's his point of view on Spinrite. His "problem" with Spinwrite is that it does a LOT of reads and writes on the damaged hard drive. It attempts to "repair" the drive. In data recovery, the goal is to get the needed data off the drive as quickly as possible.

I read that info after seeing the links posted in another thread. I figured that if the BIOS doesn't see it there's nothing I can do but send it out for data recovery. What I don't understand is that is sounds fine so I would think the PC should at least recognize it unless the firmware or similar chip is fried.

 

[Blain]

Have you tried moving the drive to a different PC or change the cable?
I would even go as far as to keep the HD in the same physical orientation as it was when working properly.

 

[Elixer]

Originally posted by: CalvinHobbes
Friend of mine has a WD 400GB hard drive that was in an external enclosure (MyBook). I took the drive out of the case and hooked it up to my PC but the BIOS doesn't see it and Windows doesn't see it.
The drive spins up fine, no clicking or any unusual noises. The circuit board appears to be fine but the chips are on the underside so I can't view those.

Looking for any experiences with data recovery companies.

If BIOS can't detect it, then, as has been said, your most likely SOL.

The recovery replaces are *VERY* expensive, we are talking 10-50x (and more!) the cost of the unit in question.

As for which company, they pretty much all do the same thing. It just depends on how much you want to spend, and the turn around time.

 

[imported_Wanderlust]

Actually if you don't want to spend the potential $1000+ for recovery, you can always try and work with the drive. Move it around, boot up, see if it's recognized. I've had a few that it just took some persistence and patience but it finally initializes and you have a good chance of being OK until a reboot and it has to reinitialize.

 

[MustISO]

.http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: CalvinHobbes
What I don't understand is that is sounds fine so I would think the PC should at least recognize it unless the firmware or similar chip is fried.

My data recovery efforts are limited to drives that can be read by the BIOS. As I understand it, failure to properly register in the BIOS can be caused by both firmware issues (controller board on drive) or by problems reading certain control sectors on the hard drive.

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger

Originally posted by: CalvinHobbes
What I don't understand is that is sounds fine so I would think the PC should at least recognize it unless the firmware or similar chip is fried.

My data recovery efforts are limited to drives that can be read by the BIOS. As I understand it, failure to properly register in the BIOS can be caused by both firmware issues (controller board on drive) or by problems reading certain control sectors on the hard drive.

Yeah, that's what I'm guessing based on what I've been reading. I've tried everything possible I can think of but it's just not recognized. Time to send it off and see just how much something like this will cost.