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Ask HN: who would you recommend for failed hard drive data recovery?

3 points by badmash69 ↗ HN
I have a physical hard drive failure. Google search for data recovery brings up a zillion services proving data recovery -- they all seem to smell fishy. They all have some sort of Class A or something clean room facility.I was on the phone with one service -- their quote was from US$3k to US$7k. Is this normal ? Also is there anything else I should consider while selecting a service.

16 comments

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bdfh42
At least the quote you got is more honest than many. I tried one once that quoted a reasonable fee but once they got their hands on the drive it appeared that (despite the telephone conversation lies) the initial fee was for an evaluation only - now they wanted the big bucks.

Interestingly, I declined and asked for the drive to be returned - when it came back I found I was able to mount it and extract the contents - it turns out the journey was good for it. I am certainly not advising giving the drive a good shake but it worked for me.

JonathanWCurd
2-5 k is normal if the drive is so far gone they need to take it apart to get to the data.

CBL Data worked for me in the past but That was a few years ago. They will evaluate your drive for free and tell you what they can get off data wise and the cost. If you want to proceed they then do the work if not they send you drive back. They were suggested to me by a seagate support person at the time.

Have you tried to pull the data off with a recovery software using the drive as a slave.

Are you on OSX, windows, or Linux?

badmash69
Linux But I have tried pretty much all disk recovery techniques. It seems to be drive chip issue.
pbhjpbhj
Is there nothing in the logs about the drive - eg at boot is it read, are their errors or is it just ignored? Does the BIOS recognise a drive is present or do you get a "no operating system" type warning?
JonathanWCurd
Who makes the drive? Many of the manufacturers have diagnostic programs you can run to test if its motherboard or read head issues.

If its not making funny sounds (read head / platter damage) you may be able to swap the drive chip guts with another similar drive and get the data back yourself without sending it in. If its under warranty you can get a replacement from the manufacturer if not eBay might have one or some of the other asset recovery chop shops you can find parts for computers servers etc.

AngeloAnolin
Normally, the manufacturer of your hard disk drive provides data recovery services for a fee. You should contact them first since they should be the ones whom you could trust to be able to retrieve the contents of your hard disc.
badmash69
Good suggestion.My Drive is Seagate Barracuda. I am taking with Seagate data recovery.
kls
I have used drive savers before (that was years ago), they have been around for a long time. As well most drive manufactures offer recovery services. Granted they are usually just subing it out, but they do chose reputable vendors. There is a lot of sleaze in this industry so be careful it is worse that auto mechanic scams by 10 fold. As well a high price would not scare me as much as a low ball quote. A low ball is a guarantee that they are just going to try to run some software tools on it. A high quote does not guarantee that they are not so it is not a great indicator.
patrickgzill
What exactly has happened to it?

If it "clicks" or seems to spin up then stop when you apply power (put in an external drive enclosure perhaps to control power separately), then possibly something on the "motherboard" of the drive has failed and the drive platters are fine.

In that case, buying a drive of the same manufacturer, size and model number as close as possible in firmware level to the failed one, and swapping the motherboard may work for you, as it did for me.

If there is physical damage to the platters you will need to spend a lot.

The two most reputable that I know of are OnTrack Data Recovery (http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/) and Drive Savers (http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/).

badmash69
Well it seems to be a controler chip or interface failurevon the drive. The motor is spinning; there are no clicks. But the drive is not "seen" by the BIOS.

Gparted etc. software based solutions failed as the drive could not be see,

I took the drive out , put that on my eSata external drivevay -- same problem -- the drive would spin but no the drive would be invisible.

patrickgzill
In my case, I searched for a donor drive that was as close as possible to what I had, on eBay, bought it and that worked. It will certainly be the cheapest thing to try.

It sounds like the mechanical part of the drive is working fine, and it is reasonable to assume the data is still there; so swapping motherboards is the least expensive and least stressful way to go.

badmash69
Your suggestion is awesome . I have never done motherboard swapping on a haddrive-- but could you please blog about it and post a link here. Right now, given the state of mind I am in, I am too nervous to try it on my own.
portman
I recommend OnTrack. I first used them 15 years ago, so I can assert that they're not fishy. Their clean room is in Reston, Virginia.

I've paid anywhere from $700 - $1800 per incident, and always had close to 100% data recovery.

I'm sure there are other great services out there as well, but I've been loyal to OnTrack ever since they recovered 2GB of digitized home video in 1996.

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

pbhjpbhj
Ontrack wrote the software we used to use at a computer recycling centre for drive testing - the software was bought by one of the major disk drive makers and badged as their own disk testing solution. Based on this alone, assuming they're the same company, I'd trust them more than others.
drallison
I have used http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/ to recover a disk which failed due to mechanical head failure. The cost was O($3000), expensive, but less costly than trying to reconstruct the lost data. I have also used Steve Gibson's spinrite program (http://www.grc.com/intro.htm) which does very low level recovery and repair. YMMV depending upon exactly what kind of error you have.
badmash69
Thank you all for your suggestions!!

I am going with Seagate Data recovery; they have inofrmade me that the Seagate Barracuda Drive that I have has a known firmware issue. They will fix it(firmware flash ) for free in approximately 4 weeks. Or approx $600 if I want to get it done in 2 to 5 days.

Now that is a a cool business model : make money even with bad quality !!