Data Recovery - rip off??

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

Hi,

This is totally unrelated to java & programming, but maybe one of you good samaritans out there can help us ;).

A friend lost her work on her computer & external USB hard drive somehow by blowing them both up (no idea how). Anyway, this data recovery company wants $980 Australian (US$700 ??) to retrieve it . She really needs it done but wants to know if that’s a reasonable price. The data’s worth that much to her but she’s a poor-ass uni student (like many of us I assume :P).

What do you think? Any input welcome.

Thanks,
Keith.

#2

Ok, a few things first.

While she may be eager to have a “friend who is knowledgable with computers” offer to help her for free with data recovery tools, etc. that can be catastrophic to the recovery process (screwing up indexes, overwriting logs, etc.)

If the data is really that important to her, she should use a professional service and $700 US seems to be right in the ballpark. Going forward, it is much cheaper to keep backups of the data (hindsight being 20/20 and all :slight_smile: )

Good luck to your friend!

-Chris

#3

Tip of the day: just check you word documents into the schools CVS too.

#4

Most companies I have seen will not charge unless they recover data. But otherwise that price sounds right.

#5

Has she tried Fast File Recovery allready? THis works most times for me. It can restore the files as long there aren’t any new files written to the same hdd sector.

#6

You mean this http://www.computoolz.com/ffr.htm

#7

No, not that tool. The one I mean is freeware. Don’t exacly know which version i have at home and from which firm, but when searching google for “fast file recovery” or “fast file undelete” I got some freeware tools. I will see what the exact name of the installed tool is.

#8

no offense but using free tools to recover a dead drive is exactly what NOT to do if you care at all about the data. Recovering a file from a working drive is one thing. If it doesn’t work you could permanently destroy the data.

#9

All depends on how they work… If the drive doesn’t even spin up then you can’t use software tools anyway. If it does you could try software that will only recover data to a known good drive and never try to write anything to the toasted drive… That shouldn’t be very likely to cause more data loss… unless operating the drive at all is going to be risky.

A friend had very good luck with SpinRite on a drive that would even prevent windows from booting if it was connected to the computer - but it writes back to the same drive which has the risks that Chris mentioned.

I personally would consider buying an identical drive if you can get one. Then swap the controller board on the dead drive with the one on the new drive. You don’t need to “open” the drive to do that and it has a good chance of working. (for a LOT less than $700)

#10

If it spins up but you can’t boot you can often get away with using a CD distro to boot up and just find stuff on the drive from there.

Otherwise it is pretty much time to get in touch with the pros.

#11

Actually, this is a great idea! Here is the site for BertPC: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

-Chris

#12

if you happen to have ways of “acquiring” this piece of software without giving any details of how you get it: try out ERD Commander 2005. it’s crazy good, it even has network capabilities to move that precious data somewhere safe instantly. I’ve had to use it 100s of times (I’m a Dell technician - don’t ask us to fix batteries ;))

#13

Hi there guys,

I’m Keith’s friend Hannah, the one who almost lost her data. Just wanted to thank you all for your posts - they were really helpful and made me feel a bit better about paying what I thought was such a lot for my data recovery! it’s hard trying deal with technical problems that come up when you’re not technically competent, like me - so thanks!

In case you’re interested, I did actually end up getting my data back using a professional data recovery service… after first attempting to use some online software. As well as what you guys recommended, I used free trials of software at www.realtime.org and www.r-tt.com. Perhaps these sites might help one of you if something like this ever happens to you - fingers crossed you won’t need to use them!

Anyway, thanks again

Hannah

#14

Looks like your crossed fingers didn’t help me, Hannah… I lost 5 years worth of files about two weeks ago. And since I didn’t know anything about data recovery, I wrote many times to the drive and, apparently, I overwrote the sectors which contained my data. It’s all gone. :frowning:

But here’s what I do now, A LOT: Backup! Backup! Backup!
I learned from my stupid mistake of not backing up my files. I lost over 3500 files; 3 gigabytes of programming projects, games, graphics, programs (including my current program, QIM, which I had to reprogram from the ground-up). That was all of my files I have ever worked on since I started programming 5 years ago.

#15

The funny thing is that we’re always binning old kit that works but is a bit too slow for what we need. Or we have it lying around the house getting in the way. My tip for the top is to bodge together a subversion server from some of that kit and use it to maintain your versioning system. Failing that get an external hard drive, run svn on your own machine but keep the repositories on the hard drive. That way you have your data in two places at least, so if either one fails you’re not too badly stuffed…