Lost data

vinylmusic

The hard drive on my laptop packed up and I've been trying to recover lost data.
I sent it away to a company called Data Savers who say that they haven't been abler to recover anything.
I'm wondering if its a total loss or if its worth trying elsewhere.
Can anyone help?
Thanks

Below is a copy of Data Savers report...

Please accept our apologies for not bringing our services to your satisfaction, despite the fact that from a technical point of view, the damaged inflicted on HDD is beyond repair and it is absolutely impossible (economically not viable for commercial purposes) to recover any data as the HDD had suffered from severe internal mechanical failure accompanied by media damage, therefore the extreme nature of the damage made it impossible to recover any data.

Despite the usage of different components/procedures to get to the HDD data, the internals were too damaged to read any data from the HDD.

The effect of the media damage is immediate on the magnetic information stored on the drive, jeopardizing the stored data files and the logical structures.

DatabaseError

simply, datasavers look pretty good, if they say no, based on "severe internal mechanical failure accompanied by media damage" then that is that!
it may be possible to recover fragments of the data, but the cost would be in the thousands, so possibly not worthwhile even trying (no guarantees )

TechTerry

Looks like a no no im afraid to say, its a big reason why people should always backup.....even though i dont, im saving up for a 2nd hard drive in case anything does go wrong especially with me starting my A levels this year.

Im sorry i could not be much of a help.

DatabaseError

terry, the 2nd hard drive can fail.....

TechTerry

tonyhague wrote: »

terry, the 2nd hard drive can fail.....

lol it could, but the chances of 2 HDD's failing in 1 day is quite unlikely, although not impossable. Unless mabey you spilt water over it or dropped the computer.

I still have a HDD thats over 6 years old running lovely.

isofa

You could also try OnTrack http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk might be worth a chance if it is really important. But I imagine you'll get a similar response...

isofa

TechTerry wrote: »

lol it could, but the chances of 2 HDD's failing in 1 day is quite unlikely, although not impossable. Unless mabey you spilt water over it or dropped the computer. I still have a HDD thats over 6 years old running lovely.

I've got hard drives that are are 15 years still running fine in an old Mac Quadra! But they can fail at any time, I've only had one ever fail, an IBM Travelstar in a laptop.

Always backup.

albertross_2

have they sent it back to you, in one piece, and if so does it still spin

PROLIANT

What I have done in the past is transplant the disk platters into an identical HDD and read them that way, sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, I have done this successfully 3 times, if you know any IT/Electronics people them I am sure they will know what to do. Check this link as well, very good.
http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/17/give-that-hard-drive-a-second-life-if-you-dare/