Data recovery question

[kaleb2hlp]

I posted last week about my computer (15" pbook g4 1.33 GHz) crashing. I called Mac outfitters today to see how the repairs/stauts was on my machine. They said that the hard drive needs replaced as well as the optical drive (I just had a new optical drive installed 6 months ago!). They said they tried a few ways to get the data off but that they need to try several other things, too. Apparently there hasn't been any data retrieved thus far. As you can imagine I’m really nervous/upset/worried about this. I have heard through several people that there is always a way to get the data off and that sometimes you have to send it away to a company that specializes in this. I guess my question is: do these places really work? I really don't care what the price is...I just need all of my lost data. Any thoughts or recommendations of a place to send my hard drive if Mac outfitters cannot successfully mine my data?

[steve1958]

Re: Data recovery question

Our drive crashed and we went through the same anxiety.

Looked all over the web for a solution, found a shop locally (Austin), the guy retrieived all the data - cost was $750 which was a bargain considering the content was important. I was concerned about sending the drive away not having any idea of the quality of the potential work. Additionally, most companies gave really loose, uncertan qutes. Minimum is $450 but it could go as high $2,000 depending on the work we might need to do - for example. Some companies had flat fees - it was just all over the board.

Apparently a tech takes appart the drive in clean enviroment and then uses various methods to capture the data. In our case the drive was frozen, but the surface was not damaged.

The big lesson - back up na dback up often. After thsi we bought a 500 GB external hard drive and back everything up regularly.

Best of luck

[harrison_29raul]

Re: Data recovery question

Yes, these places really work. They use techniques which can include the disassembly of the drive and direct examination of the drive surface. Depending on just what is necessary (it is unlikely that your drive requires anything that extreme, but hard drives that have been through fires often do), it could be several thousand dollars. I most certainly hope more conventional methods of data recovery will prove effective. There are many companies doing data recovery services. Try Salvage Recovery Lab. I contacted them once and I got my problem solved. They got 90% of my data back. I was extremely happy to get my data back. You can call them at 1 203-973-0242. I think you will have to send the drive physically.

[zuriatman]

Re: Data recovery question

The best and safest way to recover data from a corrupted drive is to use a program called "Norton Ghost" available from the Norton Symantex anti virus software company.

You will need to buy a new hard disk which is relatively cheap nowadays and Norton Ghost will recover and transfer yur data free of any viruses and other *********s.

You will however need to buy the program as well. All told it will still be much cheaper than the US750 bargain price your repair shop quoted.

[Vola]

Re: Data recovery question

Have you not tried any data recovery software for MAC. You can at least give a try to recover data using Stellar Phoenix Macintosh data recovery software, recovers data from damaged, deleted, or corrupted volumes and even from initialized disks.
Download the demo from: http://www.stellarinfo.com/mac-data-recovery.htm
See if the demo shows the recovered data or not.
If not then you can send your hard drive to some data recovery service company. Even you can consult Sellar Information; they also provide data recovery services. Or you can talk to the support (http://www.stellarinfo.com/technical_support.htm) and discuss your problem with them at the toll free number.
Hope they might be helpful.

[Collectors-info]

Re: Data recovery question

Don’t know if this is any help. Its from the same site that gives us the pixresizer.
Its a freebie.

http://www.recuva.com/

Good luck.

[The Fixer]

Re: Data recovery question

Attempting diy data recovery is very risky. Zuriatman is partly correct about Norton Ghost, but you must be very careful when using Ghost. For example, you could ghost the destination drive to the source drive. Result? total disaster, you would have overwritten your data with whatever was on the drive you were going to save to. Some versions of ghost identify the drives as drive1: drive2: and so on. The drive number refers to the disk controller that the drive is plugged into as well as the drive setting (primary, secondary) or the position on the cable if you are using cable select.
Norton Ghost will not work on a drive which has any kind of spin fault or head fault. Ghost can be set to ignore bad sectors, this can very effectively recover drives with bad sectors. DO NOT try recovery methods on your original drive. If Ghost will work with your drive, make a disk copy to another drive, then perform any recovery needed on the copied drive. You should never risk the data on your original drive. No professional data recovery service would!!