Hard drive data recovery (Read 9335 times)

Johnny Brown · November 01, 2007, 11:10:32 am

I've got a hard drive which died last month. Seems to be the electronics rather than the disc itself - was working fine, computer crashed a few times, then it was dead. No power at all, doesn't spin up at all.

Presumably there are people out there who can put it in a new enclosure and recover the data? Anyone know who? In Sheffield?

ps have tried all the cable/ power switching etc - nothing. doesn't work in another pc either.

dontfollowme · November 01, 2007, 11:54:18 am

Retro Data get good reports. Its not cheap though: http://www.retrodata.co.uk/service-standard.php

Johnny Brown · November 01, 2007, 12:14:08 pm

Fuck me. £250 plus vat. I had no idea.

Control freak · November 01, 2007, 12:16:02 pm

One word - backup

Johnny Brown · November 01, 2007, 12:24:45 pm

Yeah yeah big balls. I did back-up until it got full...

Bubba · November 01, 2007, 07:01:17 pm

If you can find another identical working drive, you can swap the circuit boards between the two and see if your drive fires up - this can work because i've done it myself.

Paul B · November 01, 2007, 08:53:20 pm

Try Mac Solutions on west st. (they do more than just macs)... they used to do some kind of data recovery service but I don't know to what level i'm pretty sure it'll cost a whole lot less than the above.

Jim · November 01, 2007, 11:48:43 pm

Quote from: Bubba on November 01, 2007, 07:01:17 pm

If you can find another identical working drive, you can swap the circuit boards between the two and see if your drive fires up - this can work because i've done it myself.

I'll have a look for you JB in my box.
What was it 80gig IBM deskstar?

Bubba · November 02, 2007, 08:36:48 am

It's pretty much got to have the same part no, etc...or at least be *very* close. I was lucky because i'd bought 2 of the same drive at the same time so had 2 identical ones.

If you google the part number you will sometimes find people with the same drive, or who are just selling the pcb on it's own - when i looked for one the pcb was about £40.

Johnny Brown · November 02, 2007, 09:52:26 am

Cheers guys, get rooting in your drawers...

IBM Deskstar 82.3Gb, Model IC35L080AVVV07-0, IDE, Part no 07N9210.

I got a bunch of quotes yesterday, there's obviously some franchise going on, all emails were formatted identically. From this I deduce 'its not rocket science'.

Jim · November 02, 2007, 09:58:08 am

will get rooting, also will have a look for a hard drive for you.
Seems to be quite a few on ebay as well for about £10 ish, just need to match up numbers
having a look for one now

Bubba · November 02, 2007, 10:06:26 am

JB, is it definitely IC35L080AVVV07-0 and not IC35L080AVVA07-0 ?

Google turns up nothing on the former, but loads on the latter...

Johnny Brown · November 02, 2007, 10:24:00 am

Yeah you're right, fat fingers sorry.

Seems like I might be able to buy just the pcb, however I've also come across this:

Quote

However, IBM Deskstar drives are notorious for developing serious mechanical faults. These can be easily identified by a distinctive regular ‘scratching and clicking’ noise coming from the hard disk. This is commonly known in the industry as the IBM Deskstar ‘click of death.’

This failure is caused by the unique design and manufacturing of the hard drive’s read / write heads, and the interaction of the GMR (Giant Magneto Resistive) technology with the data stored on the hard disk. These internal hard disk problems cause increased contamination, which in turn produce the notorious ‘click of death.’

I didn't notice any 'click' before it died, however it did cause the computer to crash several times. I assumed this was because the drive was almost full...

Jim · November 02, 2007, 11:07:45 am

take the side of the computer off, power it up and plug the HD in whilst listening to it, should be obvious if its clicking/scratching or not

Johnny Brown · November 02, 2007, 11:21:59 am

It doesn't do anything now, its dead.

I didn't notice any clicking before it died though, so hopefully its the pcb that is damaged/ needs swapping and not the heads that are fucked.

How difficult is swapping the pcb? I need some little star drivers for starters...

Jim · November 02, 2007, 11:24:19 am

I've got a set of them. I'll bring em over saturday for you

Bubba · November 02, 2007, 07:51:09 pm

Sounds like you may be in luck if there was no clicking/grating noises etc.

A set of small torq bits will sort you out.

Good luck!

underground · November 02, 2007, 10:43:18 pm

Quote from: Bubba on November 02, 2007, 07:51:09 pm

Sounds like you may be in luck if there was no clicking/grating noises etc.

A set of small torq bits will sort you out.

Good luck!

Sounds rather like my recent experience.. I took a Deskstar into the local PC menders just to see if it worked.. the response was 'that's why we call them Deathstars mate...'

Johnny Brown · November 12, 2007, 06:49:11 pm

Having no joy with this pcb, firms just don't reply. Before I fork out £300 is ebay worth a pop - I guess the first step is try to get an identical drive?

Johnny Brown · November 22, 2007, 02:48:50 pm

Well I got fed up of fucking around and sent it off to the 97 quid place. I got the data back today, supposedly, on a new drive. Bill was £460. I feel like I've been raped.

Anyway, looking forward, I can't get the computer to work with this new drive. Its SATA, previously I've only used IDE. Have switched on the IDE port in the BIOS, but the computer doesn't work. The 'instructions' with the drive say 'in some rare cases 1.5Gb/s hosts cannot connect with 3.0Gb/s devices' blah etc. As 'rare cases' invariably applies to me I guess this is it.

Can someone tech-savvy read this page, and explain in english what I need to do? Seems like I have to put something on a disk, but when does the pc read off it? During boot? Cheers.

Bubba · November 22, 2007, 03:28:36 pm

£460 fuck me that's horrible....and they couldn't even give you back a useable drive - that's terrible service.

Is the drive a copy of your windows boot drive, or is it just the data in files on a spare drive?

Does your PC support SATA?

Johnny Brown · November 22, 2007, 03:40:17 pm

Thanks for the help, the whole thing is sending me under.

I think the problem is at my end to be honest. I sent them a brand new drive, they have then formatted it and written the data to it. So its just a spare drive. The pc supports SATA as far as I can tell, I guess its this speed issue?

May be part of a bigger issue though - I put in a back-up drive whilst this one was being recovered, and iit made the CD drive disappear. Its enough to make me buy a mac.

Jim · November 22, 2007, 04:48:31 pm

Quote from: Johnny Brown on November 22, 2007, 03:40:17 pm

Its enough to make me buy a mac.

you must have more money than you know what to do with.

The motherboard is an Abit BH7 and supports SATA, read up on abit support.
All SATA drives are backwards compatible as far as I am aware.
Have got some new sckt 478 motherboards knocking about I could sort you out with, should sort out your issues.

Johnny Brown · November 22, 2007, 04:52:05 pm

Quote

you must have more money than you know what to do with.

Yeah check me out I just threw away half-a-grand on getting some pictures back.

Word, will the motherboard support three hard drives and a cd drive at the same time then? Cos everytime I plug something new in something else disappears. Its focking bollshut.

slackline · November 22, 2007, 04:56:06 pm

Quote from: Johnny Brown on November 22, 2007, 04:52:05 pm

Yeah check me out I just threw away half-a-grand on getting some pictures back.

Computer users fall into two groups:-

Those that do backups
Those that have never had a hard drive fail.

That does seem like rather a lot to have paid, especially if your now having trouble accessing the drive, I'd be well

Hope you get it sorted anyway.