OT Computer folks

[Coralfreak]

I know this is an odd topic for this forum, but I know some of you are into PC's professionally, I REALLY need your help.

We had a transformer go out this last weekend and I believe it created a power surge, long story short it took out my PC and severely damaged the hard drive.

There are many data recovery services online, my question is, do any of you know how good these places are?? Can anyone recommend someone?? I realize its my own fault for not backing this information up, but there are tons of family pics on the drive, I'd like to find a way to get those back if it is possible.

Thanks,

Allen

 

[waverz]

Does your pc see the drive at all? If so you can use this software...it works pretty good, you can even get data back after quick format.

Good luck.

 

[jbrunken]

I don't have any services I can recommend, but I can tell you that if the damage is limited to the electronics of the drive, the chances of them being able to recover most of your data is pretty good.

On the other hand, if it failed in a way that caused platter damage, the chances of getting back something useful goes down a lot.

Unfortunately, most of those places operate knowing that people are desperate, so they charge a LOT of money. If you search you might be able to find one that's more reasonable in situations where there is no platter damage (all they have to do is remove the drive controller and hook it up to thier own controllers to recover the data).

Hope that helps...

-JB

 

[Coralfreak]

The drive is unuseable as is, it shows the read/write head is damaged, too many errors etc. I think is mostly electronic damage. My fear of messing with it is that it will make matters worse, thats where you end damaging the surface.

JB, Yeah it isnt cheap, but I dont know if going with the "low cost" guys is a good idea here either. I've talked to a couple places and from the sounds of it, you may only have one chance to get it off the drive. Cost is anywhere from $500-2500!! But those pictures are to some degree invaluable to us, you cant replace a picture of your kids walking for the first time, ya know. I learned a hard lesson on backups.

 

[jbrunken]

I hear ya. My wife had the exact same thing happen and we lost a TON of pictures of my oldest daughter... We tried the recovery thing, but it was going to cost $1400 with no guaranty of success.

Luckily most of the good pictures had been emailed around so with the help of our relatives we were able to recover most of what we wanted. Now we do nightly scheduled backups to multiple locations for all of our media files.

-JB

 

[Coralfreak]

Wow, no guarantee! The couple places I talked to will not charge if they cannot recover the data, so thats a good thing. The place that seemed the most helpful is called DriveSavers?

 

[natec]

What type of drive is it? Sometimes, if you suspect it is electrical and not physical, you can swap the circuit board on the drive for one that you know is good. I've done this a few times, and it was good enough to get the data off the drive at least.

 

[musty baby]

Allen-

Had the same thing happen with a drive that had 3000+ pictures from my time spent in australia, AND the spare drive I used for backup at the time, which I had left in the computer by mistake. I took the drive into a computer repair place here in Ames, they simply plugged the electronics board from a different (same model) drive and recovered everything. Cost a little over $100. Even if they hadn't been able to recover anything, $100 was worth a shot. I'd recommend going that route, maybe call a few repair places around the area and see if they can try to recover the data, see how much it'll cost, etc.

 

[musty baby]

By the way, allen, the frags we picked up from you are gorgeous. Just got my 20ks in the mail the other day and they are just ridiculous, your frags, as well as some of my other stuff, is shining like I'd have never believed. Thanks a bunch. Sorry to hear of your computer woes.

 

[Coralfreak]

Its a Western Digital 80GB drive. This may mean more to you guys than me, the error codes were 0007 and 0225.

The computer shop here in town, all one of them , tells me they cant do much. They were going to try and see if they could slave it out, which is what I thought of doing, to see if they could get anything off of it.

Question is, could that cause much more damage??

 

[Coralfreak]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9080501#post9080501 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ryansholl
By the way, allen, the frags we picked up from you are gorgeous. Just got my 20ks in the mail the other day and they are just ridiculous, your frags, as well as some of my other stuff, is shining like I'd have never believed. Thanks a bunch. Sorry to hear of your computer woes.

Glad to hear you like them, at least something is going good

 

[jbrunken]

You might look on E-Bay to see if you can find the EXACT same model drive for dirt cheap. If you do find the exact same drive, the only thing you need to know in order to swap out the control cards is how to use a screw driver!

-JB

 

[natec]

Does the drive tick or make any distinguishable noises? If not, it's probably not the drive, it's most likely electrical. In that case trying to slave it probably isn't going to hurt anything. It's worth a shot, but I think you're going to have to swap the board or use recovery software.

 

[Coralfreak]

It does tick, thats what scares me.

 

[natec]

yeah, that is a bit scary. Where did the error codes come from? From a diagnostic utility?

 

[Coralfreak]

I am assuming it was a utility, they were given to me by the computer shop, they are Western Digital codes. I know the 225 means "too many errors".

 

[natec]

Bummer... At this point you have to ask yourself what that stuff is worth to you.

If it's worth the big bucks, then I would send it off to a recovery specialist. On-track comes to mind, they've recovered multiple drives for our company, but they can get pricey.

If you can't or don't want to spend that much, you can try to slave it or swap the board. Not without risk mind you, but it might work and you wouldn't have to pay the big money.

Odds are that even if a slave or swap didn't work, a specialist would still be able to do a recovery. But you are taking a risk by trying a slave or swap.

 

[Pygmey]

Sounds like you had a head crash. We have used ontrack here at work. Might do a search for them. They are really good but expensive

 

[Coralfreak]

GOOD NEWS!! I got the hard drive back, slaved it into my other PC and I have pulled all the pics off of it!! I am not to impressed the local shop could not have done that!! I dont know much, but its not exactly difficult to put in a hard drive as a slave.

Question, how do I get into my user profile on the old drive, it was password protected under my profile, now it wont allow any access, any ideas??

 

[natec]

Awesome! Glad that worked for you. As far as getting into your old profile, I would think that as long as you are logged into the PC that you have it slaved on as an administrator, you should be able to get to your old data. If it was XP or Win2k just browse to slave drive letter like C or D, whatever the slave drive is labled then go to documents and settings, then the user name, this is where all of your old data would be. If it doesn't let you in, but doesn't challenge for a username or password, it might just be corrupted. HTH.