Hard drive recovery service -- HELP!

[gmoney]

Anyone had experience with a good hard drive recovery company? It doesn't need to be fast, but I'd like to try to get it all back if possible.

For that matter, anyone been screwed by one?

[DS1]

1. Zombienixon might have a year or so ago

[gmoney]

7. what if I offer to feed him fresh brains?

did he get out of the biz?

[csziggy]

2. What does the drive do/not do?

If it just does not boot, you could get it hooked up as a slave drive or external drive and likely retrieve nearly all the data without spending the money on a data recovery service.

[gmoney]

4. it spins but does not "mount" so I can't run any sort of software recovery

...at least as far as I know. It's an external drive in an enclosure, but I could pull it out, although I don't know if it's a SATA drive in there or not, so I might not be able to directly install it in my Mac. I doubt the enclosure is the problem though.

[csziggy]

11. OK I don't know Macs and their operating system so I am not sure what 'mount'

means. In fact, I am new to SATA in PCs. Sorry I can't be of help. Good luck with it.

[gmoney]

16. "mount" basically means the computer can recognize the drive

unless it mounts, no software solution can be used on it

[csziggy]

26. Thanks!

[TreasonousBastard]

21. I'd betcha it is the enclosure. I've had problems with...

enclosures in the past when the drives themselves were perfectly good.

I would try finding just an enclosure-- I have one I got at CompUSA years ago for around 30 bucks. I would suppose NewEgg, or even Radio Shack, might have such a gadget. (Handy thing to have with the half dozen or so hard drives I have lying around at any one time.)

[GoneOffShore]

3. Drivesavers are the best in the business apparently

http://www.drivesavers.com/

They are the ones my local Mac supplier uses when they can't do the recovery.

[gmoney]

6. Yeah, they're the ones who quoted me $3000...

Not sure I can justify that kind of money... MOST of the data should be either on DVDs or a server, but I'm not 100% sure, and I want to avoid having to rebuild it from scattered DVDs and sources.

The drive contains raw files from photo shoots (which are always backed up to DVD) and then the edited images (which are uploaded to servers) but then again, there may be other stuff on there, too.

[Political Tiger]

5. My HD was erased about a year ago

and I used a program called GetDataBack. It worked well for me. It didn't recover everything but it got most of it.
http://www.runtime.org/

[gmoney]

8. It won't mount, so I don't think I can use a software solution.

I have a variety of utilities, but they don't "see" the drive, sadly.

[Pierre.Suave]

9. If you were here in MN

I would take a crack at it for you, but I read your profile and it does not look like you are.

[gmoney]

10. I could ship it...

Again, it's a MAC formatted drive that does NOT mount... if I could get it to mount, I could recover the data.

Honestly think you could help? PM me please...

[lizziegrace]

12. PM ZombieNixon

He had a huge amount of data on a Mac that went south on him. He had to send it away but I think the company was able to recover most,if not all of his work.

[Pierre.Suave]

24. yeah I got that it is a mac formatted drive

I am all 100% mac.

It is a possibility, is the drive in an external enclosure or in a computer?

[CatholicEdHead]

13. Have you tried SpinRite?

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

It sometimes helps to fix the drive, but if you get it back up then transfer the data right away.

[Orrex]

14. Aren't you afraid that they'll find all of your pr0n?

Or do they take some oath of confidence like priests hearing confession?

[gmoney]

15. I'm counting on it...

Have a few dozen photo shoots on there

[Orrex]

17. Ah! Now I understand the urgency

Godspeed to you, sir!

[Lasher]

18. Sounds like a hard drive mechanical problem.

Try this: Disconnect the hard drive and seal it up in a ziploc bag. Then put it in the freezer overnight. Then hook up your drivesicle and see if it will fire up. Be ready to copy what you want onto something else before it starts to warm back up. But if it doesn't keep running long enough you can always put it back in the freezer.

I shit you not, I did this successfully with a laptop hard drive about 10 years ago. All the geeks in the office thought I was some kinda PC god.

Good luck.

[gmoney]

19. Yeah, tried that...

although I also read that the odds of that working are amazingly low, like 5% where it might help.. but thanks for the suggestion.

[Lasher]

23. 5% huh? guess I was lucky.

Very enterprising of you to have tried. I don't know another person who has.

This is kinda like when somebody locks their keys in their car and they're trying to get in with a coat hanger. Everybody wants to take a turn trying to help.

[Ellipsis]

20. Have you tried TechTool Pro?

http://www.micromat.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=48

[gmoney]

25. I'll try it again, but I only think TTP works if the drive mounts

And in attempting to use TTP many times over the years, it never seems to actually DO anything. DiskWarrior is much better, but only works on mounted drives. Grr!

[MilesColtrane]

22. Don't worry.

There's plenty of more porn on teh internets to download.