Duff Hard Drive

[Mzokk]

Was wondering could anyone tell me if it was possible to get some data off a hard drive thats gone west. I have all my old Data backed up and onto the new drive I bought I burnit onto a dvdrw on a weekly basis. But for some reason I missed a folder with Family holiday photos Taken in July. I can occasionally see the old drive in the bios and it is still spinning but windows xp can't see it and the old drive (with w2000 pro on it ) won't boot. Any Idea if I can get the folder off it???

 

[Noel]

Two options try running it whilst in the freezer i.e set the machine up on top of the freezer and pop the hard drive inside or try packing it in cool blocks, some times works or remove the platters insisde the hard drive into another hard drive case.

 

[Clive795]

The freezer idea often works but I would not recommend dismantling the drive unless you have a 'clean room'.
All the commercial data recovery companies make a great play on their clean room facilities. They are probably going over the top but there is no doubt that finger smudges on the platters would be a very bad thing. The platters would also have to be put into another drive that is exactly the same as the old one, if the controller card is different you will not get anything off it.
FWIW part of my job involves data recovery and I would never consider dismantling a drive.

 

[Mzokk]

Thanks for the ideas guys! I'll give the freezer Idea a try.

 

[Fanum]

There are lots of commercial data recovery companies around as well.....never tried one meself but a quick google search will pop them up easy enough.

They seem to promise pretty good recovery of data on wrecked discs..basically if the bits and bytes are still there. they'll get them.

A bit dear though...depends on how valuable the pics are to you

 

[Fanum]

Just found this that mioght be of interest

http://www.deadharddrive.com/

 

[Mzokk]

Thanks Fanum, I tried the freezer trick and it didn't work. I'm only missing about 70 photos out of 3.89G of data. The cheapest recovery firm is looking £99. So I might give this a try if I can find a 4 year old 40gb IBM deskstar 7,200 speed 2mb buffer drive.