Recommendations for a data recovery company?

xgeek · 3 Dec 2009 at 19:55

Hi,

The HDD in my wife's laptop died and despite having memsticks and an external USB drive she did not back up as often as she should have. The drive is a Samsung MP0402H (40GB) and there are some photos of the kids on there that we would like to salvage if we can.

Can anyone recommend a company that they have had good results with and that did not cost an arm and a leg? I tried google and there seemed to be tons of companies doing this sort of stuff so any pointers would be appreciated.

Cheers
XG

sk3lph · 4 Dec 2009 at 00:46

I'm in a similar position and have a couple not to try -

http://www.cheap-data-recovery.co.uk/DATARECOVERY.html

Don't try them as the company went under months ago and they haven't bothered to remove the website. I sent my hard drive there and delivery was refused.

http://www.rapid-data.net/

I sent my drive there as they said they'd try to fix for £97 - then wanted £400 when they had received it - was a bit steep for about 100Mb of office documents.

I reckon about £100 is a fair price however most companies seem to want about £400 for mechanical failure. If you manage to find a good company please let me know.

samir_ansari · 4 Dec 2009 at 10:03

I will do it for you

(seriously) - I can recover it from pretty much any mechanical failure except replacing the heads and the motor.

Let me know if your interested and Ill try help you guys out

Burned_Alive · 4 Dec 2009 at 10:38

samir_ansari said:
I will do it for you (seriously) - I can recover it from pretty much any mechanical failure except replacing the heads and the motor.

Let me know if your interested and Ill try help you guys out

Out of interest, what equipment do you have?

samir_ansari · 4 Dec 2009 at 10:47

It would be easier telling you what I don't have:

- Platter drum removal kit
- An industry standard 'clean room' (but it is clean enough to get the job done)

sk3lph · 4 Dec 2009 at 12:21

I'm interested - whats your background and what sort of cost are we looking at?

samir_ansari · 4 Dec 2009 at 12:29

hey sk3lph, my email address is [email protected] if you dont mind just emailing anything you need to know in there - Very sorry to the OP for hijacking the thread but Im just trying to help - Ive been in exactly the same situation and thats why I fix them now for cheap.

In terms of companies I would agree with sk3lph about the cheapo companies - that £97 quote was probably only to pop the casing of the hard drive to have a quick look - then they charge a ridiculous amount per hour for the labour.

I honestly cannot recommend a single company that is good value for money - pretty much all will charge at least £200 for recovering about 100gb of data. There are one or two decent ones in america I have heard but you wouldnt want to send your drive all the way out there.

sk3lph · 4 Dec 2009 at 12:35

Thanks samir - I'll send you a message this evening.

bledd · 4 Dec 2009 at 13:39

xgeek, what is wrong with the laptop?

Could just be a booting problem...

burn this to disc using imgburn and boot the laptop from it, you'll see the data if it's there.. http://www.slax.org/get_slax.php

then just remove the drive and stick it in a usb caddy thing (£5-10)

samir_ansari · 4 Dec 2009 at 14:05

yes or you could even try sticking it in another computer and let the system treat it as just another drive (that it doesnt boot windows from)

bledd · 4 Dec 2009 at 14:22

It's a PATA drive though, so you'd need a converter, might as well just get a usb to laptop pata thing if Slax shows the drive as working

samir_ansari · 4 Dec 2009 at 14:44

Yep or get a laptop hard drive adaptor off a popular online book store for about £2.99 that will let you plug it into a normal pc using a normal IDE cable

bledd · 4 Dec 2009 at 17:01

no posting competitors mate..

xgeek · 4 Dec 2009 at 17:56

Thanks guys.

Tried adding the drive to my desktop via an adaptor and I also bought a USB external case to try it in.

Drive is not found in the bios when connected directly to the MOBO of my PC. When using the USB case I did get to the stage where I saw it in disk manager (only once) but it said it was an unrecognised drive. Not 100% sure if it is an electronic failure or mechanical but am out of ideas so think best to send it off before I damage it even more.

Cheers

XG

samir_ansari · 5 Dec 2009 at 16:11

xgeek I have sent an email through your Trust under the name sambo_joseph (my older account which has Trust enabled)

sk3lph · 10 Dec 2009 at 20:58

Just off the phone to Samir and he has got the drive working again and is sending the drive back to me together with a couple of DVD's of the important data in case it doesn't work again when I plug it in - cost was £50 which is a hell of a lot less than the £400 the data recovery company were wanting.

Highly recommend you give Samir a shout if you have any hard drive woes. This is excellent service.

samir_ansari · 11 Dec 2009 at 11:56

Thanks for that sk3lph - glad I could help

sswats · 24 Dec 2009 at 14:38

Sounds like a great service.
My parents laptop hard drive started clicking all of a sudden and is not detected in the bios anymore.
I backed their files about 2 months ago, but there's been some work done on it since.

Sound like something you can handle?

Banny · 26 Dec 2009 at 12:43

Sent you a message through your site Samir

samir_ansari · 26 Dec 2009 at 16:21

sswats said:
Sounds like a great service.
My parents laptop hard drive started clicking all of a sudden and is not detected in the bios anymore.
I backed their files about 2 months ago, but there's been some work done on it since.

Sound like something you can handle?

I have sent an email through your trust.

Also thanks for the message Banny - I have received your mail and replied with my details.