Hard Drive data recovery service?? Help !

[Wilhelm]

The hard drive crashed on my laptop ! ( Yes..I know, I will be backing up the new drive regularly...this is the first time I have been bitten )
The Geek Squad says it is "unreadable" and all files are gone. Can anyone recommend a reliable, honest, somewhat reasonably priced data recovery service? Anyone have any experience with a place called SF Bay Area Low Cost Data Recovery ? I am in the Los Angeles area

Thanks for any advice !

[slodave]

I'll pm my number, give me a call. I may be able to help, if not I know a good service.

[Hugh R]

Carbonite has saved me. Sorry.

[MysticLlama]

Totally dead, or click of death?

Often when it's doing the click of death, leaving in the freezer for a few hours or overnight and then putting it back in will buy you 20ish minutes of time to get stuff off.

[Wilhelm]

Thanks guys ! Dave, I will give you a call this evening.

Hugh R. ...I had been thinking about Carbonite for a while. The Geek Squad says they are good. Unfortunately.....I thought about it a bit too long !
I will try Carbonite for sure on all my machines.

Mysticlama...It seemed to be making a slight humming or high pitched noise. Hard to describe...but not a noticeable "clicking"

[dennis in se pa]

OnTrack Data Recovery Services. Not cheap, but they'll get your data back. Google them.

[A930Rocket]

Search around. Some guys want thousands for a HD recovery. I lost mine a few years ago but was unable to recover anything. Still have it just in case someone can do something later.

I'm backing up to a seperate HD but am thinking Mozey or Carbonite.

[Flieger]

Originally Posted by Wilhelm

Thanks guys ! Dave, I will give you a call this evening.

Hugh R. ...I had been thinking about Carbonite for a while. The Geek Squad says they are good. Unfortunately.....I thought about it a bit too long !
I will try Carbonite for sure on all my machines.

Mysticlama...It seemed to be making a slight humming or high pitched noise. Hard to describe...but not a noticeable "clicking"

Sure that wasn't the fan?

[Wilhelm]

Thanks for the replies everyone

[Radioactive]

I have used these guys a couple of times. No charge to check it.
There in Costa Mesa a block off the 405

Data Recovery Specialists, disk recovery and lost data. Drive Service Company

[RoninLB]

Originally Posted by Hugh R

Carbonite has saved me. Sorry.

after a free week of making sure my PC was ok with it i signed up for 3 years

so far only used it to find my screw ups that i lost

mention Rush L for bonus price

[A930Rocket]

Just remembered. Find out if they do it on site or send it out. I found that several places were just drop ship locations.

[Wilhelm]

Thanks again everyone. One of our good Pelican friends is going to take a look at the crashed drive next week. I am going to try out Carbonite for sure !

[red-beard]

I use an Iomega Ix2-200. It is a 2 disk RAID NAS. It comes with software to do the same thing as Carbonite. We have 4 work PCs plus 3 netbooks which back up to the drive. It is also our work Network drive.

I also have a 1.5TB drive hooked up to the IX2-200 as a double backup. It backs up the main drive every night and rotates for a week. I wish I could set it up to save the Sunday backups for a month, and then the 1st sunday monthly for a year.

[Vipergrün]

Remove the drive and put it in an external USB hard drive case. Connect it to another computer and run diagnostics on it, try to copy files off, etc...

[slodave]

Guys, it's not as easy as just putting it in an external drive. I've got enough info from talking with Wilhelm and Max last night, to know it's going to take more than that. It's also a laptop drive, which are quieter than desktop drives, so it's hard to hear if it's clicking. I'm going to have to see the drive, but there could be a chance that the PCB is dead and that the rest of the drive fine... We'll know more this coming week on what direction to take.

[Flieger]

I got my laptop back and all the settings back to how I like them, so that is something good.

It is just weird that the drive was working fine when I shut the computer off Saturday night, then Sunday morning, the computer could not even tell it was there.

We have the old drive back, too.

[jrdavid68]

Here is another recommended company if needed:

DriveSavers Data Recovery Services