Question for th IT crowd

[Redneck Rocket]

Alright chaps, ladies.

So my hard drive went 'ping' the other day and I had to have it replaced. Unfortunately because I am a grade A tt I did not have every thing I needed backed up. The place that swapped the drive for me said that it was the motor that turns the drive that had packed up so it should be recoverable with the right equipment (ie - something that can spin up the drive manually and get the info off). The told me they knew a firm that did it but suspected it would cost £300-400.

I've got half a mind to take a wander down Tottenham Court road and see if someone will do it on the cheap for cash. Any suggestions?

Cheers

[john_p]

It's unlikely, the drive needs to be opened in a clean environment and the exact part replaced - it is not a trivial operation at all.

[AlexKP]

That's a really bad idea.

Do you want any old Tom, Dick or Mohammed looking through your personal stuff and retrieving your banking details?

[TurricanII]

As above, the disk needs to be open in a sealed whiteroom - hundreds of thousands of quid to set one up! Speak to and send it to Ontrack: £75 diagnosis fee, then recovery cost between £500 and £1500 depending on the damage. I have sent a few to them, they average £900 and get the data back to you on a new hard disk. After you spend the £75, they tell you what you can get from the disk. At that point you can tell them not to bother, but you obviously don't get your £75 back and you pay postage for your drive.

[off_again]

Another vote for Ontrack. They arent the cheapest, but their results are usually very good indeed. I have used them in the past and I know plenty of other people who have used them. There are others who are cheaper but it is down to how much is the data worth. Given that they will probably get 95% of the data off and will then dump it on to a couple of CD's, you cant go wrong.

For the smalll investigation free, there is not much to loose.

[Scraggles]

op has to ask if the data is really that important, if it is, then pay for it

one hopes he will get a DVD burner to make monthly backups, discs are so cheap these days, negligible cost

maybe even having data only drives ?

[Zad]

Rather than the motor, it may just be the servo drive chip that controls the motor. I would imagine data recovery specialists are capable of investigating that possibility, which would make recovery a lot cheaper.