Hard disk repair or data recovery services in UK?

[Scatterbrain]

Does anyone know of anywhere? My hard disk was knocked over & now won't work. I've had a local computer repair person lok at it & he says because the spin drive isn;t working he can't fix it himself.

I haven't backed up recently & have 62 childrens portraits stuck on there (having photographed at a nursery last week - so proofs are out, but I can't fulfil the orders.). Not to mention every other photograph I've taken in the past 6 months or so.

lesson learnt about not backing up! But...is there anything I can do? The manufacturers recovery service is quoting £1000 - £1400 and I just can't afford that.

S

[Quo Fan]

If the drive isn't spinning up, then there isn't a lot someone can do. Most of the DIY data recovery tricks require the drive to spin up.

Unfortunately, the only way to recover from a non-spinning drive is to send it to a data recovery firm, and most of them don't guarantee recovery of any data. If you can get it to spin up, then you may be able to recover your data.

[wulf]

Unfortunately a data recovery firm is probably not going to be much cheaper than the manufacturers quote. It might be worth checking with another computer repair place. I assume the first person reseated all the connections (including the position of any jumpers) and tried the drive in a working machine but you can't always be sure. Also, do you definitely not have copies of the images anywhere else (for example, did you clear your camera card?).

Whatever the answers, do look into getting a back up solution that is easy to use. Most data recovery issues are complicated because either there is not system in place or because it was such a pain to use that it wasn't kept up to date.

Wulf

[Scatterbrain]

No, I've reused the cards since I downloaded the images, so they won't be on there. Luckily I did upload proof edits to flickr - unfortunatly there are over 200 images for that one job and it's taking days to download them one by one. But at least I'm able to get the ones I have on flickr back. It looks like some failed to upload, but so far 95% of them seem to be there. This also means I can retrieve my favourite images of my girls (so long as flickr has them), which is great.

Yes, I will instigate a proper back up routine from now on. What do most people do? I was thinking of getting another external drive + dvd's.

I was hoping someone knew of 'someone', but it does look like the data is lost as I can't justify spending well over £1000. The local guy I spoke to did suggest a company, but i've googled them & they sound like con merchants.

Thanks for your advice anyway.

S

[OKuma]

I would guess that this is an external drive.

A couple of things I would try:

Remove the drive from the external enclosure and try another external enclosure to see if the drive will spin up.

If the drive doesn't spin-up, I would get another drive, same manufacture and size, and replace the PC Board on the bad drive with the PC Board of the new drive.

Most modern drives are designed to with stand huge amounts of G's.

Hope this helps-

OKuma

[Scatterbrain]

Thanks Okuma. Good idea & something I might have tried if I was braver - lol.

The drive is now with a data recovery company in Peterborough. A local computer shop I was recommended uses them a lot and says they've never failed to recover data for their clients (so fingers crossed). They've give me a diagnosis and quote in a couple of days, but I guess they'll probably do the same sort of thing as you're suggesting tbh. It makes sense.

I should be really happy that orders from the shoot are coming in now, but I just feel sick...

The man I spoke to said it's common for people to consider external drives as 'safe'. That in their experience there are two types of drive - those that have failed & those that will fail. I don't think i'll ever forget that...

Back up, back up & back up again

S

ETA: I always thought that shoot would be make or break for my little business...I guess I can see which one it's likely to be .

[candleman]

i had a USB die last year.. i looked in to getting the data recovered. but it would have cost me $500

so i cut my losses and had to try get th info again. some of the things were irreplacable.