Hard Drive Data Recovery - Datatrack Labs

Steve_Andrea

Hi,

My 1TB external hard drive recently decided to stop pack up after 18months.

The drive's hardly been used and has over 700gb of free space.

Problem is, the drive has every single baby photo we have ever taken of our soon to be 2yr old son...

Its really distressing as the photos are irreplaceable.

I've tried everything I can think of but the drive is dead. Windows and Bios do not recognise it and its making a horrible clicking noise.

So I've looked online for "Data recovery" specialists and have had a number of quotes ranging from £175+ VAT to £1200 :eek:
One of the firms who have quoted is Datatrack Labs

They have sent me 2 emails, one of which is stalling that they are doing a deal for £175+ vat, plus free collection by courier until the 15/05/12

It also says that the maximum recovery fee of £249.99+ vat will be fixed until the 15/05/12....

They want £75 for a replacement 500gb pocket sized hard drive or I can supply my own!!

All sounds pretty reasonable.

But is this deal too good to be true?

Thanks in advance

Nilrem

Sorry to hear about your dead drive

Data recovery for hard drives is something that can be extremely expensive to do, as depending on what is wrong it can require the use of a "clean room" (think operating theatre, but much cleaner, with even the incoming air filtered), and some very highly trained technicians.

I can't remember if I've heard of datatack labs before (I know there is a software recovery tool with a similar name), but their quote would be on the low end of what I'd expect for a hard drive to be recovered - either they are working on a fixed price and hope most drives are a simple repair, they are possibly not equipped for full data recovery, or possibly offer different levels of service (it could be they offer a consumer level, and a pro level as I don't think I've ever met a consumer who hasn't baulked at the sort of costs recovering important business data can rack up).

IIRC in the past when I've looked at data recovery for hard drives, a lot of places have charged a fixed fee + a charger per GB they manage to recover.

The only reviews a quick google shows tend to be positive for them, but i can't see much.

Not much help now, but it's always worth keeping important docs backed up to at least two independent media formats (I've tended to keep copies on an internal hard drive, an external one, and either flash memory/usb drives, or DVDR's).

Notmyrealname

Steve_Andrea wrote: »

Hi,

My 1TB external hard drive recently decided to stop pack up after 18months.

The drive's hardly been used and has over 700gb of free space.

Problem is, the drive has every single baby photo we have ever taken of our soon to be 2yr old son...

Its really distressing as the photos are irreplaceable.

I've tried everything I can think of but the drive is dead. Windows and Bios do not recognise it and its making a horrible clicking noise.

So I've looked online for "Data recovery" specialists and have had a number of quotes ranging from £175+ VAT to £1200 :eek:
One of the firms who have quoted is Datatrack Labs

They have sent me 2 emails, one of which is stalling that they are doing a deal for £175+ vat, plus free collection by courier until the 15/05/12

It also says that the maximum recovery fee of £249.99+ vat will be fixed until the 15/05/12....

They want £75 for a replacement 500gb pocket sized hard drive or I can supply my own!!

All sounds pretty reasonable.

But is this deal too good to be true?

Thanks in advance

Wouldn't touch them with a bargepole. They'll run a bit of software, thats all - pretty much the same as you can do but of no help at all if there's an electronic or mechanical error. If there's a mechanical error then trying to recover it in software can cause more data corruption because you've effectively got the same as the arm of a record player scraping over the disc.

Proper data recovery needs to be done in a sterile environment. Last time I had it done for a client it was £500 per 20GB for a dead drive which involved taking the platters out of the drive. Retrodata is who I use. You send the drive off and they'll give you an estimate plus a list of what is recoverable.

In future back up onto memory stick or a SSD. If a SSD fails, it fails to read only so you can still pull your data off.

Linbox

Try http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=screenshots - its a live cd and run photorec - Its surprising what you can get back!

You could also try http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/Version12-04 but that has no desktop just command line.

Dussed

I've had the "clicking of death" myself, best idea is to not make the drive operate, I've seen a few good companies out there, but don't be fooled. I got quoted really cheap, sent it off, next day I googled the company and it appeared to be the biggest scam ever. Luckily I got my HDD back untouched. Never got anything recovered though as I didn't have the money

Steve_Andrea

Ive found this site which has loads of reviews:

http://www.itprofessionals.co.uk/Computer_Hardware/Computer_Data_Recovery/

Looking at Datatrack Labs website they say they have a "clean room" and also have 12k likes on facebook

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Datatrack-Data-Recovery/117911811568272

Sooler

Notmyrealname wrote: »

Wouldn't touch them with a bargepole. They'll run a bit of software, thats all -.

http://www.datatrack-labs.co.uk/hard_drive_recovery.asp
"In cases of mechanical failure, hard drive rebuilds are performed in a dust-free clean room environment where they are carefully analysed and repaired."

Steve_Andrea

Notmyrealname wrote: »

Wouldn't touch them with a bargepole. They'll run a bit of software, thats all - pretty much the same as you can do but of no help at all if there's an electronic or mechanical error. If there's a mechanical error then trying to recover it in software can cause more data corruption because you've effectively got the same as the arm of a record player scraping over the disc.

Proper data recovery needs to be done in a sterile environment. Last time I had it done for a client it was £500 per 20GB for a dead drive which involved taking the platters out of the drive. Retrodata is who I use. You send the drive off and they'll give you an estimate plus a list of what is recoverable.

In future back up onto memory stick or a SSD. If a SSD fails, it fails to read only so you can still pull your data off.

Have you had dealings with this company before?

S0litaire

This is why i try to keep anything i'd like to keep on more than 1 drive.

Currently I'm using a local USB drive and a reputable cloud based storage service for backups as well as cloud based folder sync for smaller items that I'd like to have handy when out and about.

All storage mediums fail from time to time. best bet is to "spread your bets" over a few different types.

I know this is not a lot of help but hopefully you'll get to recover your data.

Moretistic

I hate to think how much it would cost to recover a 1TB drive if charged per 20GB and it was full !

What happened to angrysmurf ? (data-recovery-blog .co.uk) He did a lot of posts about the data recovery company that scammed him.

Data_recovery_expert

Notmyrealname -

You are clearly misinformed. There are no companies which charge per GB, well none that I know of. Maybe this is how they operated in the early 90's but times have changed.

Have you had any experience with dealing with that company? It's quite a statement based on your own poor assumptions.

If all they did was run a bit of software then I am sure that you wouldn't have been trading for 6 years, have lots of reviews online and have a healthly set of accounts.

It's quite a malicious post.

Also in regards to your backup advice, I would seriously reconsider offering advice when it is bad advice. I would not backup to a SSD as these are expensive to buy, have less storage capacity and will likely cost you a small fortune to recover if they were to go wrong as the data is striped across multiple chips, data recovery is 10 times for more complex from a SSD as opposed to a normal hard disk.

Also an SSD has the capacity to instantly wipe all data in a second with one malfunction, a hard drive cannot do this.

My advice would be to have two hard drives which contain identical copies of the data, store the disks in different locations, one in work, one in the house etc.