Data recovery?

[roamin_umpire]

So a good friend of mine has undergone a total hard drive crash. He had metric tons of irreplaceable data. It's a Mac hard drive. If anyone knows of a reputable data-recovery service that will charge less than four digits, please let me know ASAP.

Comments

[dolohov]

It'd be useful to quantify the nature of the crash -- is this a physical error, or a file system error? The latter case is more likely to be doable cheaply and locally. With Unix machines I believe there are free utilities you can use on a disk that's been mounted read-only. The former case would probably require a mail-in arrangement, with a lot of time and potentially a fair chunk of change. I can't think of one off-hand, but my school does a lot of business with Apple, and I bet I can get an answer from our admins.

[dolohov]

Here's the reply I got:

We have used Datasavers.

The service is expensive, but if you really need stuff back, it can be a lifesaver.

There is a minimum fee... I think it is $250... whether data is recovered or not.

Top end recovery expense I have seen was $2500.

That said, if there is anything left on the physical media, these people will rebuild controllers to get at it. You get the idea.

So, get your checkbook out.

Good luck.

[redfishie]

i'm stealing your idea about this, and posting basically the same, as I don't know all the same people you do.

Hope you don't mind.

[roamin_umpire]

Mind? Heck no - anything that helps to solve the problem.

[benndragon]

I recalled a thread on this topic on my motorcycling mailist list (um, we get off-topic a bit ;P), and here's what I've gleaned from it:

"I know some folks that have used Kroll in Minneapolis to good result." - this is the sum total of the info on those folks, although I found some contact info

There's http://www.drivesavers.com/ which has gotten good reviews, you'd need to call them for an estimate and I've no info on their pricing scheme.

Don't use Excalibur Data Recovery in Billerica, MA. Which isn't necessarily helpful, but I figured I'd toss it in there.

Finally, "It it happens to be an NTFS file system, I'd highly recommend File Scavenger. I've used it on several defunct drives (thanksfully not all mine), and after installing the dead drive as a slave, the program's worked like a champ. Free trial version, I believe." - this was the suggestion for an 80gig Seagate that went bad.

[chrysrobyn]

Did you find a good solution?

I've had the misfortune of trying to get data off of borderline dead drives and had some luck (IDE and SCSI), two notable failures (one IDE -- NTFS which went nuts after a power failure during a drive check, one SCSI -- HFS+, sounds like a mechanical problem). My father once had an RLL drive recovered, good results, cost ~$200.

Additionally, if the person has homeowners / renters insurance, sometimes there is a computer / data clause that will pay for a third party service.

[roamin_umpire]

Well, he sent it off to DriveSavers. They came up with NOTHING. Couldn't get a single useable byte. C'est la vie.