Anyone ever use a data recovery service?

[Glenn]

My wife's business computer is set up so most business related info is on an external drive. That drive automatically backs up to a separate external drive. Last night the business drive crapped out. A minor inconvenience right? After all I have a current backup. Sh*t. The backup is dead too. I had been intending to start with an online backup, just hadn't done it yet. Both drives have mechanical problems. I am going to have to bite the bullet and try a data recovery service. Anyone have any experience with one they could recommend ?

[dunndw]

I've used Kroll OnTrack with good results. Pricey, but they were able to recover all the data

[2.ooohhh]

Fortunately I haven't had a failed drive get that far. I always start with spinrite by Steve Gibson and it has never let me down to date.

 

https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

[Dustbuster]

There's a co out of Dallas tx that used to do a bang up job of yanking platters out of HDD'S and running complete recoveries. Used em about 4 yrs ago.They perform forensic work as well as reconstruction. I'll see if I can get their info if it won't come up


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2 of course it ate my spelling.

[Garufa]

I used this place once....http://www.datarecoverygroup.com/

 

It was close to $1200 to recover the data from a failed hard drive.  They did a fine job.

[MacGyver]

Early in my career I worked for Kroll.  Kroll OnTrack is the best in the business, but they're not cheap.

[bersaguy]

I don't have anything on my hard drive I would worry about losing like many people do so if I download something I want to keep that evening or even right after I done load it I put it on a flash drive so if mine ever does totally crash I will have the stuff stored I really wanted to keep on the flash drives. They are not all that expensive and you can store a ton of stuff on them. I have all my pictures and videos on them, all my email addresses and all the web sites I visit and other than that I don't worry about the junk stuff. I do hope your able to retrieve all your data you may have lost Glenn...........

[NoBanStan]

Early in my career I worked for Kroll.  Kroll OnTrack is the best in the business, but they're not cheap.

 

Nashville office? I just left last year.

[redfsr]

Might be worth trying to find an exact hard drive, same exact model and sector count, and swapping out the logic board. I've had luck doing that before. It would be a drop in the bucket in cost if it gets one of them spinning up.

[Oh Shoot]

My wife's business computer is set up so most business related info is on an external drive. That drive automatically backs up to a separate external drive. Last night the business drive crapped out. A minor inconvenience right? After all I have a current backup. Sh*t. The backup is dead too.....

 

Guess you've ruled out physical probs with MB controllers and whatnot? Seems quite long odds that two drives go out around same time.

 

That external drive USB or fireware or what?  Guess you tried hooking it up to another puter?

 

- OS

[Guest Lester Weevils]

This doesn't help for a failed/corrupted drive, but the topic comes up so often, thought I'd mention this--

 

My built in Win 7 backup utility started getting problems about the same time my 2 TB external backup drive for that PC went belly-up. I run a two disk raid 1 which is a modicum of safety but not having a rescue image was an "immediate attention" issue.

 

So I got a seagate 4 TB external which seems OK so far, but the Win 7 backup was still malfing. It would do the full backup (which takes forever on a mere 600 GB install) and then malf after hitting the 100 percent mark and during cleanup.

 

Went looking for an imaging program, figuring I'd end up buying a current copy of Acronis drive image. My last purchased copy quit working about the same time win 7 came out and they wanted me to buy new in order to get a win 7 compatible version.

 

Anyway, ran across a program Macrium Reflect that does about the same as Acronis. It is a UK company, payware, but the basic version is free for individual use. I downloaded it and tested, and it seems to work pretty good, and the price is right. It images lots quicker than the MS backup program that comes with Win 7 ultimate (though it still takes several hours). I discovered the reason the backups had quit working-- This puter has a small boot partition, then the main C drive, and a tiny D partition containing HP windows recovery tools (factory installed thataway). For whatever reason, the "basically useless" D partition has developed a problem, and if copying that tiny final partition fails, it causes the entire backup to fail. So the solution was simple enough-- Just instruct the program "Don't backup D". So it wasn't the fault of the Win 7 backup after all.

 

I made the Macrium Reflect emergency CD, with takes too long but works fine. Then booted from the emergency CD and it successfully verified one of the backups on the Seagate external drive. So everything is functioning good enough, crossing fingers that it will also successfully restore a backup if necessary. The reviews of this free (for personal use only) program are real good.

Edited January 29, 2014 by Lester Weevils

[MacGyver]

Nashville office? I just left last year.

Officially, yes.  I was in the field 50 weeks a year for the last 4 years I was there, so I don't even remember if we maintained an office. 

[vontar]

The best program I have ever used is GET Data Back,

Love the program.

[Sam1]

Might be worth trying to find an exact hard drive, same exact model and sector count, and swapping out the logic board. I've had luck doing that before. It would be a drop in the bucket in cost if it gets one of them spinning up.

 

This is what I would do, logic boards are what breaks the majority of the time... just remember to check the internals as well because some of the drives have another board on the adapter that connects to the external board.

 

**** But this is being said with the expectation that you've taken the drive out of the enclosure and verified that it is the drive and not the enclosure itself, correct?  Those external drive enclosure electronics go bad all the time and the drive is still perfectly fine. ****

[Guest TankerHC]

My take: Buy your own Cloud Server. 

 

I bought my first one when they were pretty expensive. Today they are cheap and no fees.

 

I use three. a 1TB mybook setup as a cloud server, a D-Link Share Center with 2 - 3TB WD Black drives and my favorite, a 3 TB Seagate Central.

 

Here is why I do it this way, others may have different input.

 

First I have no monthly fees. Second, all of the cloud backup services are super slow, super super slow. I have tried the number one and two and both of them after a month had still not completely backed up either drive. Decided to just do it myself.

 

Cost. The 1 TB mybook cost me about the same as 3 TB today. So they are cheap. The Share center is also cheap, $200 for the center and about 110 bucks per drive. I just added them as needed. And my 3TB Seagate Central was $200 at Best Buy last year. In total I have three different clouds with 10TB of drivespace for under 700. 

 

Ease of setup. My first cloud device took me an entire day to setup. All three of these can be set up in less than 20 minutes. Completely configured with drives mapped. The Seagate doesnt even need to be configured unless you want to disable some of the auto backups, it is already configured.

 

Security. Other than me, my wife and John down at the NSA, no one else has access. My data is not residing on someone else's server.

 

Access. I can access my data from anywhere and from any device. If I have specific folders, say family photo's I want to give a family member access to, I give them an address that directs them to that folder.

 

Continuous backup. The Seagate especially. Although I have them all setup for continuous backup, that Seagate is darn amazing. Not only does it run a continuous backup, is secure, but it is set so that any family and friends who post photo's on Facebook automatically gets downloaded and backed up and it acts as a entertainment server without having to configure anything. 

 

They are fast, all of them. 

 

I was not impressed with any of the paid or free backups that I tried. Carbonite especially, so fricken slow it took forever to do anything and in the process, because it was pulling data, slows down the system if your trying to use it. I suppose it is all a matter of personal preference. As for me, I prefer to have my data physically located in my house. I also do not like being limited on bandwidth and server speeds. And keep in mind, the paid cloud storage services are not fail proof. When I first began using Carbonite, if I would have continued using it, today I would not have that Data. They had a hardware failure a few years ago that cost customers tons of data. And they were the first and are number one. I am sure they now have more redundency, but who knows. I am sure there is the possibility that all three of my personal clouds will fail and cost me all of my data, but it is also highly unlikely.

 

If it were my business I would just buy two- 3TB Seagate Centrals and run them. 

 

Just my 2 cents.

[Sam1]

The problem with local storage is that it is all susceptible to physical theft as well as a disaster if the drives are all in the same location.

[Guest TankerHC]

The problem with local storage is that it is all susceptible to physical theft as well as a disaster if the drives are all in the same location.

 

Thats why you plan for that. Should also mention that 100's of thousands of people's data is stolen on what is beginning to be a weekly basis now from so called secure networks. 

Edited January 30, 2014 by TankerHC

[Glenn]

Thanks everyone. Further investigation reveals the backup drive actually failed in December. Someone just dismissed the warning so I really need to get the main drive's info. These are connected with firewire 800, but I have also tried USB. The main drive won't spin up. I can hear it trying at first then it just shuts off. I have removed the drive from the case and connected it with a bare drive adapter, but no change, so no utility is going to help. I am calling several places to get an idea of price. This really kills me since I know better.