Data Recovery

Does anybody know of a cheap data recovery service?

I think one of the heads on my hard disk has crashed and I have lost about 6 months of work!!

I DID have it backed up on another drive but over the weekend I wanted to re-install my laptop so I wiped that drive to make room thinking nothing will happen while it is just sitting there in the computer not even turned on. I powered it up today to find it just aint working!!! AHHHHHHH!


HELP!

 

Make a bootable floppy from a suitable machine so you can read the files on the harddisk and verify that your data is probably OK even if it wont run the OS for whatever reason.

 

I think the drive is physically damaged. The best I can do is read a few small useless files off it in OS X but I cant get the 60GB of audio work off it. I tried loads of things to make it work but at the end of the day I think a head has crashed on the platter.

I can take it to a data recovery place where they take the drive apart and get the data off it by other means but I think they ill be too expensive. People like MI5 use them to get data off physically destroyed computers, or deleted data to use as evidence in court and stuff.

 

Q. Just how much is you lost data worth (don't stint on your own hourly rate) when you calculate the time already spent trying to fix it plus the cost of recreating the six months of lost work?

A. Priceless.

 

recovery is easier if you wipe a working drive, and there are programs to help, but if the drive is goosed it's a specialized job, and they charge what they like - expensive

 

Are you sure its physical damage and not just a farked data fork?

try this in osx

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10259

 

Do you know what make/model of drive it is?

Can you hear any scratching noises? Any repetitive clicking? Spining up, then down again?

I may be able to help determine if the drive is goosed, but if indeed a head is damaged then you probably wouldnt be able to read 'any ' data at all (the drive does some self diags as part of the power on procedure - if it cannot read from one head then the drive will not initialise.