Computer geeks help major!!!

[nightstalker]

HI guys

right my G/Fs mum has had her computer go wrong, she is having some building work done and the electrics done and something has happend to her PC.
It wont boot at all.

Anyway my G/F who built this computer her self (as she knows alot about them) took the 2 hardrives out and brang them over to me so she could fit in my pc as the info one these hardrives are very very important and years worth of family tree history and info is on there and the the book her mum is writing and soon to be published and many many years worth of photos.

Yes we know she should of made back ups of everything.

Well i was having a close look at the hardrives as they will not power up and noticed that there is a chip on the boards on both of them thats have blown, i can see they have burnt marks, so seems that a power surge must have caursed this.

Now does any one know of a good trust worthy company that could recover all this years and years worth of data??

We need some major help on this as her mother is very up set this is happened.

Any help or info would be great on how to help her get what she has stored on them back.

I have found some people on line that can do this but not sure how trust worthy they are.


thanks

steve

[phockzie]

Using a professional data recovery service will cost a lot. You will have to accept that, but a lot pf companies will give an estimate of the cost if requested and may even give you a few differently priced options.

If you find that these prices are unacceptable, it may be possible to change the board on the drives to that from a working harddisk of exactly the same model if you can find one. I would only do this as a last resort, as you may make the data on the drive platers even harder to recover.

If this doesn't work, it's unlikely, but may be you can have someone change the blown component. I doubt that this would solve the problem, because as one component has blown already, there maybe damage to other components on the board that you cannot see. Also, burn marks aren't necesserely a sign of a blown component, it may just be that it runs hot normally.

I hope you can get something sorted, but if nothing else, it will teach a good lesson.

Always create backups of your data.

[Dashik]

Its also worth contacting the original drive manufacturer, explain the problem and see if they can replace the controller boards without losing the data and if that does not work then send it off to a specialist data recovery service like http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk/ who might be able to recover the data, After all they recovered the data from the space shuttle HDD when it burned up on re-entry.

Hope that helps.

[Mikee]

I had a similar problem, and found a data retievial program on google and was able to recover 20gigs worth of 60-70s music... Sad ...I know Im old though

Data recovery is expensive though,,

Golden words in IT Backup .. Back up.. backup

I was lucky to get my tunes back.. now they are on 3 computers 1 ext hardrive and a network hard drive

[nightstalker]

I know back up is the what should of been done, the drives wont power up full stop there dead, but thanks for the info guys, i know it will cost the alot but the info on them HDD is something she could never get back and will pay whats needed to be done

[callum]

If you have the make and model and firmware,

you can get the logic board off ebay or a replacement online store, but it has to be the same firmware!

[nightstalker]

To be honest i wouldnt trust my self opening it or replacing anything on it, so il forward the link on to her mum and she will pay to get it done.

thanks guys

[cambs flyer]

Someone I knew a few years back had a drive go down like this, the data recovery company ended up costing him a couple of grand to retrieve valuable lost data concerning his business.

The Horse has already bolted and the people concerened are in a world of hurt understandably, but usually in cases like this if somethings blown on the outside you can bet it's either gonna cost big time to retrieve and fragments of data still compressed within the HDD, or the short has damaged the internal disks, but for heavens sake don't open the casing, just one spec of dust could ruin anything that's possibly retrievable.

I wish you success that not too much has been lost, but for heavens sake back it all up on good quality DVD's, solid state is the safest form of archive storage, then have a small flight case to store the disks in there plastic cases inside away from sunlight, heat & dust, top of the wardrobe is a fav'.

I nearly lost massive amounts of dig' photos a few years ago, so I can imagine the panic going on, and it took a kick up my arse to have double back ups of everything I have on CD & DVD's

Good luck mate.

[Aidi]

Can you get a photo of the top and bottom of the drives and post on here? If i can see the make, model and size of the drive, and also see the circuit board which is on the drive i have a box full of various makes, models and sizes here which although work, are just gathering dust.

If i have a board which could possibly be put onto your drive then i can send it to you.

Rgds
Aidi

[nightstalker]

Cheers guys for taking the time to reply, Aidi il get some pics on later, my G/F has taken the drive back to show her mother but iv asked her to bring them back to i can get some up close pics, so keep an eye out for this post later