Hard Drive Failure

[Drusus]

On Sunday my Hard Drive Boot Sector became corrupt/failed/blew-up etc...
A mate tried to sort it but couldn't, so is currently installing a new HD.
The old Drive had some data on it i hadn't backed-up.
I've heard there are ways of getting the data off a knackered HD...who can do it and how much does it cost please

 

[confused]

There are some companys that do do data recovery, unfortuneately they're typically very expencive to do and unless you're very despirate its probably not worth doing

 

[Drusus]

Just wondering the general prices, as had a few baby photos =/

 

[Boni]

Never tried it myself, but I can tell you there are various programs that can do it out there, a chap at my old workplace used to do it on a regular basis. Im guessing it was NTFS which makes stuff tricker though probably easy with the right software, if you had a FAT32 file system it would be childs play.

Have you tried a windows repair install on the drive? Probably wont work, but worth a shot as it could save time if it works.

 

[Boni]

Just wondering the general prices, as had a few baby photos =/

hmm guess your file system type (im guesing NTFS)

google something like "NTFS recovery freeware" and try and find something that doesnt look too much like a virus

 

[Drusus]

Thanks Boni, just Googled through, gotta find out which of the 3 types of failures i've had, then go from there.
Mate who has drive atm, put it as a secondary HD in his test machine, and it just locked it up, so not looking good =(

 

[Gahn]

What was the problem? Boot Sector? If Drive ain't completely fucked u can put it as slave and try and read data from it.
Anyway tis afaik best 1:

http://www.datarecoverygroup.com/

There's also an English one but can't recall atm.

Mind ya they are fucking expensive and no warranty of success.

 

[Svartmetall]

Aye, first try adding the apparently-dead HDD back as a slave drive and browsing it from your new HDD's Windows install.

If that doesn't work....much as I am loathe to recommend PC World for anything at all, ever, thay have just introduced a data-recovery service and can do a HDD for £100; you're generally looking at way more than that for data retrieval from a dead HDD, so may be worth investigating.

 

[Drusus]

LoL you sound like most of my friends with PC World, but £100, if he doesn't sort it, sounds great, Thanks !!!