Toshiba hard drive failure?

[Maria Ripanykhazova]

Suddenly my hard drive is not responding at all. I am wondering if all
prolbems I had been having (first it woudlnt operate on SCSI, then it
owuldnt operate USB devices then it wouldnt see its registry on boot) are
related to the drive not reading properly? Now it is not seeing any drive on
any computer into which I put this 12 gig drive.

Does anyone know who makes Toshiba drives or who makes a test utility? What
is suspicious is that the drive doesn't even read any identification on
boot.

I did manage to get it to read this morning so I suspect something may
revive it or revive it so long as to get most of the data off it and copy it
onto another drive in DOS but I am wondering what I can do now short of
sending it to one of those places in Houston that presumes you are a huge
corporation and charges you by the thousands or tens of thousands to take it
apart and get data off it (are there places which do this at any sort of
reasonable cost?)

I have meanwhile put it in the freezer pending finding a Toshiba HDD testing
utility. Seagate once told me to slam it onto a hard surface to try to free
up sticking arms or cause to rotate stuck discs: But if something wont read
even the drive identification, I am wondering if EITHER this is something
very easy as it was working this morning OR this is slightly beyond the end
of the road?

Anyone got any other ideas?

 

[Arno Wagner]

Suddenly my hard drive is not responding at all. I am wondering if all
prolbems I had been having (first it woudlnt operate on SCSI, then it
owuldnt operate USB devices then it wouldnt see its registry on boot) are
related to the drive not reading properly? Now it is not seeing any drive on
any computer into which I put this 12 gig drive.

Does anyone know who makes Toshiba drives or who makes a test utility?

Er, Toshiba?

What
is suspicious is that the drive doesn't even read any identification on
boot.

Sounds dead.

I did manage to get it to read this morning so I suspect something may
revive it or revive it so long as to get most of the data off it and copy it
onto another drive in DOS but I am wondering what I can do now short of
sending it to one of those places in Houston that presumes you are a huge
corporation and charges you by the thousands or tens of thousands to take it
apart and get data off it (are there places which do this at any sort of
reasonable cost?)

The cost is usually reasonable if you consider that an engineer costs
several hundred USD per hour. Most of there places also will give
you some sort of cost estimation.

Also be warned that anything you do with this drive has a good chance of
making a professional recovery more expensive. Maybe you should think
really hard about how much your data is worth and then get some price
quotes, before you try anythign else on the drive, including starting
it up again.

I have meanwhile put it in the freezer pending finding a Toshiba HDD
testing utility. Seagate once told me to slam it onto a hard
surface to try to free up sticking arms or cause to rotate stuck
discs:

That is historic information. Does not apply to more current
drives.

But if something wont read even the drive identification, I
am wondering if EITHER this is something very easy as it was working
this morning OR this is slightly beyond the end of the road?

Difficult to tell. My guess is it is repairable and can be fully
recoverd. However probably only by someone with the right tools
and knowledge.

Arno

 

[Maria Ripanykhazova]

The cost is usually reasonable if you consider that an engineer costs
several hundred USD per hour. Most of there places also will give
you some sort of cost estimation.

Toshiba (actually to make things more difficult, an Indian telephonist
reading answers/questions from scripts) merely tried to get rid of me when I
asked them where there disc storage division was and denied that it existed
or that I could use it if I had a Toshiba laptop! She went into the
asking-irrelevant-questions-numerous-times-and- v e r y -slowly routine when
I tried to press her and ask for a supervisor.

I did eventually track them down and they told me that there ARE disc
utilities which I can use (which I thought someone here would know of) which
would attempt to repair any drive.

I don't take any offence whatsoever at the suggestion that YOU don't know of
any.

The data recovery people do do a whole lot of work on some drives as you
suggest when a drive comes in badly burnt and having been hit by a McTruck.
But that otherwise they have special machinery which can read and easily
copy data off dead drives. I'm a bit surprised you didn't know this? But
again I don't take any offence whatsoever at the suggestion that YOU don't
know of this.

Naturally I have no objection to paying a reasonable sum if this is what
they do. But companies in this situation usually have standard charges
which don't take account of how much time it takes to get their repair
people to work on the unit, which makes your suggestion slightly amazing?
This might happen in countries like Switzerland but in the US the way it
works is that such companies will raise their base charges depending on how
much work they get. If you find a company which gets very little work and
expects to find (for example) only one company per month with only a few
drives which need recovery, their charges will be astronomical to cover all
their costs and paperwork. I was posting here to try to avoid that by
finding the companies which don't NEED to screw customers

Does any one else on this group know if there are any companies out there
which do impose a reasonable cost for work actually done?

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Er, Toshiba?


Sounds dead.


The cost is usually reasonable if you consider that an engineer costs
several hundred USD per hour. Most of there places also will give
you some sort of cost estimation.

Also be warned that anything you do with this drive has a good chance of
making a professional recovery more expensive. Maybe you should think
really hard about how much your data is worth and then get some price
quotes, before you try anythign else on the drive, including starting
it up again.


That is historic information.

Nonsense.
Try tell that to one of my 10k cheetahs. Or a drive that is supposed to park it's
heads at a ramp (like you would expect a notebook drive to do) but failed to do that.

Does not apply to more current drives.

Clueless, as always.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Toshiba (actually to make things more difficult, an Indian telephonist
reading answers/questions from scripts) merely tried to get rid of me when I
asked them where there disc storage division was and denied that it existed
or that I could use it if I had a Toshiba laptop! She went into the
asking-irrelevant-questions-numerous-times-and- v e r y -slowly routine when
I tried to press her and ask for a supervisor.

I did eventually track them down and they told me that there ARE disc
utilities which I can use (which I thought someone here would know of) which
would attempt to repair any drive.

I don't take any offence whatsoever at the suggestion that YOU don't know of
any.
LOL.


The data recovery people do do a whole lot of work on some drives as you
suggest when a drive comes in badly burnt and having been hit by a McTruck.
But that otherwise they have special machinery which can read and easily
copy data off dead drives. I'm a bit surprised you didn't know this?

Arnie doesn't need to, he has insight.

But again I don't take any offence whatsoever at the suggestion that YOU don't
know of this.
Rotflol.


Naturally I have no objection to paying a reasonable sum if this is what
they do. But companies in this situation usually have standard charges
which don't take account of how much time it takes to get their repair
people to work on the unit, which makes your suggestion slightly amazing?

Maybe you lack Arnie's insight.

This might happen in countries like Switzerland but in the US the way it
works is that such companies will raise their base charges depending on how
much work they get. If you find a company which gets very little work and
expects to find (for example) only one company per month with only a few
drives which need recovery, their charges will be astronomical to cover all
their costs and paperwork. I was posting here to try to avoid that by
finding the companies which don't NEED to screw customers

Does any one else on this group know if there are any companies out there
which do impose a reasonable cost for work actually done?

Nah, Arnie is the only one here that has lots of insight and a clue about physics.

 

[Cubesphere]

Maria:
I feel you are complicating matters more than you need to. May be there
are data recovery companies out there that have ridiculous charges, but
there are plenty that are quite reasonable. I myself have had a
pleasant experience with one company:
Disk Doctor Labs, Inc.
www.diskdoctors.com
1-800-347-5377
It is a risk-free experience with them, because of the following:
1. Free evaluation.
2. Firm Dollar Quote on Evaluation
3. No Recovery -- No Charge
4. They will provide you a File List of all the data they can recover
before you pay anything.
5. There are no hidden extras for parts or evaluation or whatever. Only
shipping costs and copy media costs (no shipping cost if you can
deliver it to one of their 12 labs in all major US cities including
Houston; and no copy media cost if your data can fit on 5 CDs or less
or if you provide your own hard drive).
If your data is not critical, you might want to take a chance with any
home remedies or canned software, but just remember they might make
even professional recovery more difficult.
Good Luck,

 

[Arno Wagner]

[...]

I think you assume a bit mug about my non-knowledge, but I don't
take offense about this.

Naturally I have no objection to paying a reasonable sum if this is what
they do. But companies in this situation usually have standard charges
which don't take account of how much time it takes to get their repair
people to work on the unit, which makes your suggestion slightly amazing?
This might happen in countries like Switzerland but in the US the way it
works is that such companies will raise their base charges depending on how
much work they get. If you find a company which gets very little work and
expects to find (for example) only one company per month with only a few
drives which need recovery, their charges will be astronomical to cover all
their costs and paperwork. I was posting here to try to avoid that by
finding the companies which don't NEED to screw customers

O.K., in Switzerland what you get is a price-quote for initial
diagostics and an estimated total cost for the recovery, which is
actually a number of hours multiplied by an hourly charge. If the
initial diagnostics turn up thet the problem is more severe, they
will notify you and ask whether to procceed. At least that was
the procedure last time we got a quote for data recovery at work.

This is just good business practice and the way they need to do
it in order to be able to charge the customer at all.

I am sorry if the golden land of capitalism has a dysfunctional,
corrupted market, but first I could not tell that you are living there
and second the market and its regulation actually work in part of the
world. (And I am not convinced that screwing over customers is
standard practice in the USA, but i am not quelified to judge,
having not lived there for more than 6 weeks at a time so far.)

Still, If I remember correctly the hourly charge was something like
200 USD, which is quite reasonable, given that a qualified plumber
(e.g.) also costs around 100 USD per hour. The numbers may be off a
bit, (also CHF->USD slippage), but basically they were asking the
usual hourly fee for an engineer plus bit for laboratory usage.

Arno