Recovering Hard Disk Platters: data intact

manti452

Hey

I'll try to be brief with the back story: I took an IDE drive from an old PC and put it into an external enclosure from Komplett.

tried it on a laptop, laptop crashed while drive was connected and drive became "unrecognisable". Left it at home while i tried to find someone who can recover it cos i dont have the software, found them, gave them the drive and they sait it was toast .. looks like it was dropped, physical errors with the arm not reading the platters. They tried the platters in a different drive but couldn't get it to read. The platters are still in tact so the data is still there but the arm won't read the drive.

Lost 6 yrs of music, films, personal photo's etc.

Do I have any options other than some expensive recovery service: I hear they charge an arm a leg and various other body parts

Thanks
James

polyfusion

What software did they use?

Ideally, if the disk is going to be opened to transplant the platters, then it needs to be done in a cleanroom. I've seen DIY jobs on about the net, and open drives spinning and working on youtube etc, but their lifespan is severely curtailed once they've been opened.

Also, physical damage on the platters may not be visible; they may look ok, but may be beyond hope.

Is/was the disk spinning up at all? Using a USB adaptor is one of my favoured options for recovering because you're forcing it to spin up and keeping spinning (if it can get that far) by using a seperate power supply, but the software has to be good too. May also be worth trying the disk on an IDE channel in a regular PC (other than paying upwards of €500, there aren't many other options.)

When you get a new hard drive, get 2, if your data is important, and backup often. And use a utility like diskcheckup to monitor the health of your drives.

BigEejit

data recovery is a very expensive proposition, but sometimes its the only thing to do. The more fecking around you do the less likely that they will get your data (also possibly more expensive).

If the data is _really_ important I would be looking for quotes to get it recovered professionally.

manti452

Hey,

I'm not sure what software was used. To be honest I'd not be worried about the lifespan, I'd be happy with 2 hours of life to pull my data back.

According to my guy the problem now boils down to the fact that the arm will not read the platters. When pushing deeper into it he reckons the disks are intact and the data still there as there has been no contact with the arm and disk platters.

#3: Appreciate the input

James

Overheal

professional platter recovery can be ridiculously expensive. youre talking hundreds, if not thousands of euro.