Somewhat off-topic but I don't want to open a new newsgroup

  • Thread starter Thread starter 46erjoe
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46erjoe

I have 4 hard drives with important information on them. They are not
repeat NOT bad drives. They worked fine when I dismantled the system.
Now I need the data on them. I can't put the systems back together
again (Humpty Dumpty etc.)

I've tried using a hard drive shell to get the info off but that
didn't work for some reason. So I'm thinking of going to a computer
shop of some kind and ask them to retrieve the data.

Am I asking a big bucks job? Retrieving data off bad drives I know is
costly because I had to do that once. But these drives are okay.
Probably all that the guy would have to do would be to set my drive up
as a slave and pull off the data to a CD.

What'ya think? Is this gonna drain my wallet? Thanks.
 
If you can manage to get some hardware together try this:

download pclinuxos 2007 tr4 and use that CD to boot your computer...
this is a live LINUX cd, that is bootable and will not touch your hard
drives...
but it will detect them and mount them.

then you can do various things to save your data.. if you have a network you
can transfer the data from the
drives to another computer. If you have a flash drive you can save the data
there of if you have an external hard drive you can save the information
there...

bootable linux cd's are also called rescue disks for this very reason

Plus the linux download is free....

http://www.pclinuxos.com/
download http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?option=com_ionfiles&Itemid=28


tell me if this helps
 
I don't think this will be that expensive. What you need to do is purchase
an external USB drive, connect it to your current system to make sure that
it works properly and then take that drive with the other drives to the shop
and have them simply copy the data to the new external drive.
 
46erjoe said:
I have 4 hard drives with important information on them. They are not
repeat NOT bad drives. They worked fine when I dismantled the system.
Now I need the data on them. I can't put the systems back together
again (Humpty Dumpty etc.)

I've tried using a hard drive shell to get the info off but that
didn't work for some reason. So I'm thinking of going to a computer
shop of some kind and ask them to retrieve the data.

Am I asking a big bucks job? Retrieving data off bad drives I know is
costly because I had to do that once. But these drives are okay.
Probably all that the guy would have to do would be to set my drive up
as a slave and pull off the data to a CD.

What'ya think? Is this gonna drain my wallet? Thanks.
Click to expand...

No one can really answer that with any accuracy since we don't know 1)
where you live and what the going computer repair prices are in your
area; 2) how much data you're talking about recovering.

In general, no this wouldn't be very expensive. If the drives are good,
it wouldn't be a difficult job. If you have huge amounts of data to be
recovered and burned to DVD-R, it would just take some time. I don't
know why you couldn't do this with an external enclosure but since you
didn't give details, I can't guess.

If you want a better estimate of the time involved, I don't mind giving
it to you if you provide more details about the amount of data, etc.


Malke
 
It should be a piece of cake job, if the drives are good as you say. Most
shops use external drives (USB or Firewire), so it's a quick and easy
hookup. Depending on the amount of data, and where it is located (if in
multiple folders, and it's a hunting job to find files....), it could range
in cost.

If it's a simple remove and burn to a DVD, it should be fairly cheap.
 
How can you say that? If the total data from the drives is 300 GB and you
want to back it up you would need

around 65 dvds, say you would need about 10 minutes to burn each dvd....
that would be 650 minutes,
or 11 hours, thats one person working for one and a half days only to
backup!

Lol I would say thats expensive to do in a store! lol

And thats if you say the data is only 300 gb... it could be more.. what if
its all videos, what if some of the files
are bigger than 2 gb and you would have to compress and slice them so they
would be able to burn on a dvd?

I can tell you its hell! I had to back up ONE 200 gb full of data because it
was failing and it took one whole day
and I dont mean 8 hours....
 
I did try to use an external USB hard drive enclosure. It didn't work.
It was a Z-Disk External by Cintre. My computer detected the conection
of a USB drive, but it didn't appear in my Windows Explorer folders.
When it was detected, it came out as "Windows has detected Maxtor
/,;(&56%">?&% BL;AH ... in other words, gobbldegook. But again, no
appearance in EWxplorer. I phoned the people at Cintre. No one
answered. I emailed them. No response.
 
In many case's, you can just get an external USB hard drive enclosure, pop
each drive in it & connect it to whatever computer you have now & access the
data, copy as desired.
Depending on what security you had on the HDDS, you may need to take
ownership of the files/folders to access the data.
 
I have 4 hard drives with important information on them. They are not
repeat NOT bad drives. They worked fine when I dismantled the system.
Now I need the data on them. I can't put the systems back together again
(Humpty Dumpty etc.)
Click to expand...

Were the individual drives or setup in a RAID array?

--
Leythos
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
Calling an illegal alien an "undocumented worker" is like calling
a drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist"
(e-mail address removed) (remove 999 for proper email address)
 
I did try to use an external USB hard drive enclosure. It didn't work.
It was a Z-Disk External by Cintre. My computer detected the conection
of a USB drive, but it didn't appear in my Windows Explorer folders.
When it was detected, it came out as "Windows has detected Maxtor
/,;(&56%">?&% BL;AH ... in other words, gobbldegook. But again, no
appearance in EWxplorer. I phoned the people at Cintre. No one
answered. I emailed them. No response.
Click to expand...

Try something other than a CHEAP one. I use a LOT of external drives
where just purchase the case and install my own/old drives in them.

--
Leythos
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
Calling an illegal alien an "undocumented worker" is like calling
a drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist"
(e-mail address removed) (remove 999 for proper email address)
 
If the drives are IDE, did you try different jumper settings when connecting
to the USB converter?

Dan
 
True, but that's why my post had this line:
Depending on the amount of data, and where it is located (if in multiple
folders, and it's a hunting job to find files....), it could range in
cost.".
Click to expand...

If it is 300 GB, it will cost a lot more. If it is just a simple 10GB of
information then it's a cheap job.

Not sure if you read my post correctly, but we were basically on the same
page there.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--
 
46erjoe said:
I did try to use an external USB hard drive enclosure. It didn't work.
It was a Z-Disk External by Cintre. My computer detected the conection
of a USB drive, but it didn't appear in my Windows Explorer folders.
When it was detected, it came out as "Windows has detected Maxtor
/,;(&56%">?&% BL;AH ... in other words, gobbldegook. But again, no
appearance in EWxplorer. I phoned the people at Cintre. No one
answered. I emailed them. No response.
Click to expand...
Well that's a Windoze limitation of some sort. Microsoft never did get USB
working properly. You can try and boot your computer using a Ubuntu LiveCD
and then plug in the USB enclosure. It should mount that hard drive and
then you can burn the data to a DVD-R. Will take you some time but it's
something you can do yourself when you have the time.

Get the LiveCD from here ...

http://www.ubuntu.com

Love and Kisses,
Doris
 
Whoa Betsy!!! Are you suggesting that I download another OS and have
it install all its programs onto my harddrive?? That would be like
committing hardrive suicide yes?

Or... is it possible? Say it is ... that I can run my computer
completely off of a CD disk which has its own OS on it thus
eliminating even the need for my primary harddrive?
 
Again, that's exactly what I did. But WindowsVista would not recognize
the presence of the USB2 drive. It gave the little message "USB drive
detected Maxtor %)89*%4645<:| blah blah blah" but when I looked in
Windows Explorer, the drive was nowhere to be seen.
 
The message indicates that Vista did indeen 'find' the USB drive. But you
have to go through an additional step to access it.
If you go to admin tools, disk managment, you may have to set the external
disk as active to see it in Explorer.
I am not in front of a Vista machine at the moment, but poke around in
Control Panel to find it.
 
In a RAID array (usually only used on servers or by advanced users) the data
from each drive is mirrored to another drive as a backup.
If they were on suchj an array, there may be additional steps to access the
data, but in your case, that doesn't seem to be the issue.
 
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