Re: [OT] data recovery

[Jim Noble <yahoo-groups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ho Yin Ng wrote:
> Oh bummer ...
> SWMBO's mac laptop hard disk has gone t!ts up.
>

:-( Was it a Fujitsu drive by any chance? (Google for "Fujitsu sudden
death syndrome")

> As per usual she never listened to my requests to back it up.
> No real important documents but loads of photos she wants to recover.
> Disk is not visible in disk utility and I tried putting it in a caddy
> to see if I can access it through my PC, but no luck.
>

If a half-dead HD has stuff you /really/ want to recover, don't even
attempt to get it to work, just take it to a professional. Learnt that
the hard way :-(

> Can someone recommend a cheap, but good data recovery service?
>

Not sure such a thing exists I'm afraid (without an element of luck...).
Also, going to the cheap place first could scupper any chance of the
expensive place succeeding either. Decide now how important the data on
the HD is before choosing which place to send it to...

When my powerbook HD died, I sent it to a place near Shepherd's Bush,
but they failed to retrieve anything and I wasn't overly impressed with
their service. I then tried a place in Letchworth, who appeared to make
a valiant effort, but ultimately failed. The last ditch chance was going
to be to send it to a place that could extract the platters,
"scan" them
and re-construct the HD image from the scan data. But that was going to
cost at least £1k, and even then might not work, so I bailed on the
idea
and vowed to be more thorough with my backups.

I *think* this is the place I was going to use:
http://www.datarecoverydoctor.co.uk

They seemed to be the only ones I could find who talk about any form of
recovery beyond either replacing the drive electronics or the drive
heads (which is all that most places are capable of).

HTH,

Jim


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