Hard Drive Problems - help needed please!

annie-c · 9 February 2006 at 4:43AM

Would be v grateful for any help or advice please.

My last PC didn't survive a recent house move. It worked fine before but now isn't bootable (I tried 2 separate discs bought from Ebay but no luck).

I hadn't backed up the hard drive (stupid, I know) and wonder if there is a way and how to go about getting a copy of the stuff that was on there. In particular there were lots of scanned in photos of sentimental value. What sort of places/people offer this service and how much could I expect to pay (if it is even possible?)

Thanks for reading - hope someone can help.

Annie.

Amba_Gambla · 9 February 2006 at 4:45AM

no idea about the cost, but it is definately possible....

will have a scout around now......

wonka · 9 February 2006 at 12:10PM

The same thing happened to me a few years ago.

I looked around and found a few companies who take your HD and perform a data recovery. I think "Vogon" was one such company.

Unfortunately this is quite a labour intensive operation, and I was typically quoted a few hundred quid. One or two companies also suggested that it could be a few grand!

Needless to say, the disk is still lying there. We lost about 2 months worth of pictures of our son when he was few months old....

I now backup my PC regularly, and bought a surge protector for it.

wonka · 9 February 2006 at 12:13PM

BTW I should point out that my drive was COMPLETELY dead - it couldn't be seen in the PC's BIOS on boot-up. I presume the electrics had been blown.

I suspect phil999 can recover data only if the drive can be turned on, and found in the BIOS.

Hillfly · 9 February 2006 at 2:11PM

A friend of mine had a similar problem. He took the drive into works IT team.
They tried everything but concluded the drive was stuck and not rotating and so couldn't get the data off. As a last resort they gave it an almighty whack with a screwdriver handle which dented the case and 'voila' the drive worked again - at least long enough to recover the data. So if you have tried everything else and there is no other options you may consider this 'last resort'! :eek:

B33fy · 9 February 2006 at 2:19PM

It may be possible to connect the drive as a slave drive to a working computer and read off the required data - but first have you checked that the connection cables are fully plugged in and not been dislodged in the move?

starlite_2 · 9 February 2006 at 3:10PM

my friend, who is great with all things p.c sorted this out for us, though in a complex way. we bought a brand new one of the excat same brand, model etc and he took them apart and swapped over the parts that store the data. he did warn before that it was high risk, but we had nothing to lose as couldn't afford data recovery services.worth a shot if you know someone similarly savvy.

i've also heard many stories about broken hard drives working again, at least for long enough to transfer data if they are put in the freezer for a while, but can't advise anything on that.

steve_r123 · 9 February 2006 at 3:18PM

B33fy wrote:

It may be possible to connect the drive as a slave drive to a working computer and read off the required data - but first have you checked that the connection cables are fully plugged in and not been dislodged in the move?

Yes, I agree, try this first, try running scan disk a few times on the poorly drive as well to see if that helps at all

albertross_2 · 9 February 2006 at 8:45PM

is the disk recognised in the bios, does it try to launch windows. If so, there is hope (depending one what you have done with those disks from ebay).

These may help, but only if the disk is spinning, recognised in the bios, and you haven't completely overwritten the data.

the first one is free, 2nd about £50 (they do different things, first is an undelete, 2nd forces the read head to try as hard as it can to read the data (whereas scandisk just gives up after a couple of attempts, and marks the disk area as bad)

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

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

if you can get into windows or windows safe mode at all, then a chkdsk c: /F may help.

if it is a physical problem, then a professional data recovery company on-track etc, would probably charge you hundreds or thousand or £'s to recover it.

you can sometimes get them working by twisting them rapidly, banging them, or putting them in a fridge, but this is absolutely the last resort, and should only be attempted if you have been unable to get the data back with software first.

boogiemaster · 9 February 2006 at 9:05PM

Buy another hard drive of the same type and transfer the insides making sure you dont damage the little disks inside.

squeaky · 9 February 2006 at 9:20PM

Yep. I agree. It's not normally the disks in the drive that fail - it's usually the electronics or the motor. So if you can transfer the disks you'll get everything back as normal.

It does take some care though.

Hard Drive Problems - help needed please!

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