Hard Drive Data Recovery

[zurch1818]

After I tried to pull my computer out of hibernate mode (the last time I will ever put a computer in hibernate mode might I add), my main hard drive just crashed and internal backup crashed an hour after later . This is unusually strange because the main hard drive is only four months old. Both drives still spin, they just are not recognized on any computer. I personally think that my computer fried the chipset on both the drives, but that's just a hunch. My room mate, who has some experience recovering data at his work, tried to recover the data from either drive -- but he failed. Does anyone know anywhere that can economically recover the drive?

 

Also, I have decided to cut my losses with that computer and buy a new one. It would be nice to have all of my music and picture files that were on both hard drives though. Thanks.

[DatHoser]

It's rather bizarre that both drives went bad with hours of each other. A possibility is that a controller (ide or sata) on the motherboard went bad. I don't know of local places that do data recovery, but one thing you could try is an external hard drive enclosure. They're usually around twenty bucks, so if it doesn't work you're not out much, plus you can use it in the future for an external backup. Just try one of the drives in it on a friend's pc.

 

EDIT: Did your friend remove the drives and try them elsewhere? If so, ignore the part above and chalk that up to me not reading completelyhttp://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

[zurch1818]

He took the hard drives to his work and they did not work there either. He also said that he used that device that makes it an external hard drive and that did not work either.

[bullox]

Are the drives recognized during POST? POST is what happens when you first turn your computer on, sometimes there is a splash screen, sometimes it will tell you how much RAM you have and what hard drives are recognized. If they are not recognized during POST, you might be out of luck unless you want to spend a hefty sack of cash to get that data back which it sounds like you don't.

 

If all else fails, I would be willing to give it a shot. I have done this type of thing for about 10-12 years now. You could ship the drives to me, and if I fail to get your data back I will ship them back at no cost to you. Send me a PM if you are interested. I am very reasonable with pricing in the event that I am successful.

[JoeHova]

man, that sucks. Hard drive failure is a big worry of mine, I can really empathize with you. Hopefully bullox (or somebody) can recover your data.

[RockCoCougars]

Sometimes freezing the drive fixes it for long enough to pull all the data off. If you try it, wrap it in paper towel and then seal it in a freezer bag to prevent condensation from totally trashing the drive. It's probably a one in ten shot, but sometimes it does work.

[giffted1]

Along with the freezing, you can lightly tap the drive with a hammer to try to get it to work. Also, I'd recommend having an external drive on hand, so if you can get it to work, you can get your data off ASAP because it might be your only shot.

[zurch1818]

Are the drives recognized during POST? POST is what happens when you first turn your computer on, sometimes there is a splash screen, sometimes it will tell you how much RAM you have and what hard drives are recognized. If they are not recognized during POST, you might be out of luck unless you want to spend a hefty sack of cash to get that data back which it sounds like you don't.

 

If all else fails, I would be willing to give it a shot. I have done this type of thing for about 10-12 years now. You could ship the drives to me, and if I fail to get your data back I will ship them back at no cost to you. Send me a PM if you are interested. I am very reasonable with pricing in the event that I am successful.

Both drives do not post. Actually, when I found out that the first one crashed, it tried loading windows from the backup drive even though it was not on the drive. Because this drive still posted, I thought my new hard drive was the problem. This is when I gave both drives to my friend so could take it into his work and do some data recovery by putting the data from the new drive onto my backup drive. It was a while since I did my last backup, so I needed data off of the new hard drive. He insisted that because the drive was so new, data recovery at his work would not be a problem. Two days later, he failed with the data recovery. This is when I decided load windows on my backup drive. I also know that the drive that crashed is still under warranty from Seagate, so that is not lost. But anyways, when I got the drives back from him, I popped the windows cd in drive and the setup started. Once it got to the point where it asked about partitioning, it said unknown drive and then when I arrowed down, the blue screen of death popped up. I did not think this drive would fail too. Once I turned my computer off and back on again, the backup drive did not post. I am unsure if it posted before or I popped the cd in the first time because the drive worked when I gave it to my friend. This leads me to believe that something with the hardware is frying the drives.

 

So I guess I partially lied when I said it was an hour later. It was a lot longer in real time (a couple days), but it was only an hour later if you only count the time that my computer was actually on.

 

Now I might consider sending the drive to you Bullox. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the drives on me right now. I just gave them to my dad who is going to have someone at his work's IT department look at it. If he fails, I was going to send it into Seagate and get the replacement drive. But I might send it your way, if you want to try to do something to the drive first. I am in no hurry to send it into seagate because it is under warranty until 2013. Then after you sucessfully recover all of my data (being optamistic), you can send that drive into seagate and have them send the replacement to me.

 

Also, If anyone wants to get rid of an old hard drive, my computer is hungry for another one................................

[zurch1818]

A few of us took a crack at the PC and we all failed miserably. We tried to run the drives in one of our machines - no luck. We tried to run one of our drives in your PC - no luck. We think that the motherboard may have gone bad. This issue may have trashed both of the hard drives as well. Neither of the drives are accessible, so we cannot retrieve any of the data.

Here is the response from my dad's IT department. Not god at all. With this piece of information, if you still are interested in repair bullox, go right ahead.

[pitchleague]

I am sorry for your trouble, zurch, but at least some good came out of this--I've spent most of the day doing some general maintenance, cleanup, defragging, and full backups onto my external hard drive of both my wife's and my computers. I encourage others to do so, too, if you don't already. I couldn't believe it had been 6 months since my wife last backed up her data!

[bball123h]

Depending on how valuable the data is on there, there are companies that can still recover the data (think men in hazmat suits), but I think you'd be talking about thousands of dollars.

[Iron Chef Napalm]

My advice is always bad, but I offer it anyway.

 

I've had mixed results with various hard drive recovery scenarios over the years. The freezer trick has worked in some situations, but mostly those were spinning platter drive reading issues. (thump thump thump) My favorite was time I copied the last bits of data off of a drive seconds before it spun its last rotation.

 

Depending upon how desperate you are, (if I am reading correctly that the drives are spinning normally, but just not being recognized) you may be able to swap the controller board with an exact duplicate. If you send one in for replacement and get an identical drive, simply swapping out the green board on the bottom of the drive may be all you need to do. This has worked for me on two occasions. You normally just need to remove a few screws (probably torx) and pop the identical replacement in and screw it back on.

You might want to use a USB drive enclosure to copy the files to avoid the possibility of other hardware issues with your computer killing the drive again.