I'll try and word this differently so it doesn't get deleted this time.

I think I may need a recommendation for a Data Recovery service in the ZH/SZ/SG area, anywhere Ostschweiz would work.

I have a malfunctioning external harddrive, making a clicking sound, and not functioning. I have two or three times been able to make the computer recognize it through the device manager but not in any other application. Most of it is backed up, but what I need recovered is the 31.46 GB (367.2 hours worth according to iTunes) of music stored on it. My essential songs all in one broken aluminum box.

Has anyone used a data recovery service in Switzerland? I know they can run pretty expensive, but I'd like to atleast investigate.

Thanks for your help

-k3v

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Website: http://www.kevio.net

Hi Kev,

Since yst I have the same problem as you.

I know that your post is quite old, but maybe you found some specialist and can share it with me?

Or anyone else, that has a good contact to the data recovery service?

thanks in advance for help
best
rk

we do this in our shop, depending on the state of this disk, but we can offer you a quote first.
Contact us via email only. no PM please.

I'm currently researching data recovery as I have just had a disk fail containing my entire photography and movie collection, built up over quite a long time. Some of the photography is backed up on Smugmug, but only the family stuff, the rest isn't. WOrst thing is i'd put off buying a NAS until next month, so it serves me right. Anyway i'm going to start hunting for the best prices I can find and then report back...

http://www.datenrettung.ch/

These are the guys that come to mind first - if the disk has actually failed to the point of being unusable. Normally if the disk can be accessed by the system it's often possible to pull a lot of stuff back. Never had to use the company though - most people decide that the data lost is not worth the recovery fee. I had one a few years ago in England which cost £1,500 for the recovery - not cheap, prices may however have moved since then.

Note the prices on that site are only for the diagnoses, not for the recovery.

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...allegedly.

if professional data recovery is too expensive - i wonder if it could be an option to buy an identical drive and swap out the platters? you might be able to get it to work just long enough to recover the data off it and it would cost only the price of a drive.

Ahh Slappers old chap, long time no see, hope alls well.

Problem is that is's a Seagate 7200.11, otherwise known as themostunrealiableeffingdrivesintheworld, the failures have been astronomical enough to forever tarnish Seagates once-great reputation as reliability-king.

The drive spins merrily away once powered up, yet you plug it in via SATA (whether from cold or warm boot) and... nothing, nada, no data access or drive detection possible. It could be a result of this http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives...get_a_fix.html however I thought my drive did have the latest firmware. Otherwise, it could be a controller issue. I'll contact Seagate and see if they can do anything for me, but i'd really like to get all the stuff back with regards to the photos etc... and my painstakingly collected, "good" (ahem), movies.

No way would I risk that! http://www.wikihow.com/Swap-Hard-Disk-Drive-Platters

Exactly. Having taken apart several defective disks just for the actuator magnets I can tell you that you'll probably end up destroying any recovery chance you may have had in the first place.

I'll agree with you that it's more than likely to be a controller board problem. Should be relatively easy as long as you can get hold of another controller board for that exact model of disk.

fyi the freezer method works. i recovered about 99% of the files on a failed drive last year and was pretty stoked to see it work! google hard drive recovery freezer

basically you freeze the drive (put in a plastic bag to avoid condensation when you remove it), plug it in as a slave drive, boot your computer to DOS (will be faster than windows), and quickly initiate a copy command to another drive. let it copy until it fails again. refreeze. repeat until you get all your files (you will probably lose some due to bad sectors).

thanks. i hadn't seen that before. i agree with the article and only attempt on a single platter drive, multiple platters are just too fiddly.

if you've got the 1.5tb version, you might want to see if you can upgrade the firmware.

fwiw, i always buy seagates as i found them more reliable than other brands. i now buy disks in pairs and run them in RAID1. however, this still leaves you vulnerable to a bad batch/series.

to guard against this, i also only buy disks that have been out for a while so that new technology is tested in the field e.g. perpendicular recording or new higher density recording. the old disks are also retained for a year and new incremental data is backed up to tape.

hopefully, when SSDs become cheaper and more capacious, the number of mechanical failures will decrease.

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platter swap is last ditch attempt only!

if controller board, you can easily swap this out without having to open up the sealed casing.

the problem is that if it is a head/actuator failure, then you need to open up the case.

I realize this is a somewhat old thread, but did any of you have luck with data recovery? My MacBook HD crashed out last night. Got it replaced, but of course now I'm remembering some important data I hadn't backed up - work stuff that's very important (I've got the old HD)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

I know, it's hard to believe, but six years on I've come to terms with the loss of my data.

Well, thanks for the update on the progress :-)

Doc.

Bump!


I have a external HDD which seems to have died--get an S.M.A.R.T error code that suggests end of life, or something along those lines.


Was looking up data recovery and came across


http://datenrettung-zuerich.net/date...latten-ssd.php


Any experience with these guys?


Any other experience with such support--and the end costs involved?


Thanks

Every disk you ever have will die. Not only that, it will sometimes lie to you (i.e. happily return a corrupted file which most file systems can't detect as such).

Store everything valuable in three places (local computer, external harddrive and a cloud service (like dropbox) is a good start).