data recovery outfits

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hjmler
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Hjmler

had an ibm 41gb deskstar 2001 drive just stop working - bios x see it...
no noises or other indication it was failing...

checked a few drive recovery outfits and they all want huge $$ ... like
$500 and up...

are there any more reasonably priced options ?
 
had an ibm 41gb deskstar 2001 drive just stop working - bios x see it...
no noises or other indication it was failing...

checked a few drive recovery outfits and they all want huge $$ ... like
$500 and up...

are there any more reasonably priced options ?
Click to expand...

What does "bios x see it..." mean?
 
Svend said:
What does "bios x see it..." mean?
Click to expand...
on boot up, the bios "sees" all the drives on a system and displays that
info on the screen before the windows boot sequence begins... in my case
the bios reports on the other 2 drives in the system but has nothing to
say about this problem drive.
 
Hjmler said:
on boot up, the bios "sees" all the drives on a system and displays that
info on the screen before the windows boot sequence begins... in my case
the bios reports on the other 2 drives in the system but has nothing to
say about this problem drive.
Click to expand...

You've got one hell of a cryptic way of saying things.

Are you attempting to suggest that there is anything different
about how the bios lists that particular drive on the black bios
screen at boot time to the other drives or not ?

What happens once Win has booted with that drive ?
Is it visible in My Computer or not ? Which version of Win ?
 
Rod said:
You've got one hell of a cryptic way of saying things.

Are you attempting to suggest that there is anything different
about how the bios lists that particular drive on the black bios
screen at boot time to the other drives or not ?

What happens once Win has booted with that drive ?
Is it visible in My Computer or not ? Which version of Win ?
Click to expand...
hmm ... what i'm trying to say in my stumbling half-literate way is that
it isn't visible at any time by anything... <g>

running win2k pro...
 
hmm ... what i'm trying to say in my stumbling half-literate way is that
it isn't visible at any time by anything... <g>

running win2k pro...
Click to expand...

There may very well be a problem with the disk, but we have to read
what we read, and cannot make assumptions about what the user did and
know.

In my system as example, I guess that only drives set to auto type
will be listed during boot. If the disk cannot be detected by BIOS
auto detect or similar, it is another issue.

Also, if the disk is not listed in the Windows 2000 device manager
with the other disks, it is a sign that there can be a hardware
problem.

One should also remember that if an IDE port accidently is disabled in
BIOS, the disks cannot be seen.

You can try if the disk can be detected in another system using
another cable.

(All this because we or I cannot answer your original question).
 
hmm ... what i'm trying to say in my stumbling half-literate way is that
it isn't visible at any time by anything... <g>

running win2k pro...
Click to expand...

If you have a second PC move the disk over to it and make it a
secondary drive. See if it can look at your data (the operating system
must be equal or later version and patch level to avoid file system
problems. Don't write on the disk, if you can see your data. Copy
your files off, reformat and build your system from scratch.

-OR-

Burn yourself a Knoppix (Linux) CD (download from
http://www.linuxiso.org/).

Knoppix boots from the CD and lives in memory. It has NTFS and FAT32
drivers and will try to mount your hard disk, read-only. If you see
your windows files it tells you something, and gives you a chance to
copy the files off the C drive to something else.

It recognizes most network cards and USB devices. In principle
you can burn your data into a USB CDR device but if it makes
temp files it's limited to RAM size. You need something like 256MB
to run Knoppix.

A USB-connected disk drive should work fine. I've FTP'd user data
from windows machines that became unbootable (most recently when
Windows Update gave me a new driver that ruined my day)

I've had clients that paid $4000 to recover data from a dead server
disk because they were too lazy to put tapes in the tape drive. $500
sounds cheap.
 
hmm ... what i'm trying to say in my stumbling half-literate
way is that it isn't visible at any time by anything... <g>
Click to expand...

OK, that must be what 'bios x see it' was supposed to mean |-)

Either the drive has just died or its not getting power anymore.

Try one of the power connectors off one of the optical
drives as a quick check of the power connector.

If that makes no difference, its just another dead drive.
running win2k pro...
Click to expand...

That only matters if the drive was listed on the black bios
screen. The NT/2K/XP family can stop listing a drive if
they dont like what they see in the partition table etc.
 
ray said:
the drive doesn't even seem to power up - it does not spin - makes no
sounds at all ...

i'm just looking for an outfit that might try to get some of my photos
that are stored on that disk back for me...
Click to expand...
 
Al said:
If you have a second PC move the disk over to it and make it a
secondary drive. See if it can look at your data (the operating system
must be equal or later version and patch level to avoid file system
problems. Don't write on the disk, if you can see your data. Copy
your files off, reformat and build your system from scratch.

-OR-

Burn yourself a Knoppix (Linux) CD (download from
http://www.linuxiso.org/).

Knoppix boots from the CD and lives in memory. It has NTFS and FAT32
drivers and will try to mount your hard disk, read-only. If you see
your windows files it tells you something, and gives you a chance to
copy the files off the C drive to something else.

It recognizes most network cards and USB devices. In principle
you can burn your data into a USB CDR device but if it makes
temp files it's limited to RAM size. You need something like 256MB
to run Knoppix.

A USB-connected disk drive should work fine. I've FTP'd user data
from windows machines that became unbootable (most recently when
Windows Update gave me a new driver that ruined my day)

I've had clients that paid $4000 to recover data from a dead server
disk because they were too lazy to put tapes in the tape drive. $500
sounds cheap.
Click to expand...
the drive doesn't even seem to power up - it does not spin - makes no
sounds at all ...

i'm just looking for an outfit that might try to get some of my photos
that are stored on that disk back for me...
 
Rod said:
That only matters if the drive was listed on the black bios
screen. The NT/2K/XP family can stop listing a drive if
they dont like what they see in the partition table etc.
Click to expand...
YEah, it's in the black bios screen where it doesn't show up and I
didn't want to try fiddling with any bios setting because I know nothing
about that stuff...
 
Hjmler said:
Rod Speed wrote:
Click to expand...
YEah, it's in the black bios screen where it doesn't
show up and I didn't want to try fiddling with any
bios setting because I know nothing about that stuff...
Click to expand...

Yeah, if the drive isnt even spinning up, it wont be bios settings.

Either the drive has died or it isnt getting power anymore.
 
Yeah, if the drive isnt even spinning up, it wont be bios settings.

Either the drive has died or it isnt getting power anymore.
Click to expand...

Was is said that the disk did not spin? Then it also can be the auto
spin disable jumper setting, although it is hard to set that
accidently.
 
Svend Olaf Mikkelsen said:
Was is said that the disk did not spin? Then it also can be the auto
spin disable jumper setting, although it is hard to set that
accidently.
Click to expand...

Yeah, because of the way it works, even falling off wont do it.

You dont see to many jumpers installing themselves.
 
Previously Hjmler said:
had an ibm 41gb deskstar 2001 drive just stop working - bios x see it...
no noises or other indication it was failing...
Click to expand...
checked a few drive recovery outfits and they all want huge $$ ... like
$500 and up...
Click to expand...
are there any more reasonably priced options ?
Click to expand...

Actually $500 is a _very_ reasonable price.

Arno
 
Arno Wagner said:
Actually $500 is a _very_ reasonable price.
Click to expand...

It depends on about what country we speak. At us $500 - it is a
complex work with RAID, difficult cases of replacement of head
assembly and centering platters etc...

Leonid
 
It depends on about what country we speak. At us $500 - it is a
complex work with RAID, difficult cases of replacement of head
assembly and centering platters etc...
Click to expand...

True. I imagine labor cost is far cheaper (as is cost of living).
Here in Switzerland you get about 5 engineer-hours for $500.
Maybe a future export/import business for your country?

Arno
 
Roger said:
If there was important data on the drive, the best option of course is
to restore your most recent backup.
Click to expand...

because of the way my drive failed I'm suspicious it could be the
controller board on the drive that failed... I'm thinking about buying
another, identical drive if I can find one and moving the controller
board from the known-good drive to my failed drive... for $60 ~ $80 to
get a new, identical drive it's a lot better than $500 for openers to
have a lab try to recover stuff...

on further investigation it turns out that there could be MANY silent,
with no warning, failures in a lot of integrated circuit products... and
that controller cards on hdd's have indeed been failing...

here's a link to more info
http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/nea/200212/manu_219463.html

here's an excerpt
"In about June 2001 a rumor began circulating through the industry that
certain Fujitsu HDDs were failing at an unusually high rate. One after
another, 3.5-inch HDDs mounted internally in desktop and other PCs were
failing to spin up. The cause was a failure in the drive controller, the
CL-SH8671 (codename: Himalaya 2.0) from Cirrus Logic, Inc of the US. The
failure was caused by a short between pins within the integrated circuit
(IC) package."
 
Hjmler said:
because of the way my drive failed I'm suspicious it could be the
controller board on the drive that failed... I'm thinking about buying
another, identical drive if I can find one and moving the controller
board from the known-good drive to my failed drive... for $60 ~ $80 to
get a new, identical drive it's a lot better than $500 for openers to
have a lab try to recover stuff...

on further investigation it turns out that there could be MANY silent,
with no warning, failures in a lot of integrated circuit products... and
that controller cards on hdd's have indeed been failing...

here's a link to more info
http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/nea/200212/manu_219463.html

here's an excerpt
"In about June 2001 a rumor began circulating through the industry that
certain Fujitsu HDDs were failing at an unusually high rate. One after
another, 3.5-inch HDDs mounted internally in desktop and other PCs were
failing to spin up. The cause was a failure in the drive controller, the
CL-SH8671 (codename: Himalaya 2.0) from Cirrus Logic, Inc of the US. The
failure was caused by a short between pins within the integrated circuit
(IC) package."
Click to expand...

Yeah, thats the rather notorious problem with the Fujitsu MPGs.

Yours isnt a fujitsu tho.
 
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