Laptop HD repair/recovery question

H. Kurth Bemis kurth at kurthbemis.com
Mon Nov 17 16:47:30 EST 2008


Ditto on the DriveSavers.  Here's a quick story...

A long time ago (~6 years) I responded to an urgent page from a customer
who owned a few video stores in the area (Springfield, VT).  I arrived
at the head store, introduced myself to the manager and then asked "Can
you take me to your server?"

After 15 minutes of searching we found the server.  In a storage room,
in the back, completely buried with boxes of who knows what.  The server
was a 486DX2 running DOS 5 and Netware 3whatever.  The storage drive,
with all their records was dead.  It would barley spin, and that's about
all.  When it would spin, it would scream like a banshee.

I advised that the best course would be to ship the drive to drive
savers for recovery.  The owner agreed.

I removed the drive from the server.  As soon as I removed the drive I
could tell that there was something not right with this drive.  As I was
moved the drive, I noticed some rattling and by rattling, I mean, there
was things moving around in there, freely.  Not sounds a drive, good or
bad, should be making.

I overnighted the drive to DriveSavers.  In 1 week we had the data back
on a DVD.

Drive savers also sent back the damaged drive.  Being the curious cat I
am, I opened the drive up to find loads of fine black grit.  The heads
were swinging free across the platters, and the magnets were
non-existent (the black grit, I'm assuming).  The platters showed signs
of the drive heads skimming back and forth, probably during shipping and
in the parking area, a nice, silver band could be seen where the heads
had worn through the surface of the platter.

They recovered the data. 100%.  I would have figured the drive (and
data) was destined for the green monster (dumpster) with the damage I
saw.  DriveSavers can do some amazing work.

<ali-g>Respeck</ali-g>

~k


On Mon, 2008-11-17 at 15:12 -0500, Bill McGonigle wrote:
> Alex Hewitt wrote:
> > When I looked into having them recover a customer
> > drive they wanted somewhere north of $3k but their price was
> > proportional to the percentage of data recovered.
> 
> I've used DriveSavers before and they do a good job.  Their pricing is 
> sort of a nice qualifier - if $3K is too much to even consider for the 
> data, then a DIY approach is warranted.  If $3K sounds like a bargain 
> not to lose that data, send the drive to them.
> 
> -Bill
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