Hard Drive Recovery

sufcfan1

i have been asked to have a look at FIL's laptop as it has stopped working.

The Hard drive is making a lovely grinding noise when you turn it on, and it will not boot.

Not too bad, new hard drive probably about £35.00 plus reinstall software.

But...

Does anyone have any recomendations for how to recover the hard drive. Had a look online, and there is no shortage of companies offering to recover data in their 'labs' for several hundered pounds.
Does anyone have any recomendations, or is the local computer store likely to be able to recover the data? (In Glasgow if anyone has local knowledge)

I must have told him a dozen times to back it up as well.

OneADay

You will need to take it someone qualified who can open up the drive in complete dust free environment, swap the insides with a working drive and then recover data. Don't try it yourself - will never work.

It costs money with companies - this one came up with google - databusters.co.uk

tonyh66

these data recovery companies are stupidly expensive and don't guarantee recovery. Look on the internet (google) info about putting HD in freezer, this can work for short periods giving time to recover stuff

andy2004

buy a cheaper enclosure, £4 or less on ebay, and connect that to the pc see if you can get any of the data of it. Try putting in the fridge as someone else has said first, preferably in a bag. cold temperature means it might last long enough to get the recovery partition / and data off it.

Big_Ed

Before you go to any companies or labs, try SpinRite 6.0.

Notmyrealname

tonyh66 wrote: »

these data recovery companies are stupidly expensive and don't guarantee recovery.

However they'll tell you what they can recover for free and they won't make matters worse unlike your local computer shop that just runs software freely available on the internet.

When you look at what these "stupidly expensive" companies do, how much it costs to construct and run a clean room and the monetary value of the data on the drives from their main business sector, all of a sudden it doesn't seem expensive.

Notmyrealname

Big_Ed wrote: »

Before you go to any companies or labs, try SpinRite 6.0.

And remember that once you have, you've probably made the situation worse. Steve Gibson is a quack who peddles snake oil and has had that reputation for over a decade.

buglawton

Find another computer.
Download Gparted http://gparted.sourceforge.net/index.php
Burn the ISO file to a CD
Pop the CD in the dead machine (I assume the machine with the bad disk is dead?)
Power on
Use Gparted's check and repair facilities see:
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html#mozTocId748422

You might get lucky

Guardsman

My hard drive gave up the ghost today but fortunately I have been making regular backups.
It really does pay to do a regular backup because it saves a lot of headaches later. We get little or no warning when the hard drive is about to fail.
I back up my computer onto a 32GB Cruzer Blade.

Big_Ed

Notmyrealname wrote: »

And remember that once you have, you've probably made the situation worse. Steve Gibson is a quack who peddles snake oil and has had that reputation for over a decade.

I'd recommend reading independent reviews from people and companies who have actually used it than from no-fact comments like these.