Hard Drive Failure on my PC

[Got the Bug]

I turned my Dell laptop on last night and got a BAD message...."no hard drive detected." After spending 90 minutes on the phone with Dell, they concluded (what I already knew) that my hard drive was toast.

Dell is sending me a new hard drive. Wondering if anyone in the Bay Area (preferably the South Bay) has a positive experience/luck with one of these data recovery companies.

I found two in the South Bay. One is called We Recover Data on Zanker in San Jose. The other one is Disk Doctors on Oakmead in Sunnyvale.

[Greg tripp]

Sorry Doug,
Mine crashed last year and lost EVERYTHING! I had the geeks try to save what they could but everything was lost.

GOOD LUCK AND BEST WISHES

Greg

[Got the Bug]

Thanks Greg. I just took a look at Geek Squad to get an idea of what data recovery costs. They charge $599 to 1,599, depending on the severity of the drive damage. Yikes!!

[Randy Rosenberg]

Hi Doug, I know this doesn't help, but for you and everyone else who use compoopers, disk drive storage is cheap and abundant, so it's really easy to buy a second or third disk for back up purposes.

[computerworks]

Originally Posted by Got the Bug

Thanks Greg. I just took a look at Geek Squad to get an idea of what data recovery costs. They charge $599 to 1,599, depending on the severity of the drive damage. Yikes!!

That's because they just send it out to a third-party lab for recovery.

You can do that, too. ...without the markup.

We use Ontrack...they are good, they are expensive.

Data Recovery Services, Data Recovery Software, Data Loss Solutions - Ontrack Data Recovery

If the drive is dead at the interface level, there is not much you can do without expensive equipment.

[Got the Bug]

Randy - Thanks. I'm definitely going to look into buying a back-up drive.

Ron - Thanks for tip!

The only good news is that I finished my taxes yesterday, printed a copy, and e-filed before the drive crapped out!

[vanoochka]

Bummer, Doug,

I went to the Carbonite online back up service after my last disk crash. It's relatively cheap, persistent, doesn't affect performance and needs no additional hardware. As a backup to that backup, I upload all my (many, many) photos to my free Snapfish account.

How's the car coming along? I just found out that my headers and pipes that were promised for last week are now ready. They are the last items on the punch list, so I'm hoping to get out this coming weekend.

Your data recovery success will depend greatly on the cause of the disk failure, so I'm hoping it wasn't a bad one.

Chuck

[Got the Bug]

I'm hoping to have my car back by the end of the month. They just need to install a new clutch and throw the transmission back in.

I'll check out Carbonite

[Ronbo]

If you can get the exact same hard drive and have a small torx screwdriver try swapping the controller board. there will be one connector in the middle for platter motor, arm motor and head connection. (got a 50% chance here) Data recovery companies will whack you for $500 and this is the first thing they try.

If the drive isn't detected this sounds like the controller fried and the mechanicals are still good. Bad mechanicals will give a SMART error (as well as nasty sounds).

Laptop drives are prone to higher failure as they're exposed to bumps and temp extremes. Well worth it to get a USB external drive for $100 and back up often. If you want brute reliablity and speed put a SSD (solid state disk) in there. Very expensive but only true server grade drives (also $$$) share 2 million hour failure ratings.

[Randy Rosenberg]

Originally Posted by Ronbo

If you can get the exact same hard drive and have a small torx screwdriver try swapping the controller board...

I thought one needed to pay close attention to the environment where one chose to open up a hard drive. Aren't the tolerences between head and disk platter measured on the molecular level? If so, then doesn't one need to be in like a clean room to be successful here?

Maybe I wrong... (hint: wouldn't be the first time )

[ccomt]

Got The Bug,

Chances are your problem is with the controller board as Ronbo suggested. Replacing the controller board doesn't require opening the drive so you don't need a "clean" room. If that doesn't work, check out
Gillware Inc. Data Recovery -- these guys do great work and are very reasonable.

[dlang14]

Brother from another mother.....

Give me a ring or an email, I'm glad to try to help (I'm in Boston this week though). As others have suggested swapping out the controller board is pretty easy. Disk recovery is bucks, and just so you understand what you'll get back it'll be some of your files, and some garbage files. Don't expect a recovery shop to get 100% of your data.

Daryl

[Got the Bug]

Hey Bro,

Boston sounds cold right now. Get out of there before it starts snowing!

Thanks for the offer. I moved through the anger phase today and (after finding out the cost of recovery) have blown off any plans to send it out to a recovery shop.

I'll give you a call or email you when the new hard drive arrives.

[289fia_cobra]

doug, I do have a "spare" Hitachi" 20GB drive. Rather old but functional from what I'm told. Problem is, your Dell likely has a controller for a higher capacity drive so I don't think it'll work.

These days with USB keys hitting 8GB capacity, there's no reason you couldn't just off load critical data onto a USB key. It's effectively solid-state but IF you want good archival media, I'd burn a CDROM. I've done this for my old VW website so if I ever lose the source on the HDD, or if Comcasts loses it (can't see how though), I can recover.

Need to do that for my Cobra site now since the updates aren't happening frequently anymore. That and all the family photos. Then store them in my vault.