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Recommend data recovery company?



 
 
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  #51  
Old May 1st 18, 02:39 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10
B00ze
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Posts: 67
Default Recommend data recovery company?

On 2018-04-30 11:10, VanguardLH wrote:

B00ze wrote:

Considering that swapping heads/PCB (or moving the platters to a new
drive) is a one hour job, $1500 is a crazy per-hour salary.


Did you ask them if they charge a fixed fee regardless of what they end
up repairing? I doubt it. If a simple PCB swab (along with moving over
the ROM chip or microcontroller if the ROM is inside there) would take a
lot less time and be a lower price. What they quote over the phone is
going to be exhorbitant because they don't yet know what they have to
do. Once you ship the drive to them, they can provide a much more
accurate estimate and then you can decide if you want to go ahead or
have them ship the drive back to you.


I'm sorry I haven't called any of them yet, I spend all my time here
discussing what will happen when I DO call lol. I will do so soon, I'll
report back here.

How would they know how much work it would take until they see it? Do
you expect an over-the-phone estimate of repairing your car's exhaust
based on "it makes more noise" from the muffler shop? They probably
won't even give you an estimate. They must see first. A PCB (and chip
swap) doesn't require a clean room nor highly specialist techs working
with ferromagnetic microscopes or other specialized and other pricey
equipment.


And charging more for bigger drives is nonsense - fixing physical
damage takes the same amount of time no matter how much data's on the
drive.


Okay, you'll have to explain to me why trying to read through 10 GB of
sectors on a platter takes the same amount of time as trying to use a
ferromagneticscope on 1 TB of sectors. Ever format a driver? Yup, you
have, so you know it takes a lot longer to format a 10 GB drive than for
a 1 TB drive.


I'm assuming the platters are intact. From what I can tell from our
discussions, they are like TV repairmen - they quote you a price that
depends on how big the TV is, regardless of the fact that it matters not
one bit how big the TV is. OF course if they have to rebuild everything
because the platters are damaged it will take longer the more data you
have...

I need a place that's flexible, where I can negotiate how much work
gets done before we call it quits. I don't want them spending 3 days
trying to rebuild a failed NTFS filesystem; I don't want to pay for
that...


Once they get the drive and can do an inspection, they should be able to
provide a more accurate estimate.

The typical recovery time runs 2 to 5 days (16 to 40 hours) in trying to
recover as much data as possible off your failed drive. What do you
earn per hour? And it's not just a tech's salary but all the operating
costs of a company that get rolled into factoring the price of sales.
Also, while they may quote a price, they have to be exorbitant and vague
over the phone because they don't yet know how much time and resources
they will have to invest in recovering your data. Could be cheaper.
Could be more expensive.


That's why I'm not really interested in places that say it'll cost
"$2000 or nothing" if they cannot do it - I don't want them spending
40 hours on this, all I need is an engineer that's swapped parts
between drives before. If it takes more than that, I'll just chuck
the drive in the trash...


Hmm, I don't remember calling a drive recovery service that said they
charged a minimum fee of $2000 (or quoted a minimum fee). Maybe I was
blessed in who I called (sorry, been too many years to remember who it
was plus it was for someone else's failed drive).


Yeah, I'll just have to call places and discuss.

Have you called any of the recovery companies mentioned so far to see
how they quote estimates of unseen devices? Pick one that sounds most
fair, check they pay for return shipping, and the worst you're out is
the cost to ship the drive to them if upon inspection they quote a price
that is extreme compared to the value of the data on the drive (which
doesn't sound of much value from your descriptions).


Most of the ones people suggested operate in the United States. I found
a few right here in my city. I shall have to call all of them, United
Stated And Canada, to see who is the most flexible and fair on price.
It's hard to judge right? They ALL say the same things: We're the best,
if we cannot do it no one can, we have the best clean room, we have the
best tools, etc...

Regards,

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  #52  
Old May 1st 18, 02:50 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10
Paul[_28_]
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Posts: 1,467
Default Recommend data recovery company?

B00ze wrote:
On 2018-04-30 07:33, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

[snip]

Yeah, well, if the failed head has started magnetizing everywhere it
goes, then it's too late now ;-) If it's burnt something on the PCB,
then it will burn it right away again on the replacement PCB. I should
really replace both the head stack and the PCB (then I would not need
to mock around with the calibration chip.) But I've never done that
before; chances are high I can screw something up...


Well, not calibration, but you'd still need whichever chip holds the
list of bad sectors and which ones have been swapped in their place.


Ahhh, yes, now that's annoying; if calibration and bad sectors go into
the same chip I'm kinda stuck. But I guess it's OK, I can loose some
files, I just want the bulk of them...


The PCB I looked at, the outboard chip had too small of a capacity
to hold a spare sector table.

One IBM drive, it was claimed it was using 1MB of cache RAM to
hold the spares table for that drive. The little 8 pin chip
I looked at, was only 64KB of storage.

Whatever is in there, is smaller. Maybe it's an add-on
code module. They could have gone smaller, to a 2KB config
EEPROM if they wanted, and save some money. That suggests
64KB was selected for a reason, and there's actually close
to 64KB of stuff in it. They wouldn't buy a 64KB chip, if
a 2KB chip could identify the number of platters and the capacity.

The service area on the platter, is normally where bulk information
is stored. You'd only resort to an external chip, if the main
chip needed to be "patched" to be able to finish the access routine
to get to the SA. Maybe you could store the entire bootstrap
in the 64KB chip, and not bother with a level 1 metal ROM inside
the controller SOC. But then, they wouldn't need that nine digit
part number on the controller, if it wasn't "custom". The main
chip would have a shorter part number if it was generic.

The Maxtor that died on me, if it cannot read the SA, the controller
defaults to "declaring itself as a 10GB drive". It only changed
the ID string, when it sees the SA and then it knows "this is a
40GB drive with four platters" or whatever. The controllers used
to be smart enough, to handle several model variants, with
different platter counts. You could do that, say, by always
accessing platter 0 to get the SA (platter 0 would always
be populated in the stack).

As drive capacities go up, the odds of holding a spares
table in that external EEPROM go down.

Paul
  #53  
Old May 1st 18, 02:50 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10
B00ze
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Posts: 67
Default Recommend data recovery company?

On 2018-04-30 21:35, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

In message , B00ze
writes:
On 2018-04-30 07:33, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

[]
Well, not calibration, but you'd still need whichever chip holds the
list of bad sectors and which ones have been swapped in their place.


Ahhh, yes, now that's annoying; if calibration and bad sectors go into
the same chip I'm kinda stuck. But I guess it's OK, I can loose some
files, I just want the bulk of them...

[]
Unless some of the swapped sectors - either in the dead drive or the one
whose boards you use - are ones that cover the partition table, master
file table, boot sectors, etcetera.


Hahaha, you like dashing my hopes ;-) Yup, if that's the case then I'm
in trouble, and the recovery company will be charging me to rebuild the
filesystem. Oh well, I can always (hopefully) ask them for the raw disk
image and do it myself...

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  #54  
Old May 1st 18, 04:51 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10
Sjouke Burry[_2_]
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Posts: 192
Default Recommend data recovery company?

On 1-5-2018 3:50, B00ze wrote:
On 2018-04-30 21:35, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

In message , B00ze
writes:
On 2018-04-30 07:33, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

[]
Well, not calibration, but you'd still need whichever chip holds the
list of bad sectors and which ones have been swapped in their place.

Ahhh, yes, now that's annoying; if calibration and bad sectors go into
the same chip I'm kinda stuck. But I guess it's OK, I can loose some
files, I just want the bulk of them...

[]
Unless some of the swapped sectors - either in the dead drive or the one
whose boards you use - are ones that cover the partition table, master
file table, boot sectors, etcetera.


Hahaha, you like dashing my hopes ;-) Yup, if that's the case then I'm
in trouble, and the recovery company will be charging me to rebuild the
filesystem. Oh well, I can always (hopefully) ask them for the raw disk
image and do it myself...

On an old dos system we used the NORTON utilities 8.0
to produce an image file. Most program files on the disk could
be found, because each file ended with (tab)end cr/lf (fortran programs).
Luck has it that disks were only 20-40 MB.............
  #55  
Old May 1st 18, 04:34 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10
VanguardLH[_2_]
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Posts: 1,453
Default Recommend data recovery company?

B00ze wrote:

It's hard to judge right? They ALL say the same things: We're the best,
if we cannot do it no one can, we have the best clean room, we have the
best tools, etc...


I gave an example of one recovery service, ACS, touting the expertise of
another one, Data Savers. They might be able to tell by telephoned
description whether or not they have the resources to perform the
recovery. Upon inspection, they should also tell you that. If they
cannot recover, there should be no charge. They may even recommend
someone else (who'll probably be more expensive to perform the more
complicated recovery).

Some places don't have a clean room or ferromagnetic microscopes. Like
the video that I showed, some just attempt exterior repair, like
replacing the PCB with those from matching donor drives and swapping the
ROM or microcontroller chip from the old to new PCB (if needed which is
not always a requirement).
  #56  
Old May 3rd 18, 02:08 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10
Diesel[_2_]
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Posts: 58
Default Recommend data recovery company?

nospam
Sat, 28 Apr 2018
13:33:39 GMT in alt.windows7.general, wrote:

In article , B00ze
wrote:

Got a 15 years old WD IDE hard drive, that was showing ZERO
problems in SMART data, suddenly can no longer calibrate (i.e.
it can't read anymore.) NOW the SMART data is showing
something's wrong.

what specifically is smart showing? do you have more than a
pass/fail?


Calibrate and Read, they're both like 1 or 2 (out of 100 or 199
or whatever) - it can't read, spinning-up is fine. The drive
shows-up in Windows, so the interface to the computer works fine,
but since it can't read, Windows keeps freezing-up. It's still
running in that old computer, I just disabled it in the BIOS for
now.


try it on a non-windows system.


I've had success using Linux to assist in data recovery efforts on a
failing/suspected failing hard drive, several times. It works when
windows doesn't wanna play nice. Not saying that Linux plays really
well on failing hardware either. I had a 1tb drive go south on me,
without prior warning.. Toasting the superblock and the backup of said
superblock. I lost the road map to my data obviously, but my data
itself is still intact. Luckily for me though, I'm almost uber
religious about backing up important files and making system images so
I didn't actually lose anything when that system went down.

I've kept the drive for the learning opportunity it presents for me.
Recover my **** on a linux native file system that's sustained
irreversable damage to the superblock and it's backup due to bad
sectors being present in the worst place possible, imho.

if you don't have a non-windows system available, try spinrite:
https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm


I have a legit regged copy of Spinrite 6...It's quite a program, but,
it's not a miracle worker. If the drives in rough shape (clicking
sounds) I dunno if I'd go that route first...As the last thing you want
to do is stress that drive further. It could indeed be a mechanical
failure in progress, and that can be very bad for the data on the
platters, IF, it's still intact.

Spinrite is also a DOS native program; You can't make full use of it
under Windows. It's really two exe's combined into one. The MZ (Dos
stub) is the actual program, and the win32PE file will tell you all
about it. I think it offers to help you create a bootable diskette.
It's been a very very long time since I've executed it under windows.

What I wound up doing, years ago, originally for a former employer was
to create the bootable floppy (DOS 6.2 I think it is) with spinrite on
it, etc. Then, I read the floppy track by track and saved it as an iso
of itself. I used that as my 'boot sector' for a bootable CDROM. And,
it works. The cdrom contains other diagnostic tools, so generic cdrom
drivers are loaded and mscdex mounts a drive letter for you. Pretty
standard little floppy that's not so floppy anymore. These days, it's
typically a dvd, but those can be treated like a bootable cdrom too.



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To prevent yourself from being a victim of cyber
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================================================== =
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  #57  
Old May 3rd 18, 02:08 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10
Diesel[_2_]
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Posts: 58
Default Recommend data recovery company?

nospam
Mon, 23 Apr 2018
11:03:06 GMT in alt.windows7.general, wrote:

In article
5n4tY76H10y83Lr61
8DRo,
Diesel wrote:

Hard drive
"clicks" (heads go back and forth full disk) then quits
trying. Have another of the same model, but hesitant moving
the platters myself; apparently platters are not really
"stuck" together and I could mis-align them (rotate them in
relation to each other) rendering the whole thing un-readable.

swapping controllers (which is what i assume you mean by moving
platters) won't make a difference and risks making things
worse.


First hand experience tells me otherwise. Swapping the
controllers if they're identical and the controller is at fault
can result in regaining access to his data. I wouldn't perform
any writes on a drive using a 'borrowed' controller, but I'd
certainly take full advantage if it regains access to the drive
and copy data over.


swapping a controller isn't going to fix a clicking sound. that's
a mechanical issue internal to the drive.


Sometimes, again, from 1st hand experience as a field tech has shown
me that what you're describing as the click of death isn't always a
mechanical failure. A bad controller board can also do it.

the chances of a home remedy working are very low, and with a
significant risk of making it worse.


Swapping identical controller boards isn't what I'd call a home
remedy. It's a common thing in a lot of tech shops that actually do
in house repairs and don't ship the machine off someplace.

Taking the drive apart physically to gain access to the platters
though would be a very bad idea and will almost certainly result
in further damaging the drive.


incredibly stupid.


Well, it depends on the person, the gear they have access to, AND,
how valuable the data might be to them as to what methods they'll use
to retrieve it, if possible.


It's pretty clear by his descriptive theory that he was thinking
of physically opening the drive and moving things around. Not
swapping out the controller.


it may have sounded that way, but it's hard to believe anyone
would be foolish enough to even consider physically opening a hard
drive mechanism outside of a clean room, let alone actually try
it.


I've learned not to under estimate people, because I've seen people
make things much much worse attempting to perform a repair on their
own in IT and electrical too many times to count.

Sometimes, it doesn't result in catastrophic damage and the story can
be quite funny to listen to the owner/client tell it. Other times,
the fire department was necessary... So..

Your actual experience with the company is?


extensive. i've known about the company for more than 20 years,
i've met several of their techs at trade shows over the years and
talked with them at length* and i also know several people who
have had the unfortunate need to use their services. recovery was
100% (and $$$).

backups are *much* cheaper and also much faster to restore.
turnaround time can be as short as a minute or so.

* it was quite interesting to learn how they can handle recovery
from multiple drives in a raid array as well as from ssds,
skipping the ssd controller entirely.


Kewl Beans...



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To prevent yourself from being a victim of cyber
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  #58  
Old May 3rd 18, 03:49 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10
nospam
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 160
Default Recommend data recovery company?

In article , Diesel
wrote:

if you don't have a non-windows system available, try spinrite:
https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm


I have a legit regged copy of Spinrite 6...It's quite a program, but,
it's not a miracle worker. If the drives in rough shape (clicking
sounds) I dunno if I'd go that route first...As the last thing you want
to do is stress that drive further. It could indeed be a mechanical
failure in progress, and that can be very bad for the data on the
platters, IF, it's still intact.


he wants to try homebrew solutions, and of those, spinrite has a *much*
higher chance of success than physically opening the case and moving
platters, especially without it being done in a cleanroom.

if he actually wants the data, the best choice is a recovery company,
who is almost certain to recover it (they've recovered drives in far
worse condition), but as has been noted, it ain't cheap.

Spinrite is also a DOS native program; You can't make full use of it
under Windows.


that's the whole point. it's as close to the metal as it can get.
  #59  
Old May 3rd 18, 05:08 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10
Diesel[_2_]
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Posts: 58
Default Recommend data recovery company?

nospam
Thu, 03 May 2018
02:49:35 GMT in alt.windows7.general, wrote:

In article , Diesel
wrote:

if you don't have a non-windows system available, try spinrite:
https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm


I have a legit regged copy of Spinrite 6...It's quite a program,
but, it's not a miracle worker. If the drives in rough shape
(clicking sounds) I dunno if I'd go that route first...As the
last thing you want to do is stress that drive further. It could
indeed be a mechanical failure in progress, and that can be very
bad for the data on the platters, IF, it's still intact.


he wants to try homebrew solutions, and of those, spinrite has a
*much* higher chance of success than physically opening the case
and moving platters, especially without it being done in a
cleanroom.


Umm, if the drive is making physical clicking noises and refusing to
read data, Spinrite isn't going to be able to do anything positive
for the drive. You seem to be very confused on what Spinrite can and
cannot do, and why. If you have failing sectors, and/or sectors
marked as bad, Spinrite might be able to help you recover some data.
For the sectors that are toast, it 'fills in' the missing data with
zero's. So, it doesn't provide a full recovery in all cases. There's
only so much you can do.

HOWEVER, Running spinrite on a drive that's making noises and
refusing to pull data outright will NOT help the drive. It can make
things worse, faster. Spinrites a nice program, written in pure
assembly language, but, even that doesn't give it magical powers over
the hard drive or mechanics of it.

if he actually wants the data, the best choice is a recovery
company, who is almost certain to recover it (they've recovered
drives in far worse condition), but as has been noted, it ain't
cheap.


It won't hurt anything by swapping the controller board and trying to
read from the drive. As I wrote previously. And, that's not a 'home
brew' fix, either.

Spinrite is also a DOS native program; You can't make full use of
it under Windows.


that's the whole point. it's as close to the metal as it can get.


I'm well aware of the advantage DOS has in so far as getting you very
close to the bare metal. Linux could also be subsituted for DOS with
the right software, but, that's besides the point.

While Spinrite is a nice utility, it's NOT a miracle worker and you
do NOT use it on a drive you think is outright failing; IT can AND
DOES stress the drive and that can make things alot worse, faster. It
also lessens the chance (when you give up) that a 'professional' data
recovery service can help you at this point.

Either swap the controller and give that a try, or, take the drive to
a professional company. Spinrite is the WRONG TOOL for this
particular job. I don't believe that him opening the drive enclosure
to get the data back is going to help a bit. Either a mechanical
component inside the drive has failed, or the controller board has.


--
To prevent yourself from being a victim of cyber
stalking, it's highly recommended you visit he
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  #60  
Old May 10th 18, 02:07 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.windows7.general,alt.comp.os.windows-10
David Samuel Barr
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Posts: 11
Default Recommend data recovery company?

Very sorry for the delay in replying;
haven't been able to catch up on Usenet
the last couple of weeks.

To answer your question, it ended up
costing me $400.00 plus tax. He had
originally thought it would be about
$135.00 but it turned out to require
much more extensive work than he had
anticipated before he started on it.
He was quite straightforward about
it and obtained my approval before
he went ahead with it; there was no
after-the-fact bait-and-switch. I
was very impressed with his work and
his manner of doing business.


On 4/28/2018 12:57 AM, B00ze wrote:
On 2018-04-22 02:52, David Samuel Barr wrote:

I can recommend https://sherlockdatarecovery.com/
which last year recovered data for me from an
11-year-old WD drive which, right after producing
a clean SMART report, suddenly became completely
unreadable.


Thanks David. Do you recall how much you had to pay?

Thank you.
Best Regards,


 




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