Hey guys. My secondary HD crashed today. Yes...there was clicking and then poof...gone. To add insult to injury....this crap happened at 4am this morning. The only thing i need recovered are my pictures and my music.

However...i guess data recovery after clicking noises means it needs a "clean-room". I've searched online and it seems clean room recoveries are about $600-$1000. That is freakin crazy!

Do any of you guys know of any options? Any friends in the clean-room business? Please let me know. I'm thankful for any advice. Thanks


ps. The HD is out of the PC and will sit here until i figure this out.


Jason

 

Jason,

I'm in IT and deal with stuff like this all the time. I see several bad HDD's a year and if any of them get to the point of clicking. grinding, making any sort of noise at all, they are useless.

I have sent 4 drives to a company called DriveSavers, which seemed highly regarded, and each drive has a $200 fee attached before they will look a it. THey claim to be able to recover stuff, but I have never been able to recover any data off this type of failure. I think they are good with catastrophic type failures, like running a laptop over with car, spills that short out a system, things like that. When it comes to a worn out drive that grinds and clicks and just slowly dies, it has done enough damage to itself that it just cant be salvaged.

If it were me, I wouldnt bother sending it in unless you dont have to pay up front. I think some may ask you to pay up front before they look at it, and some will ask you to pay if you want your drive back after they tell you they either got stuff off it, or couldnt get anything off it.

Hopefully you have a backup somewhere of stuff...that would suckif not.

just my .02 but I've never had any luck with those type of recoveries....

Good Luck!!

Mike

 

Jason,

One other thing...hey I just noticed your signature shows you from Ocala, FL.

I live in NH and was just down in Ocala over the end of last week/weekend. Drove 1300mi straight thru Wed to visit family then 1300 back Sat.

One thing I didnt see much of while driving around was a lot of G35's...

Got snagged by the SC State Troopers on the way home 84 in a 70, but
everyone was doing it...


That excuse doesnt seem to work BTW....

 

negative on the backup for the pictures...which is what i really need back.

I have most of my music backup on mp3s thanks to the 2005 G35 audio mp3 system. hehe


There are lots of companies who say free evaluation...blah blah.

This sucks. As cheap as HD are...why didnt I backup this crap. Ugggh.

Thanks for the response

 

yeah....there isnt an infiniti dealship within like 100 miles of here so....all infiniti's are rare. Thats a long drive for ocala bro. Ain't much here. bwahahah

 

^+1

Do you have another drive that is same model you can part with. I have had a little succes with platter transplants before in the past.

I also forze one in a ziploc bag for 2 days and hooked it back up and was able to get some data before it parked the heads again.

I am sure there are a lot of pix so any success would be very limited with either.

I will be so happy when high density solid state drive hit the market. The HD is the last frontier for improvemnt in the computer world. Hoestly wtf is taking them so long.

Sorry about the loss.

 

oh SC cops are total BLEEPS.

 

I recently bought a dvd burner for this very purpose. I am doing a backup this week. I know I am on borrowed time.

 

sorry bro. i have a laptop i go online with and a desktop i WILL not let online ever. keep it on a very nice surge protector and keep all my important info on it.


its just like your cell phone. you dont think to write down all the numbers till you lose your phone....

 

Jason Im not sure if I fully agree with the first evaluation.

The clicking and ultimate crashing of a HD normally means the motor is dying. This is actually the easiest fix of all data recovery because it just means the tape needs to be removed and placed in a working HD. It is still a few hundred dollars to do this because of the lack of compitition but if you found a free evaluation place, then it cant hurt.

 

Ouch,
Won't wish that on anyone. Sounds like you might have had a head crash. I wish I had some positive advice for you, however; whatever you do DON'T run Hard Drive repair/recovery software as it may cause even more damage.

Good luck.

 

well if the heads were thrashing then the platters could have been damaged but I would agree that there is a great chance somehting could be recovered which is why I suggested the platter transplant.

The clearance between the head and the platter is less than the thickness of a piece of paper. Keep in mind that if these folks are going to evaluate it for free they are going to hit you hard on the backside for the recovery process so get all the numbers upfront.

 

i would agree w/ was, since there was only clicking and then nothing, its most likely the motor gone bad.

either way it sux, cause its gonna cost twice as much to fix, then to get a new one

 

Iwould be willing to bet that the platters still spin up like they should and the R/W controller is fubar or bad blocks.

 

This reminds me that I need to install that other drive that is in my closet to ghost my current drive in case this happens to me.