(no subject)

[jecook]

Need a tech to tech question here.

I have a drive that I _need_ to send out to data recovery.

Anyone used the "in lab" recovery places?

the places I'm looking at are Ontrack, American Data Recovery, and Drivesavers.

Any comments, good/bad experiences, other places to get quotes from?

I've got a Hitachi 30 GB laptop drive that's giving me the "Click of Death"™. I've already got a spare drive enroute from dell, but the user (the Executive VP for the division) wants the data recovered, no cost spared, apparently. And he's got the CEO's blessing to do it.

Update: Boss (whom is assisting me in this endeavor and provided confirmation of the CEO's blessing, is leaning toward Ontrack. For that matter, so am I.
Update: We too, are using Ontrack. I'll post with what happens, because I'm sure others are curious as to the process.

Thank you, everyone for your comments.

Comments

[psyco-path.livejournal.com]

Couldn't you use an alternate boot disk (i'm thinking Knoppix) to bring the machine up and copy from there to CD?

Or is it WAY to late for that option?

Just an Idea.

[jecook]

Waay to late for that. I pulled the drive from it's sled and tried it in the test machine I use for imaging systems. Nothing.

[psyco-path.livejournal.com]

Well good luck anyway. I've never used one of those services though.

[jecook]

From what Ontrack was telling me (they called about ten minutes ago), they get referals from Dell, and are a partnet with them.

[firewallender.livejournal.com]

I'm working with Ontrack right now. It's costing us about two grand, but they have been able to recovery all of a 30 gig drive minus one WMA file. Let me know if you have any questions.

[revchris.livejournal.com]

I haven't used any of those companies, but I have had several people here on campus (http://www.wisc.edu) recommend Gillware (http://www.gillware.com).

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

I can speak to Ontrack. My two stand out cases are the "Altos Flambe' with Ceiling Tile Garnish" (office burned down due to CEO's lost lit cigarette) & the "Ooops, my kid knocked over my cpu & I heard the HD go ping as the heads hit the platters"

In both cases, they got back everything.

Caveat:they are expensive. (a few hundred to walk in the door & see if they can even read it.) but they will literally take the drive into a clean room, disassemble it & spin it sector by sector if they have to go to that length. (needless to say, that can get expensive.)

I'd go Ontrack if you have the budget. I've never heard of the other places & Ontrack has literally been in this business since it started. They not only wrote the book, they built the press & made the ink & paper AFAIK.

[firewallender.livejournal.com]

Ontrack costs $100 for the evaluation and then from $600-2200 for recovery. (Working with them right now)

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

ah. I was guesstimating up on the start prices. I remembered it as being $250 to walk in the door. and that was a while ago.

[jecook]

We are likely to go with the "priority" service, which is $150 evaluation fee, and a range of $900-$3300 for the actual recovery process.

[sean-langley.livejournal.com]

This might sound insane, but have you tried the freezing trick yet? For some reason, if you put a hard drive that appears dead in a freezer for a few hours, often it will work after that long enough to do data recovery on it.

Worth a shot.

[jecook]

With the fujitsu drives, that usually worked (this was due to a thermal defect in the Cirrus Logic controllers on those drives).

This is a mechanical issue, I think. the two copanies I talked to voice pretty much said it's a clean room issue at this point.

[greeklady.livejournal.com]

As an exemployee of a online bidding place, I have experience of this large corporation using Drivesavers. $2-3K and two days and you have your data. It was reliable and stuff.

[jecook]

How much data did they retreive? What media did they put it on?

[jecook]

Did they provide a list of files that they could recover?

[greeklady.livejournal.com]

Not to me since I was still new in the IT department. I guess I also like them becuase they are just over an hour away from me. So you can factor in driving up there and getting in their face if they screw with you too. That is always nice. But they did a good job so, everyone was happy.

[greeklady.livejournal.com]

From my understanding they can take apart the drive and get the platters out and put it together on another not broken drive and play back and copy the information off onto a CD.

They retrieved all the data. And this was a drive even using the usb connectors, connecting it straight onto a cable and making it a slave on a tower system ect and we couldn't get it to recognise at all. So for that money you actually get your monies worth.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

Heh, I got a 40 gig PST file full of nothing but jokes out of such a situation.

And the lesson is?

[kerberos.livejournal.com]

Don't save your data on your friggin workstation!
Save on server and have backup in place.