Recommend data recovery company?

nospam
Mon, 23 Apr 2018
11:03:06 GMT in alt.windows7.general, wrote:

In article
5n4tY76H10y83Lr61
8DRo,
Diesel wrote:

Hard drive
"clicks" (heads go back and forth full disk) then quits
trying. Have another of the same model, but hesitant moving
the platters myself; apparently platters are not really
"stuck" together and I could mis-align them (rotate them in
relation to each other) rendering the whole thing un-readable.

swapping controllers (which is what i assume you mean by moving
platters) won't make a difference and risks making things
worse.

First hand experience tells me otherwise. Swapping the
controllers if they're identical and the controller is at fault
can result in regaining access to his data. I wouldn't perform
any writes on a drive using a 'borrowed' controller, but I'd
certainly take full advantage if it regains access to the drive
and copy data over.

swapping a controller isn't going to fix a clicking sound. that's
a mechanical issue internal to the drive.

Sometimes, again, from 1st hand experience as a field tech has shown
me that what you're describing as the click of death isn't always a
mechanical failure. A bad controller board can also do it.

the chances of a home remedy working are very low, and with a
significant risk of making it worse.

Swapping identical controller boards isn't what I'd call a home
remedy. It's a common thing in a lot of tech shops that actually do
in house repairs and don't ship the machine off someplace.

Taking the drive apart physically to gain access to the platters
though would be a very bad idea and will almost certainly result
in further damaging the drive.

incredibly stupid.

Well, it depends on the person, the gear they have access to, AND,
how valuable the data might be to them as to what methods they'll use
to retrieve it, if possible.


It's pretty clear by his descriptive theory that he was thinking
of physically opening the drive and moving things around. Not
swapping out the controller.

it may have sounded that way, but it's hard to believe anyone
would be foolish enough to even consider physically opening a hard
drive mechanism outside of a clean room, let alone actually try
it.

I've learned not to under estimate people, because I've seen people
make things much much worse attempting to perform a repair on their
own in IT and electrical too many times to count.

Sometimes, it doesn't result in catastrophic damage and the story can
be quite funny to listen to the owner/client tell it. Other times,
the fire department was necessary... So..

Your actual experience with the company is?

extensive. i've known about the company for more than 20 years,
i've met several of their techs at trade shows over the years and
talked with them at length* and i also know several people who
have had the unfortunate need to use their services. recovery was
100% (and $$$).

backups are *much* cheaper and also much faster to restore.
turnaround time can be as short as a minute or so.

* it was quite interesting to learn how they can handle recovery
from multiple drives in a raid array as well as from ssds,
skipping the ssd controller entirely.

Kewl Beans...



--
To prevent yourself from being a victim of cyber
stalking, it's highly recommended you visit he
https://tekrider.net/pages/david-brooks-stalker.php
================================================== =
Friends often desert you in time of need. Enemies can be found
anytime you need them. --Ben Lichtenberg

In article , Diesel
wrote:

if you don't have a non-windows system available, try spinrite:
https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

I have a legit regged copy of Spinrite 6...It's quite a program, but,
it's not a miracle worker. If the drives in rough shape (clicking
sounds) I dunno if I'd go that route first...As the last thing you want
to do is stress that drive further. It could indeed be a mechanical
failure in progress, and that can be very bad for the data on the
platters, IF, it's still intact.

he wants to try homebrew solutions, and of those, spinrite has a *much*
higher chance of success than physically opening the case and moving
platters, especially without it being done in a cleanroom.

if he actually wants the data, the best choice is a recovery company,
who is almost certain to recover it (they've recovered drives in far
worse condition), but as has been noted, it ain't cheap.

Spinrite is also a DOS native program; You can't make full use of it
under Windows.

that's the whole point. it's as close to the metal as it can get.

nospam
Thu, 03 May 2018
02:49:35 GMT in alt.windows7.general, wrote:

In article , Diesel
wrote:

if you don't have a non-windows system available, try spinrite:
https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

I have a legit regged copy of Spinrite 6...It's quite a program,
but, it's not a miracle worker. If the drives in rough shape
(clicking sounds) I dunno if I'd go that route first...As the
last thing you want to do is stress that drive further. It could
indeed be a mechanical failure in progress, and that can be very
bad for the data on the platters, IF, it's still intact.

he wants to try homebrew solutions, and of those, spinrite has a
*much* higher chance of success than physically opening the case
and moving platters, especially without it being done in a
cleanroom.

Umm, if the drive is making physical clicking noises and refusing to
read data, Spinrite isn't going to be able to do anything positive
for the drive. You seem to be very confused on what Spinrite can and
cannot do, and why. If you have failing sectors, and/or sectors
marked as bad, Spinrite might be able to help you recover some data.
For the sectors that are toast, it 'fills in' the missing data with
zero's. So, it doesn't provide a full recovery in all cases. There's
only so much you can do.

HOWEVER, Running spinrite on a drive that's making noises and
refusing to pull data outright will NOT help the drive. It can make
things worse, faster. Spinrites a nice program, written in pure
assembly language, but, even that doesn't give it magical powers over
the hard drive or mechanics of it.

if he actually wants the data, the best choice is a recovery
company, who is almost certain to recover it (they've recovered
drives in far worse condition), but as has been noted, it ain't
cheap.

It won't hurt anything by swapping the controller board and trying to
read from the drive. As I wrote previously. And, that's not a 'home
brew' fix, either.

Spinrite is also a DOS native program; You can't make full use of
it under Windows.

that's the whole point. it's as close to the metal as it can get.

I'm well aware of the advantage DOS has in so far as getting you very
close to the bare metal. Linux could also be subsituted for DOS with
the right software, but, that's besides the point.

While Spinrite is a nice utility, it's NOT a miracle worker and you
do NOT use it on a drive you think is outright failing; IT can AND
DOES stress the drive and that can make things alot worse, faster. It
also lessens the chance (when you give up) that a 'professional' data
recovery service can help you at this point.

Either swap the controller and give that a try, or, take the drive to
a professional company. Spinrite is the WRONG TOOL for this
particular job. I don't believe that him opening the drive enclosure
to get the data back is going to help a bit. Either a mechanical
component inside the drive has failed, or the controller board has.


--
To prevent yourself from being a victim of cyber
stalking, it's highly recommended you visit he
https://tekrider.net/pages/david-brooks-stalker.php
================================================== =
Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.

Very sorry for the delay in replying;
haven't been able to catch up on Usenet
the last couple of weeks.

To answer your question, it ended up
costing me $400.00 plus tax. He had
originally thought it would be about
$135.00 but it turned out to require
much more extensive work than he had
anticipated before he started on it.
He was quite straightforward about
it and obtained my approval before
he went ahead with it; there was no
after-the-fact bait-and-switch. I
was very impressed with his work and
his manner of doing business.


On 4/28/2018 12:57 AM, B00ze wrote:
On 2018-04-22 02:52, David Samuel Barr wrote:

I can recommend https://sherlockdatarecovery.com/
which last year recovered data for me from an
11-year-old WD drive which, right after producing
a clean SMART report, suddenly became completely
unreadable.

Thanks David. Do you recall how much you had to pay?

Thank you.
Best Regards,

Good day all.

Finally took the drives out of the old PC. The one that won't calibrate
anymore, the spindle makes an awful whine, but it seems to spin OK (last
time I checked SMART, there were no spin-up errors.) It was really going
to die soon no matter what. So right now it kicks the heads back and
forth for 5 minutes before giving up. I swapped the controller board
with another of the same model, made the same day. Now the drive kicks 2
or 3 times and settles down, and makes those "I'm reading a sector"
noises. Unfortunately, it is not enough, it never really becomes ready
so it never appears in Windows (I am forced to use a USB adapter, I
might be able to access it on a real IDE PC). I'd maybe have to swap
that tiny ROM chip between the boards, but I do not like where it is
located, it's going to be a pain using a soldering iron and I'm afraid
I'll un-solder half the board if I use a heat gun (never tried that on
electronics, and I don't think now is a good time to try.)

Since I'm not sure what's wrong, I'm not going to attempt swapping the
heads between my 2 drives. If I mess-up, I won't even know, because the
problem could be something other than the heads. So I'll be sending it
away. Found a place with a fixed price depending on hard drive size.
Since this is a really small drive, the price is good. I'll give'em the
donor drive too. I will report back.

Best Regards,

--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Memberavid-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/SPCA/Planetary-Society
oO-( )-Oo Funny, I don't remember being absent minded.

B00ze wrote:

So I'll be sending it away. Found a place with a fixed price depending
on hard drive size. Since this is a really small drive, the price is
good. I'll give'em the donor drive too. I will report back.

I don't think you ever mentioned the drive's size. What is it? And how
much did the unidentified repair service center they would charge? Be
interesting to know what they are charging per MB or GB. Do they have a
web site? Also be interesting would be for you to return here to say if
they repaired the drive okay or were able to read everything off the old
one to put on a new one.

In message , B00ze
writes:
[]
like where it is located, it's going to be a pain using a soldering
iron and I'm afraid I'll un-solder half the board if I use a heat gun
(never tried that on electronics, and I don't think now is a good time
to try.)
[]
You've found an alternative solution, but just for completeness: I know
what you mean about blowing away other components; some of those
resistors and capacitors look like large grains of salt! What we tended
to do when removing a chip with a heat gun where there are lots of
adjacent components was cover them (the nearby components, not the one
we're removing) with "Kapton" tape (I don't know if that's a trade name
- probably). It's heat-resistant adhesive tape - dark yellow in colour,
looks a bit coppery when still on the roll.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

If you bate your breath do you catch a lung fish? (Glynn Greenwood 1996-8-23.)

B00ze news May 2018 03:50:50 GMT in alt.windows7.general, wrote:

Good day all.

Finally took the drives out of the old PC. The one that won't
calibrate anymore, the spindle makes an awful whine, but it seems
to spin OK (last time I checked SMART, there were no spin-up
errors.) It was really going to die soon no matter what. So right
now it kicks the heads back and forth for 5 minutes before giving
up. I swapped the controller board with another of the same model,
made the same day. Now the drive kicks 2 or 3 times and settles
down, and makes those "I'm reading a sector" noises.
Unfortunately, it is not enough, it never really becomes ready so
it never appears in Windows (I am forced to use a USB adapter, I
might be able to access it on a real IDE PC). I'd maybe have to
swap that tiny ROM chip between the boards, but I do not like
where it is located, it's going to be a pain using a soldering
iron and I'm afraid I'll un-solder half the board if I use a heat
gun (never tried that on electronics, and I don't think now is a
good time to try.)

There's no point in swapping components on the boards themselves at
this point. Your drive has a mechanical issue and exchanging the ROM
isn't going to fix that.

Since I'm not sure what's wrong, I'm not going to attempt swapping
the heads between my 2 drives. If I mess-up, I won't even know,
because the problem could be something other than the heads. So
I'll be sending it away. Found a place with a fixed price
depending on hard drive size. Since this is a really small drive,
the price is good. I'll give'em the donor drive too. I will report
back.

Please do. If possible and they're willing to tell you, please share
what they determine the problem turned out being. Thanks!



--
To prevent yourself from being a victim of cyber
stalking, it's highly recommended you visit he
https://tekrider.net/pages/david-brooks-stalker.php
================================================== =
'We already *know* who your friends and family are.'-AT&T