Hard drive recovery prices

N

neokeelo

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 9, 2002
Messages
1,649
Well it happened. I lost 238GB of music I have been collecting for the past 7 years. I was actually in the process of backing it up to another hard drive when it happened. Anyways, What is the likly amount I will have to pay to get most if not all of my dad back.

I think the cause is the drive got banged up ( not in my care of course) and the head got mis aligned. I hear clicks and sounds coming from the drive when it starts to spin up and the head is trying to set but can not.

If they just have to exchange the head reader in a clean room can I get my data back for under $800?


What are you best , cheapest companies you recommend for something like this? Do they have any agreement that says if I get my data back the mp3 will still be playable? What do you think?
 
No. Forget it. Data recovery is expensive (starting in the thousands). There are some software methods (SpinRite, etc) that attempt to recover data from damaged/faulty harddrives, but for a music collection, unless youre in a band or an artist, and there are no other copies, its overkill to pay for data recovery services. If they are your albums that you ripped, rip em again, or you can save time and find them on the inter-tubes. :D
 
Where are you getting that price from? why does it cost thousands to simply replace a head on a hard drive?
 
When my hard drive got damaged due to my power supply freaking out and sending a surge through it (damaged the PCB on the hard drive) the cheapest I could find to get the data recovered was about $600-800 at a local place in NYC. The data was worth it in my case since it included years of data for my father's business but for music...just get it again, it's really not worth spending these costs for it.
 
smashbros said:
This is the second result. Talks about pretty much what you would "pay to get most if not all of my dad back."
Click to expand...

You mean, I can get my dad back in pieces or all at once? :eek::eek: Wow! :p

Hehe, but that was a good find on the prices smashbros.
 
Ouch. Sorry to hear about the loss.

start with DTI (www.dtidata.com). I have done business with them several times. I believe their physical drive recovery (opening it up and repairing) will cost between 1100-1300. More expensive places like OnTrack will charge in the thousands. DTI does a great job, and will NOT charge you if they can't get the data (it's their guarantee).
 
mike938 said:
When my hard drive got damaged due to my power supply freaking out and sending a surge through it (damaged the PCB on the hard drive) the cheapest I could find to get the data recovered was about $600-800 at a local place in NYC. The data was worth it in my case since it included years of data for my father's business but for music...just get it again, it's really not worth spending these costs for it.
Click to expand...

i read an article where a guy was able to recover the data just by getting an identical drive and swaping PCBs on them and getting his data back
 
There is nothing wrong with the electronics on this one. It is something mechanical. It spins up but then starts clicking when it tries to load.
 
ALL4AMD said:
i read an article where a guy was able to recover the data just by getting an identical drive and swaping PCBs on them and getting his data back
Click to expand...

I've personally done this - had a drive that spun up but wasn't recognized in the bios... I had another of the same model + REALLY needed the data off of the bad drive.... It worked wonderfully.

but generally when you hear clicking, its a mechanical problem.
 
and a mechanical issue with a drive will require it to be opened, and prodded. This means clean room, this means skilled technicians, which translates into bottom line costs for you. Unless youre a university professor whose data got lost, or you work in big business and lost a customer's data, or similiar mission-critical circumstances, data recovery is simply not cost effective for consumers who lose "important" things like photos, documents and music.
 
If you own all the music you should be able to re-rip or download from the places you purchased from. Is this not an option to recover at least 95%+ of it? The other 5% you can just rebuy and it would be cheaper than a HDD recovery.
 
If you decide not to pursue a data recovery company, before you write off that drive...attempt the freezer trick perhaps. You've got nothing to lose at that point...personally, it worked for me. The drive stayed up for ~20minutes, during which I got all of my important data off and then most of the non-critical / redownloadable material off too before it died. It was then RMA'd to Seagate.
 
ALL4AMD said:
i read an article where a guy was able to recover the data just by getting an identical drive and swaping PCBs on them and getting his data back
Click to expand...

I had tried that before spending a lot on the recovery. I had found a replacement drive that was as close as i could find, swapped the PCBs but the drive wasnt recognized because it was a slightly newer revision as the original was 1.5-2 years old at that point ;/
 
I had to recovery a hard drive and I used Seagate (they have a recovery team).
$1700 Other companies wanted $4k for thei 'emergency' service

Included services

Getting data back within 48 hours
Giving me a list of my files they could recover BEFORE I said OK proceed
Replacing my dead external drive for free
Would not charge me if they could not recover all the files I wanted
Placed a dedicated support person on my case who called me frequently to update about my status. I never had to call and ask whats going on with my data.

Extremely happy. If you need to get your data back I wouldn't suggest you pull the platters out yourself as exposing them to the air can ruin the data on the plates. This would make it much harder to get data back from a recovery company. They would also charge you much much more because of the increased complexity.
 
I recently used ESS http://www.essdatarecovery.com/
Cost me $1200, if they don't get the data back you want you pay nothing, partial recovery is pro-rated. It took a while for mine because they had to source some parts but they recovered the entire drive (around 320gb of data) copied it to an external WD drive and sent it and the repaired drive back. Very happy with their results. Also kept me updated every step of the way.
 
ThreadNecro[1].jpg
 
Biznatch said:
LOL you think recovering data from a failed SSD is going to be better? I'm fairly certain I'd rather have to recovery data from a spinner over a failed SSD.
Click to expand...
It can go into read only mode, You can use fridge trick to cool a bad HDD to see if you can recover stuff from it, never had an SSD fail yet though.
 
Nausicaa said:
It can go into read only mode, You can use fridge trick to cool a bad HDD to see if you can recover stuff from it, never had an SSD fail yet though.
Click to expand...

I've had a couple fail. But I've also had success with the freezer method to restore data from spinners multiple times, so I'd always try that first.
 
Biznatch said:
I've had a couple fail. But I've also had success with the freezer method to restore data from spinners multiple times, so I'd always try that first.
Click to expand...
I meant SSD go into read only. Was it those awful seagates that were 1.5TB?
 
Nausicaa said:
I meant SSD go into read only. Was it those awful seagates that were 1.5TB?
Click to expand...

Nope, OCZs. There are plenty of failures that would prevent the drive from going into 'read only mode' or being able to access any of the data.
 
Biznatch said:
Nope, OCZs. There are plenty of failures that would prevent the drive from going into 'read only mode' or being able to access any of the data.
Click to expand...
Those octane or whatever? Yeah they were awful. I heard someone had their sandisk plus also fail when it was OC
 
Even though it is a necro, anyone needing data recovered beyond software tools, check out 300ddr.com - I found out about them through /r/sysadmin and 99% of the time, they can clone the data without use of a clean room and that is how they keep the cost at 300. If they are unable to recover and it does turn out to need a clean room, they don't even charge so then you send it to an expensive facility. This is a much better strategy because if you just send it to the expensive recovery services, chances are they will do the same thing and it won't ever be in a clean room yet you are charged for clean room recovery.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top