Hard drive data recovery services?

I have a hard drive that's been giving me fits. It's a Win XP machine, and there seems to be a problem with the boot.ini file, as it's not recognizing the C: drive as a bootable partition. I've been through the list of Recovery Console steps to no avail. This belongs to a friend(who of course doesn't have any backup), and she needs the data salvaged from the drive.

Does anyone have experience using any specific data recovery service? I've done some googling, but I'd really appreciate some first-hand advice for who to send her to.

If you stick the drive into another machine, can you at least get at the data or does it remain unreadable?

Is the data worth recovering? Any of the services worth their money are going to be rather expensive.

BoxheadTim wrote: If you stick the drive into another machine, can you at least get at the data or does it remain unreadable?

^ I would try this, setting it as a slave.

Unfortunately it's unreadable. I put it into a dock and tried it on a Win 7 machine, as well as an Ubuntu box and my Mac. Neither the Win 7 machine or the Mac recognized it at all. Ubuntu popped up a message about Windows being shutdown while it was still suspended. I tried all the related Terminal commands I could find on google, but none of them worked.

Pop it in the freezer for a while and try again.

mikeatrpi wrote: Pop it in the freezer for a while and try again.

Ok, I have to find a bad hard drive to test this now.

I feel your pain, I've been in possession of a drive that will require professional recovery for the better part of 6 years now. Prices haven't come down enough yet, I'm still holding out. Last quote I got was about a year ago of approx. $500 for all salvageable data.

Some places will charge a smaller fortune to attempt to recover the data, then if they can, charge a larger ransom for the data they've recovered to be returned to you.

I've had a lot of success with several of the tools found on Hiren's BootCD, download whatever the latest version is, burn the image to a disc, boot the Hiren's disc, there's a lot of different HD recovery tools on it, see what, if any data is accessible.

• Lee

Slippery wrote:

mikeatrpi wrote: Pop it in the freezer for a while and try again.

Ok, I have to find a bad hard drive to test this now.

This works some times. I have a USB drive adaptor that I then take a long USB cable and put the whole thing in the freezer attached to the drive.

Is the drive by chance a deckstar? AKA deathstar? If it is I have salvaged these by purchasing another one off ebay and moving the board from the good drive to the one I needed to access. The key is you have to get the exact same size drive and try to get one that has a serial number close to the one you have. If you don't know the serial numbers look fro the date sticker and g by that. I have done this several times. More often than not the drive / platters are fine it is the electronics on the drive that has fried.

The actual moving of the boards between drives is simple. Couple of screws and the ribbon cable just clips in to a connector.

it's probably readable, just not to windows. Ubuntu boot disks are your friend. I recovered all the data off of an "unreadable" hard drive that was "locked" by a virus

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/recovering-data-from-a-locked-hard-drive/33960/page1/
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/use-ubuntu-live-cd-to-backup-files-from-your-dead-windows-computer/

Ok, thanks for the tips guys! I'll check those out and see if I can make any of them work.

And if not, I'll tell her the only other option is ~$500...

The freezer trick works if the drive has a mechanical problem. It actually works great. Also, if you can leave the drive in the freezer connected to a hard drive enclosure via USB you can usually get everything you need off the drive without having to stop and re freeze the drive.

If it is not a mechanical problem, then the Ubuntu boot/live disk is your friend!! Also works for virus removal...

I personally like to use Hirens Boot CD. There is a Mini XP mode that allows transferring the files via network or to flash drive

I'd save the freezer trick as a last resort, IF you're not willing to pay a data recovery company to look at it.

You said Ubuntu gave you a message about Windows not being shut down, that suggests that it could read the hard drive.

Hook up the drive to the PC with Ubuntu running again, open a terminal and run "sudo fdisk -l", what comes out?

GameboyRMH wrote: I'd save the freezer trick as a lst resort, IF you're not willing to pay a data recovery company to look at it. You said Ubuntu gave you a message about Windows not being shut down, that suggests that it could read the hard drive. Hook up the drive to the PC with Ubuntu running again, open a terminal and run "sudo fdisk -l", what comes out?

Can't help, but maybe make you laugh.

Here at work we use Ontrack Data Recovery when we can't get it and there isn't a good backup. We've send them a couple hundred drives at least over the years.

If its a head failure or a logic board failure, $500 is cheap...