Quote:
Originally Posted by tcb 180
Thanks Dave. Sent an inquiry off to them just now.
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It won't be cheap, but may be your only option from what I've read.
I run an IT support business myself.
If your drive was just corrupt or with only minor hardware failure, I should be able to recover the data for you, but it sounds like you have a higher degree of hardware failure so I expect you'll need a specialist data recovery firm to take the drive platters out and recover the data using their machinery in their clean room.
On a general note, here is some advice for all you hard drive users out there:-
Backup your data regularly to a device that is not left permanently connected to your computer. Only connect the device to your computer for backups then remove it and store it somewhere else, preferably fireproof.
SMART monitoring
It is a good idea to have a hard drive SMART monitoring program running on your computer. Hard drives generally fail gradually rather than suddenly. Like a car, they wear out over time. Wear and tear in the motor, head mechanism and also the drive surface itself.
A SMART monitor will alert you to many of the error states hard drives can report. Normally these errors are not picked up by Microsoft Windows at all, until of course it gets so bad that Windows becomes unstable, freezing, or not booting, possibly with data loss at the worst stage.
A hard drive SMART monitor will give you a much earlier warning of impending drive failure, so you can get the drive replaced long before you hit the real problems.
I install a SMART monitor on not only my own computers, but all my customer's computers. The one I use is
CrystalDiskInfo which is free software.
Install the "Standard Edition" and during the installation process be sure to choose "Custom Installation" and de-select the junk software that is attached to it, such as it is with many free programs. Otherwise it will also install software you don't want, possibly even adware. As long as you de-select it, it's fine.
Once it's running it will show you information about your hard drive status.
Under the function menu set both "Resident" & "Startup" to ON, to make it run silently in the background going forward.
You can also configure it to e-mail you if problems are detected (under the "Function / Alert Features" menu).
All my customer's computers are set to e-mail me if CrystalDiskInfo detects a problem.
More information about
SMART
Regards...
D Hale
http://www.dhcomputing.co.uk