Cheap Hard Drive Recovery

Hello. I have a hard drive that has a mechanical failure. Maxtor DiamondMax 11 6H500R0 500GB IDE. Had already tried taking it to local companies for recovery, but they all refer to different cleanroom recovery services with no clear price. Pretty much have gotten the lowest quote of $599 for just the .jpg's recovered off of it.

Had backed up most of the files, but my girlfriend was in the process of organizing all of our 2009 pictures and videos when the hard drive seized up. She is pretty devastated and I am pretty bummed out about it too. There was seriously a lot of information that still needed to be backed up. I'm just glad that I had already backed up the pictures and videos from 2008 and before.

Having a hard time finding a service that can give me an exact price. Also, I really need to find the CHEAPEST, but still good quality service possible. We are both poor college students and this hurts us big time.

Does anybody know a reliable and cheap clean-room recovery service?

$600 is the cheapest I ever heard of. With photos you really should use online storage.

if it's a stuck head or platter you can open the drive up and unstick them

While certainly not the safest method of doing it, it is not nearly as bad as you imply.

A few comments for you,

Freezing a hard drive is, as you've read, NOT a good idea. The obvious problem with freezing a hard drive is that it will cause condensation inside the drive, which in turn makes it more likely that a microscopic spec of dust would fall onto the platter enveloped in a tiny droplet of water. This could cause a head crash after which no amount of money could recover your data - not even Ontrack can retrieve data from a platter that has endured a head crash. For those who have any doubts about this, please call Ontrack.

However, I have, on occasion seen a drive work for a short period of time after being frozen but, I don't think it was freezing it that caused it to work again, albeit temporarily. In every case the drive worked only for a few minutes, not long enough to retrieve any significant amount of data.

I have seen drives that after sitting on the shelf for months started to work again for several hours before failing again. I personally owned a Western Digital that did this.

Opening a hard drive outside of a clean room is asking for trouble. Hard drives and dust do not get along at all. The average room is very dusty, even those with granite floors (we won't even talk about a carpeted room). This dust can be seen at the naked eye when sunlight shines at the right angle through a narrow passage and it is no exaggeration to say it is abundant. Conclusion: don't open your hard drive.

I suggest you "don't bother" the drive. Trying too hard to make it work could have the opposite effect. Let someone that really knows what they are doing deal with the drive. That said, keep reading.

as Daship pointed out, $600 for data recovery in a clean room is unheard of cheap. Ontrack charges $150 to evaluate the drive and tell you if they can recover data from it along with a quote of how much it will cost. The $150 are _not_ refundable, that is the fee for them to inspect it. I would actually be a bit leary of such a low price. It sounds more like the price someone would charge you to attempt recovery through software means but not in a clean room.

Now a few questions for you

1. Does the drive make "unusual" noises ? Do you hear a series of maybe 10 to 20 clicks before it stops clicking ? Do you hear a whiplash kind of sound multiple times ?

2. Can the BIOS of your machine see the drive ? if yes, can it assign a drive letter to it ?

Once I have the answer to those questions I may be able to guide you a little closer to getting your data back.

HTH.

Nope, the computer even freezes before I can get into bios.

Unfortunately to figure out if your drive has a mechanical problem I'd have to hear it myself.

From what you've said about how it sounds, I cannot be sure either way.

For lack of a better alternative, I am going to suggest that we make the optimistic assumption that your drive is mechanically sound (this could be the case) and proceed from there hoping we luck out.

If the assumption is correct (unproven thus far) then the reason is doesn't work is because the drive's controller has developed a problem. Again, if the assumption is correct, replacing the controller would solve the problem. If the assumption is incorrect, then you'd know for sure the problem is mechanical.

If you are comfortable with my reasoning and, are willing to risk a little bit of money to see if you luck out then, the next step is to locate a replacement controller board (usually not hard to do). They usually run about $50.00. The other thing you can try is purchasing another drive that is _identical_ to the one that has failed - this isn't so easy because most times you don't get the drive controller's specs but it usually works anyway because controller revisions don't alter the way data is stored on the drive. In other words, it's nice if you can get an _identical_ drive but it often not necessary for it to be identical - close enough often does the trick.

To locate a replacement controller, look carefully at the labeling on the controller board, there is usually a label with a series of numbers. Google that. From the results it should be pretty obvious whether or not you got what you were looking for. On the label that is on the drive, there is usually a series of numbers that indicates the board model that is installed on the drive. Without seeing the drive, I can only guess but, a little trial and error with Google should yield the results you are looking for.

Locating a replacement hard drive is obviously easier, and I am tempted to recommend you go this route. If the manufacture place and date of the replacement is very close (or the same) to the one you've got, you often end up with something that will do. Locating a replacement hard drive has another advantage: you always test the drive you got, if it works (which it should) then you know the controller is working. If you order the controller separately and have no way to test it, you could have unknowningly gotten a bad controller.

I am a bit uncomfortable because without the piece of hardware in my hand, I can only give you guidelines. I'm sure you get the idea of what should be done. A good dose of common sense, carefulness and precision are needed to obtain good results.

The choice on what to do next is yours.

HTH.