Help - Need disaster recovery!

Hey folks,

I'm a newbie here and was hoping I could get some help recovering lost data. We were changing computer systems and in the process of trying to backup and copy the harddrive we smoked it...literally. I've never seen smoke come out of a HD until now.

I know there are many companies that can recover lost data but I would rather use a company that someone else has used and can refer me to. In addition, the information is important but I would like to keep the costs down to a minimum. I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to recover this data.

If anyone has any experience with a company, could you please pass the information on to me. Thanks in advance for your help.

PromoGuy

Fortunately, I haven't had to use a hard drive recovery service. But if I did. I would probably call around to local computer shops. Seems like every community has a few one or two-man shops that repair and build computer systems.
Also, I know DriverSavers have been around forever, so they have to be reputable at least.
http://www.drivesavers.com/
Sorry I can't be more helpful.

As you have found, or are about to find, recovering data from a dead drive ain't cheap. DriveSavers is one of the most reputable companies around, but it'll run you close to $1,000 to get it. Of course, if it's a get-the-data-or-lose-your-business situation, $1K isn't all that bad.

I'd really like to hear how all of this turned out for you....I'm sure we can all learn from your experience.

Uptill now hope your problem have been solved, but I would like to share my experience with all of you in the process of recovering my data when my hard drive became inaccessible. For recovering my data I used Stellar Phoenix FAT & NTFS - data recovery software is file & partition recovery utility that helps in recovering your all important data lost after accidental format, virus problems, software malfunction, file/directory deletion, or even a sabotage! Stellar Phoenix-is an easy to use FAT & NTFS Partition File recovery Utility that examines the inaccessible hard drives for damages and corruptions and recovers the data back.
For more information go to http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm

Well I do not recommend Higher Ground Software. I actually used them a couple of weeks ago and it did not work. To make matters worse, it would nt recover / fix whatever it did so it just made matters worse.

I agree with the other posters - ship it to someone who does it for a living. I tried Acronis's product as well, but I think that Higher Ground Software only made my HD worse. The HD was actually accessible but it ran really slow and during copying, it would come up saying could not read form the source file.

I'll try the stellarinfo as well and see if that might work before I ship it off to a company. I would like to maintain my HD here because of some of the information on the hard drive.

If your HD is mechanically dead then no software solution will work for you. You have 2 choices and neither is better than the other:

1. You have to buy a new hard drive exactly the same as the one you 'smoked' and remove the controller from the new drive and install it on the smoked drive, or remove the platters from the smoked drive and place them in the new one. Not a very attractive option. Or:

2. Send the drive to a recovery company. I recommend OnTrack. It isn't cheap. They charge a nice fee just to give you a report on the restore possibilities.

My apologies first as I did not see the date on the orginal poster's question.

Having said that, I tried the one that was recommended by the poster that brought this one back to life and it did not work. I did find Recover My Files program that seemed to work somewhat on it. It recovered some files to my new hard drive without writing on the old / bad hard drive. I am still waiting though on some type of support from Higher Ground Software since that program did damage my hard drive even more unfortunately.

I have actually called Driver Savers and was pleased with their estimate. My roommate was looking for a few other companies, some are local to Denver and some just will give you a flat rate which is something to consider as well.

Corey,

Can you let us know your final outcome with this damaged drive? I've heard of a lot of these companies (drive savers, ontrack), but have never actually talked to anyone who spent the bucks to use them.

I sent the HD off to Eco Data over the past weekend actually. After everything I had remembered from these forums, I forgot about putting the drive in the freezer. I think with the problems I was experiencing, that might have helped.

But the programs I tried to use later, just corrupted. I wrote a detailed report to DriveSavers, EcoData, and one more. Eco Data actually gave me a firm quote - $995. Where the others basically told me $500-$3,700. I am hoping that EcoData was the right solution.