Data recovery problem

[sergio96w7]

I posted last week about my computer (15" pbook g4 1.33 GHz)
crashing. I called Mac outfitters today to see how the repairs/stauts
was on my machine. They said that the hard drive needs replaced as
well as the optical drive (I just had a new optical drive installed 6
months ago!). They said they tried a few ways to get the data off but
that they need to try several other things, too. Apparently there
hasn't been any data retrieved thus far. As you can imagine I’m really
nervous/upset/worried about this. I have heard through several people
that there is always a way to get the data off and that sometimes you
have to send it away to a company that specializes in this. I guess my
question is: do these places really work? I really don't care what the
price is...I just need all of my lost data. Any thoughts or
recommendations of a place to send my hard drive if Mac outfitters
cannot successfully mine my data?

 

[hdrdtd]

http://www.ontrack.com/

 

[dillegm]

Seagate offers decent data retrieval services.
$50.00 just to look at it. You ship the drive to them. They call you when
they recieve it and give you an estimate to retrieve the data. They also
give you a choice of several different storage options. HDD, DVD, CDR,
etc...
We just sent a Maxtor 250 gig drive to them that was damaged in a power
outage/surge. They actually still have it. We are just waiting to hear back
from them and if it was successfull. Unfortunatly, we learned the hard way.
Always backup important data. Two or three backup's, and keep one *off
premises*. RAID is always good to protect from hardware issues. I have
actually started using a 5 gig USB flash drive to backup stuff.

Economy Recovery Solution:
http://services.seagate.com/consumer_standard_services.aspx

Good luck.

-Ed

 

[Blinky the Shark]

Seagate offers decent data retrieval services.
$50.00 just to look at it. You ship the drive to them. They call you when
they recieve it and give you an estimate to retrieve the data. They also
give you a choice of several different storage options. HDD, DVD, CDR,
etc...
We just sent a Maxtor 250 gig drive to them that was damaged in a power
outage/surge. They actually still have it. We are just waiting to hear back
from them and if it was successfull. Unfortunatly, we learned the hard way.

What was the price quote?

 

[DaveW]

A typical sized harddrive can almost ALWAYS have it's data recovered by a
professional data recovery service. But the fee for this runs around $1000
per harddrive. They use clean rooms, etc.

 

[dillegm]

They still have't replied.
I'll post the quoted price when they reply. The data on the disk was very
important, so they were told to do what had to be done. Should be a few more
days. I'm expecting around $750.00, hopefully no more.

-Ed

 

[John Doe]

We just sent a Maxtor 250 gig drive to them that was damaged in a
power outage/surge. They actually still have it. We are just
waiting to hear back from them and if it was successfull.
Unfortunatly, we learned the hard way. Always backup important
data.

A lot of people learn the hard way, then they come here and cry
about it (I'm not referring to you). That's not so bad actually
since it reinforces the lesson.

A guy in a later thread is talking about installing Windows over a
previous version and having done that the last time he upgraded, and
it sounds just like someone who doesn't know enough to keep backups.
In my opinion, if you are a casual user you should have at least one
removable media copy of important files at all times. And if you
even think of doing any troubleshooting or anything fancy with your
system, you immediately stop and make a fresh copy beforehand.

I too would really appreciate hearing how much it ends up costing.
Thanks.

 

[dillegm]

Well, I just heard back. They claim that the "heads" are physicaly damaged
and it's not possible to recover any data. They did happen to find out that
the drive is actually still under Maxtor's warrenty. They are going to take
care of that for me, so I'm out fifty bucks plus shipping and Maxtor will
ship me a new replacement drive. I think Seagate owns or is related to
Maxtor in some way.

The system that was affected by the power surge had 9 HDD's. It was our
file-server, with two controller cards. 4 out of 9 drives were "dead", 3 out
of the 5 remaining now make a high pitched whine, and the remaining 2 work
fine. The drive we sent in, was the Critical customer info storage drive.
They were all Maxtor drives of various sizes. The four that "died" were all
connected to the same controller card. The 3 that are now loud were
connected to the other controller card, and the two good ones were connected
to the mainboard IDE 0 controller. The 2 Optical drives that were connected
to IDE 1 were also damaged.
The mainboard, 4 drives, 2 optical drives, CPU, and RAM were all destroyed,
But the PSU is fine. Still Works, I use it as a test unit. Strange stuff.
I now use multiple backup methods and a 1000 watt UPS.

Cheers,

-Ed

 

[John Doe]

For what it's worth, I would post that (about the heads being damaged
meaning they can't recover any data) to the storage group and see what
they say.

 

[dillegm]

Will do.

Thanks.

-Ed

For what it's worth, I would post that (about the heads being damaged
meaning they can't recover any data) to the storage group and see what
they say.