HDD Data Recovery Service?!?!

Dr Pepper

Does anyone know of a decent data recovery company in Dublin? Any of the ones I've looked up seem pretty 'Mickey Mouse'.

We have a Serial ATA Hard Disk (New technology: not standard IDE connection!!) that has failed.. Any ideas on how to salvage some of the data? I have backups that are a week old but there are some 'gaps' in the backup

MarkR

There's a company by the name of "ontrack" in the UK. Been posted here somewhere before. Very expensive.

red_ice

serial ata is great fun to recover.

malico

We use them here in the wonderful world of DCU and find them good.
Great constant updates on your status etc.

Data Recovery Help Lines (Kroll Ontrack)

+44 (0) 1372 741999 (24 hours)
00 800 10 12 13 14 (8:00AM - 6:00PM GMT Monday through Friday)

European Freephone: 00 800 10 12 13 14
Phone: +44 (0)1372 741999
Fax: +44 (0)1372 741441
Web: www.ontrack.co.uk
info@ontrack.co.uk
sales@ontrack.co.uk
techsupport@ontrack.co.uk

Hope this helps


Although have about a grand in your back pocket for it.. And that's WITH educational discount.

Maybe get a recovery tool such as EasyRecovery Professional available from ONtrack.co.uk, or many other places on the internet.

Professional version is £ 329.00

Actually for the personal user:

EasyRecovery Lite 6.03 Individual Licence £ 49.99
Do-It-Yourself data recovery software with added repair capabilities for Microsoft Word and Zip files. Recover up to 25 files per recovery. Use to perform recoveries on up to 5 storage devices.

http://www.ontrack.co.uk/easyrecovery/professional.asp

Hope this helps

Dr Pepper

Cheers guys. Appreciate that!
I'm looking up ontrack at the mo.. Don't know if the data is valuable enough to justify shipping to the UK or spending in the 1000's. (We have a backup that's a week old but we have lost our entire mail archive i.e. all mails ever sent or recieved i.e. bad). Might see if I can get my hands on that recovery software.

Thanks again

vibe666

what exactly the problem with it?

if it's completely dead (i.e. not spinning or anything) then you're screwed unless you give it to somoene proffesional who can take it to bits and sca the platters manaully, but if it's still 'kinda' working but giving lots of errors then there are 2 things that you can try. one is free and is affectionately known as 'the freezer trick' which is exactly how it sounds.

it works on the principle that the drives ability to read the data stored on the platters without throwing up errors decreases exponentially as the drive heats up and as this happens very quickly under normal operating conditions you won't get very far recovering the data before the drive is more or less unreadable. the solution to this is to make the drive as cold as you can so you can get more data off it before it heats up to the point where data is lost. stick it in the freezer (in a sealed, moisture free bag for a couple of hours and then quickly plug it back in and try and copy the data off it before it heats up. sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, but it's free and worth a go if you're in a pinch.

the other way is to get a program called Spinrite5 from Gibson Research it is the single most effective piece of hard disk data recovery software available.

here's some bumpf from the website:

SpinRite prevents mass storage systems from crashing or warns the user of pending catastrophe. If SpinRite is not used until after a crash, it skillfully picks up all the pieces, recovers your data, and puts everything back together again.

SpinRite is the most capable, thorough, and reliable utility
that has ever been created for the long term maintenance,
recovery, and repair of mass storage systems.
SpinRite has had imitators. They've come and they've gone. But no other utility has ever matched SpinRite.

We know these are bold statements, but we're not making this up. See for yourself what independent industry experts have written and put their names to:

"Now just think about it: No more worrying about the data on your hard disk. Fewer - if indeed any - backups. How can you possibly go wrong with this one?" - Kevin Nickols, PCM Magazine

"I prefer to trust my disks to SpinRite." - Ed Mendelson, PC Magazine

"SpinRite describes itself as a truly new generation of hard disk utilities, which is a marvel of understatement." - Stephen M. Leon, MicroSystems

it's $90, but in my experience is the best thing out there (aside from freezers) to get back your data. and it should be considering that Steve Gibson used to design early hard disks for industrial systems. clever bloke who knows his stuff.

DaemÈn

I'll second that - SpinRite is an amazing piece of software....def worth a go..


DaemÈn