Looking for a data recovery firm

Hi guys,

I dropped my brother's laptop on the floor and now the hard drive is not working.

We are in Vancouver now and he needs it up and running before leaving for U.S. on 20th this month (in about 10 days).

Fearing that my attempts would further the damage of the hard drive, I think it'd be best for me to leave it to the firms.

Can anyone recommend any reliable and hopefully affordable (under $200 - I'm just a student) data recovery firm nearby Vancouver? Or any alternatives?

Thanks

 

You may want to try yourself or get a friend to help. I firm will run well into the thousands. From what I understand the services do not come cheap.

 

Not to mention, hard drive recovery firms may not be able to get any data back, and you usually pay them in advance.

And there's no firm that I know of that charges $200. More like $2000. They don't come cheap.

Unfortunately, the data on that drive probably will never been seen again, unless the platters are undamaged and the drive could possibly be repaired. Which is unlikely.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=97197

This is kind of the reverse of what you're wanting to acheive, but some of these guys seem to know how to do it...

What's the condition of the HDD? Is it cracked? Have you tried connecting it to another computer? Have you taken it to a repair shop?

Data recovery firms service large corporations who need valuable info for business purposes recovered... not your little brothers MP3 collection.

 

My sister in law's hard drive failed a few months ago. By failing I mean something burned on it and smoke was coming out of it. It wasn't working at all. The father in law bought another hard drive, very similar model (not even exactly the same, but that would be better), opened them up and switched the plates inside. Plugged it in and it worked. We were able to recover her previous data: tons of pictures of her two kids when they were babies. Since her husband very ignorant, stupid and lazy, he didn't want to learn how to burn cds so the pictures weren't backed up anywhere. He still hasn't learned since last time we talked to him, his pc was still slow, full of garbage and he destroyed the cd writer drive somehow.

You would think that since he doesn't know how to properly use a pc, he would print the pictures out as soon as he puts them on the pc... but anyway.

If you feel like having fun, buy a same model hard drive, swap the disks inside and plug it in an old pc that you don't care much for... just in case. It should work if you do it right, worked for us.

 

Are you sure the hard drive is the issue? You dropped the laptop... something else could have broke. Before spending all that money I would recommend test the drive in another machine.

 

Do it again and post a video of it, or simply quit wasting time and space with ridiculous posts

 

I fail to see how ridiculous it is and why I should do it again and post a video to prove it works.

We had an old 8GB hard drive that failed, we found a solution an it worked. I'm not quite sure if newer hard drives would work with our technique, but if he doesn't want to loose the data and wants to spend around 200$, a new hard drive would fit the bill. If it doesn't work, then it's like spending 150$ for a recovery company and finding out they couldn't do anything for you. If it works you get your data back and you can always put back the new drive together and still use it.

What I find ridiculous is your unwarranted attack. How about you spend more time trying to find a solution for the guy instead of attack others for no good reason?

 

the reason for my response is because what you are stating is impossible, hard drives a very delicate and the idea of popping them open and swapping out the platters is absurd for numerous reasons, you should do some research on the internal workings of a hard drive, these boards are to share useful and practical information, I hope a mod deletes your post as it is gross misinformation and could cause someone property damage or even bodily injury

 

You know what....

I'll get the hard drives from the father in law this week end and I'll make the video just for you.

Just noticed you gave me bad rep because of my post too, very nice!

So yeah, the world is flat! burn down the witches!! what he says is unpossible!!

anyway, not what I wanted to do this week-end, but your inability to accept that it might be possible is forcing me to prove you wrong.


Note: Of course, this may not work with all hard drives. We were probably lucky and found a pair that worked well for this. You might damage your hard drive, but hey, it's dead anyway. As for the money you paid for the new one, ask yourself if your data is worth that amount.

 

On a single platter drive, there there might be a SLIM chance of success, but the poster said "plates" multiple platters have their locations hard encoded on them, and sectors span across multiple platters, unscrewing the spindle to remove them would instantly put them out of alignment and your data is toast.
Not to mention any impurities in the air, finger prints, dust, condensation from breath,humidity, all the above would be fatal.

If it were as easy as Rbdesign states, dont you think this would be a common place practice in the enthusiast community by now, it isnt for a reason, that reason being at best a 99.9% failure rate and the total destruction of the data.

 

I'm pretty sure it's the hard drive, ran Dell's Diagnostic Tool and found out it's the case.

I booted up using another drive and couldn't access the damaged drive even though it appeared in My Computer. When I clicked it, it appeared to be "unformatted"

Tried running PC Inspector, but all the files that the program found was corrupted.

Regarding changing platter thing, I'm afraid I don't have sufficient knowledge or guts to do that; furthermore, I heard that doing it in an unclean environment might damage the drive furthermore.

I know data recovery firms are very expensive; but undeniably it's the safest and surest approach compared to other alternatives. I'm kind of torn between recovering the data or not: 1. The size isn't that big, maybe around 10 gigs, but the pictures, videos, and maybe documents (assignments) are invaluable to my brother. 2. The cost is really staggering.

I can only hope to find somebody experienced enough to handle this, hopefully through an acquaintance. Anyway, thanks everybody for replying. I gotta try that Ontrack software. Please feel free to advise

 

good luck, software seems your best bet, and in the future hopefully your brother( and yourself) will implement a regularbackup scheme, with the prices of notebook hardrives, you can get up to 120 gig top brand for under 100 bucks if you shop around, its very easy and affordable to make a recovery hardrive you can just slip in the notebook and be up and running withiin minutes, and have very minor if any data loss(homework/office files should be backed up on a usb key or other removable storage on a daily basis). I use my original 60 gig drive that came with my m1210 as a backup, I upgraded to a 120 WD scorpio and bought a $15 vantac sata enclousure, I keep 40 gig for windows and core applications and the rest for data transfers between my pc's,I use another 200 gig 3.5" desktop hardrive with a $10 dollar enclosure to keep photos/music/videos/etc I update the windows image from my laptop every month or so on a rainy day, you can do it in half an hour to an hour, and if your main drive fails, you have one primed and ready to go, and a hd swap on my m1210 takes 2 minutes tops, the hardest part is finding a small enough screwdriver for the screws the first go around,after you find one just keep it in your bag