Good frigging God, data recovery services are pricey! ** CONFIRMED **

[Killbat]

So for a while now I've been trying to get files off my old ST-238R hard drive. Old 5.25" RLL clunker, 32 megabytes. Having not succeeded thus far, I entertained the idea of sending it to one of them there data recovery services, so I got a couple of quick Email quotes. Yikes.

Ontrack wants to charge me $100 just to examine the thing and determine if they can actually save any data onto other media like CDRs. If they could, the additional cost would be $400-1900. *gag*

Another place called MDS Disk Service says if I send them my drive, controller card, and cables, they will return my data on a new 238R for a mere $950. Wow, only half the potential cost of Ontrack! What I want to know is where in the hell they're going to get another 238R, much less a new one.

The moral of the story, boys and girls, is to always, always, always backup your data. Always.
Imagine how much this service would cost for a 20GB drive? 40GB? 80GB? A RAID array? :Q

 

[SWirth86]

Wow, thats really expensive. Are you going to do it? What do you need off it?

 

[Killbat]

Hell no I'm not gonna do it, a college student doesn't have that kind of money.
I'll sooner go over the drive with a hand-wound coil and a microvoltmeter in an attempt to recover the data. Or maybe I can psychicly read the platters...

The drive contains a bunch of old games I can't get copies of anymore, plus all the first computer programs I ever wrote. Stuff I'd like to have, but Jesus, two grand?

 

[chiwawa626]

lol i wish i saved my first computers hardrive...i stoped using it beacuse i downloaded FATE that aol proggie (this was like in 5th grade..) and they said if u deleted FATE then the drive would be busted...me being a n00b belived that lol So i reformated.

 

[Miramonti]

I'm familiar with those prices and they are outrageous. They make their money off of businesses tho, and if discourages the small end user then thats fine for them since businesses can afford a much higher profit margin.

 

[Jzero]

Well, you're essentially outside the target market for these data recovery services. Were that to be, say....the Payroll/Accounting system at my company, we'd probably see even $10k as a small price to pay.

Of course we backup everything like nuts, and anyone running any kind of business should be, so maybe you are the target market...in which case, that is pretty steep.

 

[zephyrprime]

That's why I'm building my own glovebox to recover data from my failed hard drive. (I'm not kidding)

Say, what's wrong with your drive? Does it spin up?

 

[Killbat]

It's just old and senile.
Started developing bad sectors a while ago, eventually some disk areas went bad in just the right places, won't boot anymore, FAT is too corrupt to copy files from it normally...

 

[SuperSix]

Put it in the freezer..

 

[kranky]

Oh yeah, they are pricey! We had a Magnetic-Optical drive on our Unix system that used removable double-sided disks similar to a giant floppy but held 2GB. The drive went bad and it was trashing every disk on writes. By the time we figured out what was happening about 15 disks were ruined (because we didn't see the problem until we tried to read something that got written after it went bad, and it read the other disks perfectly).

Our drive was on a maintenance contract and the company doing the maintenance agreed to have all the disks sent to a data recovery service. I think the total bill for them was $12,000.

 

[flot]

Believe it or not, I used to have a pair of ST-225 hard drives... and all my BBS data was on one that crashed.

I was desperate to get it back. So what did I do?

Very carefully opened up both drives. Removed the platter assembly from both. Transplanted the platter assembly from the "dead" drive into the "good" drive. Booted that one up, copied files onto a 3rd drive. Reassembled the "good" drive with the original "good" platter. Worked like a charm.

Now, 7 years later, I tried doing the same thing with a 2.1 gigabyte drive - no luck whatsoever. I don't know why, either - but in that case, I managed to scrap both the bad and the "donor" drive, neither would work after I opened them up.

But those old MFM/RLL drives, they could take some abuse. I had one (hmm, might have been the one that died, don't remember) where I HAD to have a HUGE UPS on the box.. because any time the drive lost power, the heads would stick when it went to spin back up. Stick as in, stick to the platter. I'd have to give the computer a good wack just as I was hitting the power switch to make it work.

I'd start asking around for used, working 238Rs. You might find some for $5!

Edit: Oops, just read that the platters seem to be going bad, not the drive mechanism.. in that case, you're better off finding some old school software like norton utils 8 and seeing what that can do for you. But I have to ask, like everyone else - WTF were you doing using an RLL drive these days?!?

 

[Killbat]

" WTF were you doing using an RLL drive these days?!?"

It's not like it was just last week I was BBSing, playing Pharoah's Tomb, and hittin' GWBASIC on this thing.

The computer the drive came from has been derelict for a long time. I went to get files off of it... two years ago? Found the disk too badly damaged to get the files, been tinkering ever since trying to get at them.

[edit] Your 2.1GB drive surgery probably failed because IDE drives have the controller on-board. You should've transplanted the control board along with the platters.

 

[SuperSix]

Hahahahaa... This post brings me back to my BBS days.. Dual ST-225's, then replaced my a (gasp) 210MB WD drive.. then a (gaspagain) 425 MB WD drive (still working today)

I had a 2 line adult BBS here in Tampa.. Was a lot of fun!

Originally posted by: flot
Believe it or not, I used to have a pair of ST-225 hard drives... and all my BBS data was on one that crashed.

I was desperate to get it back. So what did I do?

Very carefully opened up both drives. Removed the platter assembly from both. Transplanted the platter assembly from the "dead" drive into the "good" drive. Booted that one up, copied files onto a 3rd drive. Reassembled the "good" drive with the original "good" platter. Worked like a charm.

Now, 7 years later, I tried doing the same thing with a 2.1 gigabyte drive - no luck whatsoever. I don't know why, either - but in that case, I managed to scrap both the bad and the "donor" drive, neither would work after I opened them up.

But those old MFM/RLL drives, they could take some abuse. I had one (hmm, might have been the one that died, don't remember) where I HAD to have a HUGE UPS on the box.. because any time the drive lost power, the heads would stick when it went to spin back up. Stick as in, stick to the platter. I'd have to give the computer a good wack just as I was hitting the power switch to make it work.

I'd start asking around for used, working 238Rs. You might find some for $5!

Edit: Oops, just read that the platters seem to be going bad, not the drive mechanism.. in that case, you're better off finding some old school software like norton utils 8 and seeing what that can do for you. But I have to ask, like everyone else - WTF were you doing using an RLL drive these days?!?

 

[zephyrprime]

If your sectors are going bad, you shouldn't try booting. Use a disk tool like an old version of norton and try to read the sectors off it and copying onto a newer drive.