3. I went to a shop in Exeter On. and they send the hard drive to Toronto and had info retrieved for $1200.00 (I had the only photos of my grand daughters born in 2001)
3a. The shop owner suggested I buy a 2nd "internal hard drive as a storage unit and "backup''
4. Fast forward to June 2013, and the "entrance" to the 2nd hard drive "disappeared" A tech friend tried to "save it" but no success
5. I have a hard drive with 10,000 photos on it
6. Does anyone have experience with a "retrieval company" I would pay several hundred dollars but hate to go over 1000 again...
might be a long shot but I have what is called a hard drive docking station, its a box with receptacles for various styles of hard drives. I have used this to access hard drives that wont normally boot on a computer as the dock treats the hard drive as a removable storage device. they are around 50 bucks for a good one off ebay
As has been said above, I use a docking station thingy. Especially usefull if you've been using a hard drive as your main source of data but windows no longer recognises it. You just plug your hdd into it, then plug the box into another pc with usb.
Just had to do the same for a laptop that smoked its chip . the 3.5" desktop unit was 25-29 bucks at bestbuy (dynex) didn't look to close at the price because I needed the 2.5" laptop 19 bucks . 3.0 usb connection plug and play worked for me .
i have a friend of mine who works at the local hospital as the IT guy, he told me theres a trick you can do but its complex and may not work. when a hard drive dies its normally the onboard computer part, not the disks themselves, he has told me he swapped the disks into another drive and it worked. dont know if that can be done in your case but if it means recovering the data as a last resort it might be worth a shot
I guess thats what I am looking for someone that someone trusts
this disc has every photo of my grand children (6) since they were born,
and every skating photo of my 15 year old grand daughter, who skates senior pairs figure skating.. and every photo of every trip to Maritimes since I retired
my son has been tearing pc apart and building them from scrath doing any upgradges since close to 15 years he even still fixes mine and the wife over the internet and he s down south and I m up north..............I can ask him lot of question for free of charge if you want .
any way after the first crash and the retrieve .did that shop guy actually re install that same hard drive that crash in your pc ? if he did he does know much about pc
-- Edited by 56loser on Friday 31st of January 2014 08:08:53 PM
a hard drive that crash is only good for garbage after
if you re use it ...............it will work perfect until it comes back to that same mark created from the first crash and bang gone
I m not sure but I think a hard drive as a manufacturing date written on it . if it says 2004 you got 2 new ones but if it say 2002 the year you bought your pc I m afraid ?
I am an IT guy by trade, if your pics are valuable to you, send the drive out and pay the money.
There are things that can be tried, but if you do not want to risk losing the data you will not want to try them.
Does the drive spin up? Does the computer recognize that there is a drive plugged in? (You will see this when the BIOS boots up) Does the drive click when you first turn the computer on?
For photos, no HDD is a good "only storage" device, burn them to DVD, put them on multiple USB stick drives, they are cheap.
SSD are not a good permanent storage device, one good shock and they are toast with no chance of recovery.
If it were my drive, the first thing I would try is the external dock. If that fails then you step up to more risky operations.
If the pics are that important to you. Send it off.
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Understood. I would then go with the recommendation above.
Truth be told, I am surprised that drive lasted as long as it did. Most drives die around the 4-5 year mark depending on use. I have had a batch that lasted as little as a year but most run around the 4 year mark. They usually give you some sign they are on the way out:
- things slow down
- they will whine (like a bearing going bad, because thats what is happening!)
- they will click when the computer is turned on
- you will start getting "blue screens" or random reboots.
If you get any of these, start planning on replacing the drive. I know its a bit late for you now. But maybe someone else can benefit.
Another thing to look into is an online photo host. You can make them private and its another "backup" for your important photos.
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"I know people are suppose to be honest" the above mentioned chris is honest. i am a 1/3 owner of the company. just saying!
i asked chris about the situation and he informed me they send clients to a company in ottawa. here is his response. i can get the name of the company if you are interested. if beonix are referring them i would assume they are high on the pole for competency.
the chris saunders he mentions is the owner and a bud who owns bullet autografics. a big player in his field around here. his info would be his life blood.
There is a lot of money in data retrieval - it’s a very specialized service. We refer people to a company in Ottawa for it. A thousand bucks is actually cheap. I think it cost Chris Sanders closer to $3k to recover his data when his main file server crashed.
On Jan 31, 2014, at 5:31 AM, Rick Shaughnessy <rick@moirariverfoods.com> wrote:
chris, i found this on a car form i am on. the dollar amount made me think. rick
. I bought my first computer in London in 2002 <biggrin.gif>
2. In 2004 the Hard Drive crashed <cry.gif>
3. I went to a shop in Exeter On. and they send the hard drive to Toronto and had info retrieved for $1200.00 <hmm.gif> (I had the only photos of my grand daughters born in 2001) <biggrin.gif>
3a. The shop owner suggested I buy a 2nd "internal hard drive as a storage unit and "backup''
4. Fast forward to June 2013, and the "entrance" to the 2nd hard drive "disappeared" <confuse.gif><confuse.gif><confuse.gif> A tech friend tried to "save it" but no success
5. I have a hard drive with 10,000 photos on it
6. Does anyone have experience with a "retrieval company" I would pay several hundred dollars but hate to go over 1000 again...
7. HELP
My thought too. When I moved to ontario I am sure I ditched those. Will check my dad's stash.
Mr. 427CARL, there are a couple ways the hard disk can fail, for simplicity one can be physical, motor quits or the platters are rendered useless,
the other is. the brain board dies. One way of recovering is if you can find another disk of the same make/model/size/etc you take the working board off the other disk,
it is then able to spin the platters again and read the information and you are golden.
Data recovery houses do this as part of their game and charge handsomely for it.
There is a possibility of repairing the drive doing the board swap for nothing if we can find another working drive of the same time.