Recovering data off a dead hd?

Scruff

have a pc whose hd died over christmas. When you turn on the pc the hd doesnt even start to spin up and isnt detected on boot up. Is it just a dodgy power connector on the hd itself or is it totally fooked?
Is there any way to recover the data that was on it? My sister had all her docs for the last 5 years stored on it and is quite pissed at losing them.

Eurorunner

check this thread out

If you manage to get it to spin again - and you need a lend of 'easy recovery pro' or 'get data back', then pm me.

Sleipnir

Not backing up important data on a 5 year old disk is an extremely bad idea.
Silly girl.

You could try a different power connector, try it on another machine, check the power connectors on the drive itself for broken soldering.
If after all that it's still not powering up then it sounds like it fooked.

If you have another drive that is EXACTLY the same as the broken one you could try swapping the boards on the drive. Take the old PCB off and put the other one on.
Risky though.

Or you could pay through the nose for a data recovery company to have a look at it.
Simply looking at it will cost you though, they don't guarantee anything and they'll probably only try the board swap above anyway!

Scruff

cheers.
should have said that i did try it with a different power connector and no luck.
think i might have exactly the same drive lying around somewhere but alas me thinks the reason it is lying around is cause it too is fooked :rolleyes:

just out of curiosity, any idea how much data recovery places charge?

Yavvy

www.ontrack.co.uk

BogoBot

Originally posted by Scruff


just out of curiosity, any idea how much data recovery places charge?

http://www.ontrack.co.uk/

They have rescued drives for me in the past at a cost of between 3k and 5k.
Its *very* pricey but they have never let me down.

They are cheaper if you are not in a hurry so I suppose you could fill in their web form and see what happens...?

Bogobot.

ando

Originally posted by BogoBot
They have rescued drives for me in the past at a cost of between 3k and 5k. [/B]

:eek: :eek: :eek:OH MY GOD :eek: :eek: :eek:

I had no idea it would be THAT expensive

DaemÈn

a friend of mine had a problem similar to yours - he found that the the motor on the disk had just become jammed - he gave it a few (gentle!) knocks and loosened it up. he was able to boot from it and backup his data. if this is the case tho and it does work again id recomend throwing it out/ using it for games r something after u back it up as u could never rely on it again.

mobby

Whats the make/model number of the Drive

Yavvy

please do not knock your hard drive gentle or otherwise.... it may just be the board thats gone...you dont want to add a head crash to your list of problems

Capt'n Midnight

I take you have tried the drive in various orientations
on it's side / up side down etc.

RE: gentle knocks - only really old drives suffered from stiction - and you'd get them going by putting on top of another drive (eg: nice chuggy scsi drive) - NOT by manual intervention.

The ontrack recovery involves taking the drive apart and reading the data off the disk inside it...

Five years - doesn't anyone know that hard drives have a failure rate of about 3% a year and the quality is getting worse (also the wear out when they get very old)

has she emailed the stuff to anyone ?