Help broken hard drive!!!!

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone knows of a place that does cheap data recovery. Damn IBM deskstar 40gb broke, just stopped working.. powers up and all but bios does not detect it. Changed over the controller board on the HD with one off the exact same model but that didn't work either.

Took it to PC specialists and they say that I need to send it to data recovery, most places are charging £800 upward!!!

Was wondering if anyone of u guys know of anywhere cheaper or anything else I could try...

thanx for any help guys, much appreciated :o)

contact ibm re warrenty? how long u had it? do a search on google.com for data recovery services..

I tried looking in google already, all the companies charge well over 800 squid, and that's a lot of money to pay to get my mp3 library and photos back :oP

Called IBM they don't care about the data recovery all they are willing to do is replace the HD... I think I'll hold on to the HD and maybe one day in the future data recovery will become very cheap, heh.

Oh it seems that data recovery is really expensive because they use a controlled environment, a 'clean room'.

Anyway thanx for the reply m8. :o)

My HD went down at the weekend as well, I tried On Track's Easy Recovery but the only thing it recovered was a single poxy file which I didn't even recognise.

On the subject of IBM drives 3 of my mates have had the same problems with them, die for no reason after about 6 months.

try encase pro


should find it around its been done a few times

highly recommended by the nhtcu

No software recovery process will work if the BIOS cannot detect the drive, the only solution in this case is to send the drive away which is quite expensive (as Duppydude has already found out).

Pegasus Team is right,

If the bios does not detect the hard drive then the only thing that can be done is have it sent away to data recovery. They will dis-assemble the hard drive in a controlled environment and take the cylinders out to put them in a special machine to read them I think. Don't take the hard drive apart urself if u ever intend on claiming warranty or recovering the data because ur house is not a dust free environment, lol.

Anyway it's all very expensive so up 2 u if ur data's worth the data recovery money. If ur hard drive is still under warranty call up the manufacturer and they will exchange a replacement. I have been warned that the early IBM Deskstars, i.e. anything below 120GXP tend to just die. Let that be a lesson, back up ur files regularly! cdrs are dead cheap! Another one to look out for is the Maxtors, aparently u get some of them dying aswell.. I think I'll got with Western Digital now or Seagate.

Good Luck!