Help! Hardrive failure advice please!

[milkshake_561]

Hi!

My hard drive has recently failed and there's some really important stuff on there that i want to try and recover, my neighbour told me about these people called the tech guys or something and i was wondering if anybody knew anymore about them or if they're any good (bearing in mind im quite a computer novice!!)

Thanks

[Paul K]

Data recovery from dead drives is VERY expensive. How far gone is the drive? Does windows see it at all? Does it show in the BIOS when you boot up?

well if the drive still spins what I do is attatch the drive to a usb ide/sata bridge connect to a running pc and scan with my trusty recovery software

[Gareth]

The Tech Guys is the name given by PC World to some of its staff - presumably the technical ones.

www.thetechguys.com/ourservices/index.shtm

No offence intended to any PC World employees who frequent the site, but if I had data that hadn't been backed-up that needed to be recovered, I wouldn't be going to PC World, I'd go to a specialised data recovery company... but it's gonna potentially be very expensive, i.e. over a grand depending upon the amount of data to be recovered. Most companies I know of will scan the drive to see what they can recover, then provide you with a quote, but it's very rarely cheap.

---------- Post added at 10:52 ---------- Previous post was at 10:48 ----------

ps - anyone notice the obvious mistake with this image on the Tech Guys homepage...?

She is one of the guys she tells rude jokes and is proud when she farts


I have had good results at recovering data myself without paying anyone else. The most resent drive would stop the pc booting so could not be installed internally. So as I said I fitted the drive to a ata to usb bridge plugged it in and the pc found the drive allowed me to scan the drive and allowed me to recover 90% of the data on the drive

[grandmaster]

why not have a look at www.grc.com/spinrite.htm
If your data is important then this may help you.

Let us know how you get on..

[milkshake_561]

I had no idea that they are members of PC World. Still having checked around they seem pretty cheap (relativley) compared to others when it comes to data recovery.

I may try this spinrite thing although the website rather confused me. Do you have experience in using it? What I'm really asking is is it fairly user friendly?

By spinning do you mean that it still makes a noise when you turn it on? The light comes on and it sounds like it is loading but doesn't appear on my desktop and I can't find any recognition of it anywhere on my computer

[ewan.paton]

a quick hint is to put it in the freezer, seriously it contracts the heads a little and can on occasion give you long enough to pull the data of.

as to profesonal data recovery, you are talking about a lot of cash if it isnt a software issue, like hundreds going to thousands if they need to use electron tunneling microscopes if i recall.

[budwieser]

Originally Posted by milkshake_561

I had no idea that they are members of PC World. Still having checked around they seem pretty cheap (relativley) compared to others when it comes to data recovery.

I may try this spinrite thing although the website rather confused me. Do you have experience in using it? What I'm really asking is is it fairly user friendly?

By spinning do you mean that it still makes a noise when you turn it on? The light comes on and it sounds like it is loading but doesn't appear on my desktop and I can't find any recognition of it anywhere on my computer

I`ve used spinrite lots of times mate and it`s actually ressurected unbootable drives for me! You also use it to perform regular drive maintenance.
Best £40 i ever spent.

[jumbo159]

Why not post it to a prominent target in iraq, wait for the yanks to drop a 500lb bomb on it, then they will retrieve your hard drive and get the data off it. Ahh, i see a floor in my plan here

[Strzelecki]

Techguys is the new name for PC Servicecall and the instore techs, intended to beat off competition from Carphone Warehouse's partnership with US 'Geek Squad'. PC World do data recovery, they have have custom Linux machines supplied by a big data recovery firm that I can't remember the name of. If that doesn't do it then you can opt to have the drive sent of for more specialist recovery to the people thay have partnered up with.

[budwieser]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

She is one of the guys she tells rude jokes and is proud when she farts


I have had good results at recovering data myself without paying anyone else. The most resent drive would stop the pc booting so could not be installed internally. So as I said I fitted the drive to a ata to usb bridge plugged it in and the pc found the drive allowed me to scan the drive and allowed me to recover 90% of the data on the drive

Hi Dude, Was it this cable? http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?...=48965&doy=9m1

Pretty much yeah I just used a bridge out of an external rom caddie but thats the same I woudl say thats to expensive you can buy caddies with ide bridges for a lot less but of course that cable does sata too

this will do for ide http://svp.co.uk/products-solo.php?pid=371

[milkshake_561]

Originally Posted by Strzelecki

Techguys is the new name for PC Servicecall and the instore techs, intended to beat off competition from Carphone Warehouse's partnership with US 'Geek Squad'. PC World do data recovery, they have have custom Linux machines supplied by a big data recovery firm that I can't remember the name of. If that doesn't do it then you can opt to have the drive sent of for more specialist recovery to the people thay have partnered up with.

Ummm thanks for the information looks like they provide a pretty comprehensive service if required. I haven't taken it in yet as I'm going to try the DIY possibilites first. Trouble is finding the time to do all this stuff and read all the information about it.

If that doesn't work - its off to The Tech Guys for me I think.

Many thanks for your help - I may very well be back.

[Quam256]

When you say it has died have you tried putting it in another pc as a slave and see if it wil detect it .Then you may have a chance of copying your files over to the main drive.