Hard drive recovery services - recommendations

[James_G]

Early last week in a fit of frustration at the Internet I thumped my laptop. Alas the HDD was directly beneath the point of impact and now no longer spins up.

I've taken the lid off to have a look and the read heads are still on the platter, so they haven't parked, and they top of the platter spindle shows marks where it was spinning against the case. The platters themselves are fine, visually. Case now back together.

Thankfully my backup regime is good, so I got all my data back up until 31 July this year. Although I took a back up on the 10th August Outlook was obviously running, so it didn't take an incremental of the PST files so I've lost 14 days of email, which I can live with. Alas I wasn't backing up my photos however so I've lost every shot since July 2010.

So Has anybody got any recommendation for a disk recovery specialist. For benchmarking I have a quote form diskslabs.co.uk and it's £395 + VAT, no fix no fee. And please, no smug comments about Macs or keeping things in the cloud :wink:

Thanks

 

[Stuart Truman]

Ontrack. I've used them professionally and they are very good. Prepare for a walletectomy though...

They've changed hands since I last used them. Here's a link http://www.krollontrack.co.uk

 

[Stuart Truman]

Then buy an SSD. Almost immune to the "frustration thump"

 

[bluestreak56]

Have you tried the old freezer trick? Worked for me once or twice.

Stick the drive in a sealed ziplock back and then in a plastic freezer proof container.

Leave it in the freezer for say 12 hours.

This helps shrink the platters and re-align.

Managed to get mine to spin up once for a few hours (enough time to get my data off).

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Save_Your_Hard_Drive_by_Freezing_It

 

[James_G]

Ontrack. I've used them professionally and they are very good. Prepare for a walletectomy though...

They've changed hands since I last used them. Here's a link http://www.krollontrack.co.uk

Thanks I've submitted a form to their website to see what the cost is. Frustratingly I have been thinking about some network attached storage for ages (http://www.z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=28473&p=390171&hilit=music+stream#p390171) but never pulled the trigger for fear of losing a week of my life to setting it up. Ironically it's taken about that amount of time to rebuild windows and get my data back.

Still, we all live and learn.

 

[James_G]

Have you tried the old freezer trick? Worked for me once or twice.

Stick the drive in a sealed ziplock back and then in a plastic freezer proof container.

Leave it in the freezer for say 12 hours.

This helps shrink the platters and re-align.

Managed to get mine to spin up once for a few hours (enough time to get my data off).

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Save_Your_Hard_Drive_by_Freezing_It

I did try this actually after watching it on YouTube, although probably only gave it an hour. Didn't work unfortunately, but I'll try it for longer next time. Well, I say that but hopefully it'll never happen again since I'll have either one of these:

http://www.ebuyer.com/245542-wd-my-book-live-2tb-1x-2tb-nas-drive-wdbacg0020hch-eesn

or one of these if I can face the prospect of setting it all up. The hardware bit is easy, it's the configuration I reckon will be the issue.

http://www.ebuyer.com/288176-synology-ds212j-2-bay-nas-enclosure-ds212j

 

[benlumley]

+1 on the freezer trick - has also worked for me in the past. Although only for failure in normal use... so may or may not work for you. Worth a shot though.

Might be worth letting data recovery know you've opened the drive - they are meant to be sealed to keep dust and other stuff in the atmosphere out, as heads are very sensitive to this sort of thing. It may be they have a process they can go through to re-open it clean any dust etc out. Or they may think its not necessary!

 

[Anonymous]

taking the top off has probably screwed any possible chance of you getting any data off it. the tolerances for hard drives are extremely tight and you could well have introduced some contamination into the drive (they aren't made in 'clean' rooms for a reason).

also, if you've opened it up I wouldn't apply any power until you've spoken to the professionals for some advice.

 

[Stuart Truman]

+1. Also, some drives park their heads out near the spindle so unless your head assembly was mid platter it may have been in the right place. If there were marks on the lid there's a chance you impacted the case onto the spindle and stopped it, maybe tripping some fail safe. Laptop drives are a little sturdier than standard ones. Hopefully it's recoverable

 

[James_G]

Thanks all for the comments so far. Having recovered almost everything I took a calculated risk with removing the lid. The rationale being that there was a chance that it was simple downward pressure that was preventing the motor from spinning and I'd save myself a £500 bill and get a few hundred photos and 14 days of email back.

As it turns out that wasn't the case, but since these companies don't charge unless they fix I haven't lost anything, other than the data, which isn't critical. I'd still like to recover it, but if I've lost it for ever then I'll accept it.

SSD idea a good one - thanks for that. Any other suggestions for companies to try gratefully received.

 

[marchantsuk]

Good luck, and whilst not helpful in your situation but this was one the reasons for switching to Apple. Time machine is a great Apple application that backs up every day, and keeps everything for about 6 months. After that justs starts over writing old material.