hard drive data recovery - dublin area (1 Viewer)

[quaidox]

howerya thumpsters,
i have a 3.5 inch sata hard drive that has failed and i need to get the data off it if possible. tried connecting the drive to another pc directly to the system board and even though the drive is recognised in device manager windows cannot access the data on the drive. tried the ultimate boot cd as well, no joy there either. so the next step is to take it to the recovery professionals and hopefully they can get the data off it, so i was wondering if anyone has used a recovery company in the dublin area that have been successful with recovering data from failed drives and at a reasonable price? thanx.

 

[pete]

howerya thumpsters,so i was wondering if anyone has used a recovery company in the dublin area that have been successful with recovering data from failed drives

yep - try http://www.criticaldata.ie/

and at a reasonable price? thanx.

nope. i was quoted about €800 or something. did it DIY in the end.

 

[quaidox]

cheers pete, i have already got a quote from them, between 400-650, steep!! but better than 800 i guess!!
how did you manage to do it diy??

 

[D0njo]

If it's still recognised in device manager maybe try something like this?

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

 

[pete]

cheers pete, i have already got a quote from them, between 400-650, steep!! but better than 800 i guess!!
how did you manage to do it diy??

turned out it was a known bug in 1TB seagate 7200.11 drives

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it went again (third time) a couple of weeks ago so i redid it last night, as it happens.

I then had to use Recuva to get at the 30,000 photos on it because windows wouldn't see the partition table.

i should probably put the fixed firmware on it now...

 

[quaidox]

cheers for the replies lads. never tried recuva donjo, just assumed it would not work if windows could not access the drive, so will give that a shot tomorrow.
wow pete, fair play for following that vid, thats some low level shit right there! and very entertaining too!!:>>

 

[pete]

cheers for the replies lads. never tried recuva donjo, just assumed it would not work if windows could not access the drive, so will give that a shot tomorrow.
wow pete, fair play for following that vid, thats some low level shit right there! and very entertaining too!!:>>

check if yours is a 7200.11. They're made by seagate but mine is branded Maxtor.

Anyway if recuva doesn't work try this one - http://www.z-a-recovery.com/zar-data-recovery-software.htm

 

[quaidox]

thanks a mill pete, will defo give ZAR a run as well. The disk is a samsung, will check if it's a 7200.11 tomorrow, too late to be getting stuck into this now!!

 

[pete]

thanks a mill pete, will defo give ZAR a run as well. The disk is a samsung, will check if it's a 7200.11 tomorrow, too late to be getting stuck into this now!!

Ah it won't be if it's a samsung.

If the drive is appearing in windows, but not readable, then this might help too: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

You should probably clone or take an image of the disk before doing anything.

 

[quaidox]

cheers pete, but testdisk is on the ultimate boot cd and i ran that and it did not recognise the disk at all....

 

[jimmybreeze]

These lads might be able to hook you up http://laser-computers.com/
(just opposite the central mental hospital) theyve sorted out two of my computers,and recovered data from a dodgy external drive for a lad I know

 

[quaidox]

cheers jimmybreeze, 95 euro sounds a lot better than 650, but if it's only software based recovery tools they use i don't think they will be successful...
i tried recuva on the disk but it just stopped pretty much straight away and said unable to read MFT.
Am running ZAR over it now, it been running for 2 hours and has identified 6 data fragments, 205 MB each. Seems to be stuck at 22% at the mo, but will leave it running overnight and hopefully it can find more data fragments than can be recovered.....
if it can read data fragments, would this indicate that the read/wite heads are ok and it's the platters themselves that are damaged??

 

[pete]

cheers jimmybreeze, 95 euro sounds a lot better than 650, but if it's only software based recovery tools they use i don't think they will be successful...
i tried recuva on the disk but it just stopped pretty much straight away and said unable to read MFT.
Am running ZAR over it now, it been running for 2 hours and has identified 6 data fragments, 205 MB each. Seems to be stuck at 22% at the mo, but will leave it running overnight and hopefully it can find more data fragments than can be recovered.....
if it can read data fragments, would this indicate that the read/wite heads are ok and it's the platters themselves that are damaged??

did you change the Recuva options so it scans for non-deleted files? or failing that a 'deep scan'?

ZAR can be excruciatingly slow alright, but you can tweak the settings to tell it what to do when it gets to bad sectors or whatever. it's a good few months since i used it but if i remember correctly you can also save the scanned disk info and load it back up for subsequent data recovery, rather than rescanning the whole disk again.

 

[quaidox]

no i didn't do any changes to the recuva option, cheers, might give it a go again.
Yeah ZAR stalled at around 22 % and stopped responding in windows, so i have kicked it off again and will leave it alone to run overnight without me bothering it. not looking good tho, only got to 21 % again after 2 hours...about 5 sectors recoverable , but only if the scan completes........

 

[pete]

I'd actually kill it & retry recuva with that option selected first.

 

[quaidox]

left it running overnight and it got no further than 21% so no joy there. am trying to run recuva now in deep scan mode and it's started the scan but has not moved from 0% for the last hour. time to admit defeat methinks??

 

[pete]

deep scan is last resort

just tick on the "scan for non-deleted files" box

 

[quaidox]

yeah have that ticked, it's going nowhere, time to give up. thanks for all the advice anyways folks!

 

[pete]

well i wouldn't give up quite yet

there's a program from them ZAR people called ZLON for cloning drives - give that a lash, then scan the image it makes with ZAR

 

[quaidox]

thanks pete, will give that a go.
on a positive note, i stopped the recuva scan there as i am heading out to go see therapy later, and recuva recovered one file, a toshiba logo image!! that was after scanning for 2 hours, but still there's a glimmer of hope for it right??