Yo Computer Geeks

[neilinov]

Our main office computer that runs all the other ones had a hard drive malfunction. The local computer guy says there is nothing to do to retrieve the data. Is there anything we can do to get it back?

[Shortfin]

There are companies that will retrieve your data for big money

I would find a computer geek that has the time and patience to keep trying to retrieve it

had a similar situation with a friend of mine's companies hard drive and they ended up leaving it with a geek and he eventually got it running enough to scare up some of the important info

[Jer]

Yes, look for "data recovery" companies. Make sure you look for reviews on them. Here in Brazil that kind of service starts at $200, but it may cost much more than that.

[krabill]

Put it in the freezer for an hour or two if it is making the clunkin noise, should make it work for a few mins, but you better be ready to ghost it, or pull off the few files that you need.

If general failure is reading it then beat it with a rubber mallet until you hear it spin up then grab you data.

otherwise its big $$, good luck

[neilinov]

Thanks for the info guys. It was making a clunking noise when my Secretary got into the office today. She took it to the shop and they said it's toast! I need the accounting files off of it so I guess I am going to have to shell out some greenbacks for data recovery.

[nautiduck]

Neil seriously try the freezer deal I have used it many times in my past life as a geek to retrieve data from a fried drive. The best way is to set the little jumpers on the end to CS (cable select) youll see a legend on the end of the drive to show you how, leave the drive in the freezer overnight. Open up another working PC (off of course) find an unused connector for the drives and a power connector. In the morning take out the drive hook it up to the functioning PC boot it up the drive should show up as a new drive letter as soon as your up and running find the files you need on the toast drive and copy them to the good drive. Freezing the drive will tighten up the bearings that are allowing the platters to hit the read arms, this should buy you enough time to transfer the data. Worst case your out a little time it wont hurt anything anymore than it is. If you have to send it out they will disassemble the drive and run the platters to read them.

[nautiduck]

Oh yeah I forgot, for gods sake get a backup system even a cheap tape backup and just use the same tape every night. From the sounds of it all you really need is a simple backup like an nightly incremental just set it up to update any changes every night. If you need help with the drive you can send it to me and Ill give it a shot. If your interested all I will need is the folder name your datas in so I can copy it to a disk for you, depending on how big your drive is I can create an ISO image to a DVD of the whole drive, or if you have a blank Hard drive I can ghost it over for you.

[flatbottom]

buy a copy of spinrite ver 6.0

you can download it from the site linked above

good day

[nautiduck]

Flat how does software save a drive that is doing the death wobble? I see how the software canb retrieve data on a drive that will intermittantly boot by scanning it over a period of time, but their site claims it repairs drives, how does it work? their site didnt explain that.

[Shortfin]

Oh yeah I forgot, for gods sake get a backup system even a cheap tape backup and just use the same tape every night. From the sounds of it all you really need is a simple backup like an nightly incremental just set it up to update any changes every night. If you need help with the drive you can send it to me and Ill give it a shot. If your interested all I will need is the folder name your datas in so I can copy it to a disk for you, depending on how big your drive is I can create an ISO image to a DVD of the whole drive, or if you have a blank Hard drive I can ghost it over for you.

Are tape drives still current ? I thought they were a thing of the past ? do they have good reliabilty , I just purchase portable drives

and those little pen drives ? are they any good