Computer help

[Dead Horse]

Harddrive crashed and I have no access to the backup for at least a week. Can anyone help or refer me to someone who can recover info off of hard drive? Please help!!

 

[wherzwaldo]

Are you sure the drive has crashed? I would double check the interface and power cables going to the drive.

Google "data recovery" and the name of whatever city you live in. There's probably stuff in your yellow pages too. That should get you started.

 

[schnarkle]

Mepis or Knoppix download and burn a livecd. Then you can boot with the cd and have a look at your hard drive.

or take the drive out and slave it in another pc and see if you can salvage that way.

 

[Dead Horse]

I will try that...

 

[Gadfly]

I suggest getting a little USB drive bay that will turn your IDE drive into a USB Mass Storage device. That way you don't have to worry about pin selection or opening up another box. You can also just plug it in to a running system with no reboot. I think they run $20 at Fry's. I got one for notebook hard drives for that price. I'd imagine the standard desktop variety would be cheaper.

Are you getting a windows error or a Bios error? Blue Screen or a screen that says primary HD0 could not be located? Do you ever see "Windows Loading" at all? If it’s the HD0 not found, try re-seating all the cables first.

Also - listen to the drive to see if you hear anything. If it's a mechanical issue, you'll have to pay a lot of money to get your data. And these places won't even give you a guarantee. I've had clients use them and still have to pay even if they failed to get data.

 

[chiwanna]

When working on our help desk I almost always was able to recover data by installing a new hard drive, getting Windows installed and putting the damage drive in secondary position. Then it’s nothing more than copying data over. Only try to grab what you need so it goes faster. The more you run that drive, the sooner it will crap out forever.

At work we have had to send hard drives out for recovery and it cost several thousand dollars to get everything back. Someone told me that geeksquad at Best Buy got everything back for them for around $150.