Looking for recommendations for data recovery companies

[Mursilis]

I've got a WD Cavier Black 1TB drive that died (only 2 years old!) and I want to get the files from it. I tried some software I've used before (Active File Recovery) but it is taking FOREVER. I'm thinking of sending the drive off to a data recovery company. Any recommendations? And how much should I expect to pay?

On a related note, what's my best option for not having to do this again? I'd like to mirror my main drive so that if one fails, I can just pop in another and be done with it. Is RAID 1 the best way to do that?

Thanks!

 

[code65536]

The taking forever part is the fault of the controller. Most onboard mobo controllers just like to spend a LONG time pondering over each sector before finally giving up on that sector. If you've got, say, 100K bad sectors (given that each sector (as exposed by the drive) is just 512 bytes, 100K bad sectors is only 50MB--a relatively insignificant area on a 1TB drive) and your controller decides to spend a minute trying and retrying each one before finally conceding that it's bad, you'll be at this for a couple of months.

You could try hooking the drive up to a different controller. I've had the best luck with USB docks; most of those things give up on a sector after just a few seconds.

Software could play a role, too. Most software will blindly try each sector, which takes a long time if you've got a long streak of them. Smarter software will try a few sectors, and if they're all bad, then skip 10 sectors, and if they're still bad, skip 100 sectors, then 1000 sectors, etc. Such a strategy might miss the lone good sector buried in an area of bad sectors, but that virtually never happens: usually, if you have a bad area, they're all bad. I don't know if such software exists (I fortunately haven't found a need for something like that yet), but I'm pretty sure I'm not the first one to think of such a thing, and it won't be a very difficult thing to code up, either.

 

[Rifter]

If its bad enough that software will not work and you send it out expect a bill in the 1000's.

 

[Blain]

I'm thinking of sending the drive off to a data recovery company. Any recommendations? And how much should I expect to pay?

My Hard Drive Died

"How much does it cost?
We do an evaluation of hard drive for $50 after which we can tell you what is wrong with the drive, the probability of recovery, and if possible we will provide you a list of recoverable files.
After the evaluation the cost of recovery is additionally $750 per a drive, or $200 for Flash USB Drives.
If there is a need for parts you will be told the cost of those parts ahead of time."

 

[code65536]

If its bad enough that software will not work and you send it out expect a bill in the 1000's.

That's true. But keep in mind that the only thing that a recovery company can do that we can't do at home is replacing hardware from a donor drive: new head, spindle motor, etc. (most of that is because they have a cleanroom and we don't). If none of those things need replacement, then they are going to be doing exactly what we would be doing.

In this specific case, the OP's comment about "taking forever" implies that he is making some progress, just very slowly. If there are parts of the drive that need replacement, then he would almost certainly be making zero progress and the recovery wouldn't have even started.

If he is able to make some progress (i.e., implying that there is no need to replace the head, motor, etc.), then I say the best way to go about this is (1) buy a "lifeboat" drive with at least the capacity of the sick drive, (2) attach the sick drive to a USB dock, (3) use software that does a blind sector-by-sector copy (preferably one that is smart about sector skipping) to clone the sick drive to the lifeboat drive, and finally, (4) run chkdsk on the cloned lifeboat drive to try to fix any damage to the file system's structures (assuming that the damage did not clobber the partition tables; if that happened, then you'd need to run some sort of disk recovery software to try to piece things back together). These are pretty much the same steps that the recovery company would take.

 

[compcons]

depending on the issue with the drive, sometimes swapping out the controller with one form a new drive will get things back up and running. If you cna find the same controller, this is probably worth the <$100 to try to get the data back. Definitely a lot cheaper than $1000. Perhaps find a used drive on ebay/AT and go that route.

And yes, RAID 1 (mirroring) is an effective way of rpoviding fault tolerance. In an ideal world, you should also make backups of your data to an alternate location. Do not count on RAID as a backup solution. I minimally suggest an external drive that is used regularly for copying data. Perhaps invest in something like Norton 360 (security plus backup features including scheduled local and cloud backups) or Mosey, or Carbonite, etc. I am guessing the $100 a year seems worth that cost right about now. I have lost plenty of data. A cheap drive and service is defintiely worth not suffering through the pain.

Good luck,
EH

 

[Mursilis]

In this specific case, the OP's comment about "taking forever" implies that he is making some progress, just very slowly. If there are parts of the drive that need replacement, then he would almost certainly be making zero progress and the recovery wouldn't have even started.

If he is able to make some progress (i.e., implying that there is no need to replace the head, motor, etc.), then I say the best way to go about this is (1) buy a "lifeboat" drive with at least the capacity of the sick drive, (2) attach the sick drive to a USB dock, (3) use software that does a blind sector-by-sector copy (preferably one that is smart about sector skipping) to clone the sick drive to the lifeboat drive, and finally, (4) run chkdsk on the cloned lifeboat drive to try to fix any damage to the file system's structures (assuming that the damage did not clobber the partition tables; if that happened, then you'd need to run some sort of disk recovery software to try to piece things back together). These are pretty much the same steps that the recovery company would take.

Yes, I was able to get a few files off the drive, but the software had read less than 500MB in approx. 10 hours, so on a 1TB drive, you can understand how that's not fast enough. Your idea on trying a USB dock sounds good - do you have any recommendations on software which will do a blind sector-by-sector copy? Thanks!

 

[code65536]

Yes, I was able to get a few files off the drive, but the software had read less than 500MB in approx. 10 hours, so on a 1TB drive, you can understand how that's not fast enough.

Yea, that's exactly how mine went. The Intel onboard controller was spending about a minute per bad sector, so after a full 24 hours, it was still trying to work through the bad patch. And I had no idea how large the bad patch was; if it was, say, 100K sectors, then this would've taken weeks. That was when I decided to start over with a USB dock. In the end, it wasn't that bad: only a few thousand sectors (this was a 2TB drive), so had I kept with the onboard controller, it would've only taken me an extra day or so.

do you have any recommendations on software which will do a blind sector-by-sector copy? Thanks!

I just went with the first freeware sector-by-sector copy utility that I found on Google. Here is a download link for it. The two downsides to this utility is that (1) it is not smart about skipping bad sectors (again, I was lucky to only have a few thousand bad sectors; if I was looking at a few million, then even the faster skipping of a USB dock would still be way too slow) and (2) it doesn't run within the OS (the "installer" creates a bootable CD or USB stick), so you can't use your computer to do other stuff while it is doing the copy (was not a problem for me since I have several).

 

[ummduh]

It took me almost an entire week to recover about 1TB off my 2TB drive.

It's a very slow process.

I put the drive in a USB enclosure.

I used EaseUS Data Recovery.

Worked great, but took a LONG time to scan the drive. Then it took a LONG time to go through the drive folder by folder and select the files, unselect the duplicates that were corrupt/etc.. Then it took a LONG time to recover them.

There was nothing wrong with my drive however, there is an ongoing issue I am having that caused the drive to lose its partition table and show the drive as RAW..

 

[Jen]

accidently formatted a 2 tb drive it took about 40 hrs to see the files with software and another 40 hrs to recover. and there was less than 1 tb of files on drive itself. if you can read the drive with software that is cheapest solution no matter how long it takes

Jen

 

[MustangSVT]

what are these files you are trying to recover?

my guess is its not worth over 1k usd and slowly slowly you learn to live without it. (at least that was the case with me).

but at least you have some hopes of recovering it . good luck!

 

[Mursilis]

what are these files you are trying to recover?

my guess is its not worth over 1k usd and slowly slowly you learn to live without it. (at least that was the case with me).

but at least you have some hopes of recovering it . good luck!

You're right, the data isn't worth $1K - the drive is from my main personal PC, and it's just some music, photos, e-mails, etc. I think I'm going to go with software (EaseUS Data Recovery was recommended by someone - that software looks promising, unless someone has other suggestions?) and hook the drive to a PC via a USB enclosure and just wait it out.

Thanks for everyone's good advice. I do appreciate it.