External Hard-Drive crapped out... help!!!! :(

[stokerfed]

I have a Netware 160GB external hard-drive that is 4 years old. It stopped working out of nowhere, and there is physical damage. I sent it to Iomega because I heard they can recover anything... They determined by hard-drive was in a failing mode with several bad sectors, but they could recover most of my data onto a new hard-drive I sent them... FOR $1000!!!!!! I know this hard-drive has all 10,000 songs + videos, all of my schoolwork for the past 4 years, resumes, everything... I'm a computer engineer and losing everything just isn't possible... but $1000, seriously???!!

Is there any other company or person that could offer a service for less then this?? I need to respond to iomega within 78 hours..

Someone please help, there has got to be another option out there!!!

 

[tyanni]

No offense, but as a computer engineer you didn't think to backup your harddrive?

Anyway, 1000 is cheap - we spent 2500 to recover all the data from a HDD. I don't think you will find anything cheaper, especially if you really want the data. You could try to recover it yourself, depending on what is wrong with the drive, but I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[Harvey]

A friend had good luck with Ontrack Data Recovery Services, but they may be as expensive as Iomega. I don't know.

Have you tried mount the drive as a slave to see if you can read the damaged drive?

 

[stokerfed]

Well, its an external drive... and I'm not too confident to open the whole thing up out of its case and mount it... I don't want to damage it further... But thank you for the link, I'll check that out next...

 

[Harvey]

An external hard drive is usually no more than an internal drive in a chassis with an interface to USB, Firewire, etc. You should be able to check that visually without doing any further damage.

Does your system recognize the drive when it's connected?

Good luck.

 

[stokerfed]

It doesnt... I'm not even sure that its spinning at full strength... It might be possible that the arm was obstructed by the case itself...

 

[evident]

Originally posted by: Harvey
An external hard drive is usually no more than an internal drive in a chassis with an interface to USB, Firewire, etc. You should be able to check that visually without doing any further damage.

Does your system recognize the drive when it's connected?

Good luck.

he's right, best bet would be to try and mount it in linux and do a dd to another drive. (dd if= /dev/(yourCrapDrive) of=/dev/hda/backup bs=64k ). It might be a little difficult if it isn't a regular ide drive inside (eg. a small laptop hd) in which case i would not know how to directly mount to a pc. if you're lucky maybe the external interface is broke and your acutal hd might be fine

 

[Laputa]

YHPM for Option 2!

 

[tyanni]

What all these guys fail to mention is that you can do more damage to the drive trying to recover it, especially if its a physical problem. If you ABSOLUTELY need this data, spend the money and get it done professionally.

 

[stokerfed]

Thank everyone. I think I'm going to take the drive out of its case, and if its something physical, I'll try the Ontrack Service suggested to see if they are cheaper than iomega. Otherwise I'll have to just get it done and pay the money, that I dont have... Thank again. I'll let you know how it goes for those interested.

 

[Laputa]

Ontrack is $1800-$2000+ Good luck.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: stokerfed
It doesnt... I'm not even sure that its spinning at full strength... It might be possible that the arm was obstructed by the case itself...

You mentioned "physical damage" earlier, too. I'd pay the $1000 if the data is worth $1000 to you. $1000 for data recovery on a damaged hard drive is a bargain. Ontrack will charge $250 for the estimate....

 

[stokerfed]

On the OnTrack website they advertise a free quote...

 

[Laputa]

Quote is free, eval fee is not.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Ontrack will charge $250 for the estimate....

Actually, it IS less than what I said. I was going from memory.

Ontrack's quotes are free.
The non-refundable evaluation fee, for a "Standard" (Mon-Fri) job, is $100, in advance. Weekend and Emergency evaluation fees are $400 and $1000, respectively.

But the OP's comments imply that there's physical damage to the hard drive housing itself. I wonder how well Ontrack can predict the repair cost without opening the drive?

 

[imported_fixit]

There some free Linux tools for recovering data from crashed hard disks.

 

[TG2]

use GetDataback from runtime.org to recover your files, you have to pay $1000 and they dont even provide the new drive?