data recovery companies

[slowSSer]

ok, so after 5 years of love and abuse (two of which it was my work computer) my mac's hard drive finally gave up the ghost.

the issue: there's 5 years of pictures (2x yosemite, at least 4 to sedona, pics of pets when they were little, several oregon MTB trips.....etc.)

not to mention my wife's been using it for work.

any companies y'all have used?

and finally, HELP!!!!!

[Sprockethead]

Will the drive spin up or are the bearings shot? If it powers on and you can hear the drives spinning up, try installing the HD in another Mac and see if you can access the data to back it up.

If you have to send it out to a professional data recovery company, it's gonna cost $$$. Most companies will not charge you to recover the data until they actually recover it so don't prepay for the service. I've haven't had to use a data recovery company yet, but I did send one of the exec's in my company to Best Buy to recover his music files on his laptop. They were able to recover his files and he was pretty happy with the service.

I use Mac911 for servicing Macs when I can't get out to the west side. 310-581-4911, ask for Felix Rosario. I'm sure they do data recovery.


Good luck!

[slowSSer]

calling soon!

[Burner]

these guys are the industry standard for Data recovery, they can get almost anything off any drive, even with a lot of damage.... but $$$$$$$$.

Data Recovery | Email Data Recovery by Ontrack

but if it's important to you, I wouldn't leave it to chance.

I've used them several times in the past, super fast turnaround, and they never failed to deliver.

[Kid A]

dat sux. when i remember i periodically back up all my stuff with maxtor external. memory is so cheap these days

don't know sh!t about inner workings of computer so can't help with recovery but sharing some of my pics to help u start over (see below) even made it so you can personalize 'em

Include:
Yosemite
Sedona
Oregon (boarding @ mt hood, best i can do sorry)
Pet (she's a bit of an exhibitionist, again sorry)
Anything missing???

j/k wish u best of luck getting everything back!! lost stuff in the past and it sux

[slowSSer]

thanks for the effort!

i do have this one of the annoying little dog.

[Winger]

This is crazy, but put the drive in a zip-loc bag and freeze it overnight. Then quickly install in your computer and copy the data from the old drive to the new.

My IT department recovered my laptop hard drive this way.

[andino]

Originally Posted by Winger

This is crazy, but put the drive in a zip-loc bag and freeze it overnight. Then quickly install in your computer and copy the data from the old drive to the new.

My IT department recovered my laptop hard drive this way.

woah serious? I've had my slave 250GB sitting on my desk for the last 4/5 months cuz it crashed and i couldn't recover the info. i'm gonna try this lol

[LBmtb]

Here's another one of those pricey companies that offer recovery services. Data Recovery by DriveSavers | Hard Drive Data Recovery

[cH4os]

There is a local joint right here in town, I've used them for a ReiserFS disk.

Data Recovery by OC Data Recovery, Inc. Hard Drive Repair Service

There are numerous tools that can be used... but it takes a lot of time to recover from bad blocks... All problems can be resolved using a free tool, if your patient.

I would say MAC OSX using HPFS would probably run between $500 to $1000

Is that what your running? hpfs?

And the freezer resolution does work depending on the issue...

Does it spin? did you check for bad blocks? or the boot strap?

If you have a Linux Boot Disk or PPC Im assuming you can boot and use recover tools to check the disk... Linux will have the best tools. I would first download and burn a Linux Boot Disk, like a live cd. Gentoo Linux -- Gentoo Linux News

put the tools you need on a usb drive, and run them from there...

you should be able to transfer the block level if is spins.
if it doesnt spin your actually fine too, just transfer the disk to a working drive.

Good luck!

[slowSSer]

an update:

the drive is FINE!!! one of my best friends is a compunerd who workd over at broadcom. he took the drive home, DL'd some serious molly-maid type software and it works fine!

how he put it: a hard drive is full of many folders. to get to these folders, you need a table of contents. your table of contents got deleted.

so, there you go. now I'm off to find a 80gb external HD for backup purposes.

[Kid A]

Originally Posted by slowSSer

an update:

the drive is FINE!!! one of my best friends is a compunerd who workd over at broadcom. he took the drive home, DL'd some serious molly-maid type software and it works fine!

how he put it: a hard drive is full of many folders. to get to these folders, you need a table of contents. your table of contents got deleted.

so, there you go. now I'm off to find a 80gb external HD for backup purposes.

good stuff!!! must be a world of relief

whether currently needed you'll prob end up getting bigger exteral drive as can prob double that size for minimal add'l cost

[Shannon]

You might want to check out Kodak.com in addition to saving pics to your hard drive. I download my pics to that site and then save them to my computer. I had a computer crash but still had my pics saved on Kodak.com. Just a thought.

[slowSSer]

Originally Posted by Kid A

good stuff!!! must be a world of relief

whether currently needed you'll prob end up getting bigger exteral drive as can prob double that size for minimal add'l cost

no kidding- it's got a 80gb, and i figure i can get at leat a 100gb for 100-150 bucks.

major world of relief- all of my wifes company's stuff is intact.