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Rescuing data from Hard Drive

I am stuck as a fair chunk of my work is isolated in a RAID0 hard drive and I have been quoted in excess of £1.5k to retrieve data which is over the top(!) Wonder if any one of you know someone who could rescue data on a hard drive or could do it - I am happy to pay for it to be retrieved but there is a large gap between the quote above and the one I have in my budget...

Any signposting or assistance would be truly appreciated!

Ta and here's to the Posh game ...

Comments

  • hello silent. has the drive actually failed? or do you have a problem preventing you booting therefore you can't access the drive? you might just need to pit the drI've in another machine.
  • It's not helpful, but Raid 0? Tut tut.
  • Hi Silent.
    The problem could stem from one or more of many possibilities, best let techies deal with it. I'm in IT but we get a firm to do data retrieval for us who also service domestic customers. Around €90 on average and the data should be given to you on DVD.
    I Googled "hard drive recovery London" and plenty came up to get quotes from, or send it over in a double padded envelope and i'll get it done here in Dublin.
  • cafcpolo said:

    It's not helpful, but Raid 0? Tut tut.

    Pen and paper maybe?
  • Polo's right - Raid0 without a backup is far worse than even one disk without a backup - since there are, by definition, more disks, hence more chance of failure.

    It's highly unlikely that both disks have failed (if they have, then it's more likely to be a controller failure - which would be much easier to resolve - just replace the controller), so depending on what you need to recover, you might be lucky. If your files are smaller, there's more chance they'll be written entirely to one disk, rather than spread across both. You could try taking the working disk(s) out and shoving them in another machine on a different sata connection (or preferably an external caddy). If the files are large, you've got no chance of getting them back other than via a data recovery service I'm afraid. I haven't had to use one of those for about ten years (you only ever lose important data once, trust me!) but they weren't cheap when I did have to use them. I'd suggest the figure you've quotes is expensive, but without a reference point (how much is the data worth to you, what's the market rate for retrieving it etc) I couldn't be sure. Why don't you shop around?
  • Thanks the drives failed too. Will pick up on the points raised, yeah was probably sold a pup with this disk configuration, was told the back up is in place and automated when in fact it was nowhere to be seen! May take your suggestion of sending it over to Dublin, scidbox if I get nowhere over here... Thanks and will do an inbox message when all else fails.

    Great to know that this site is here to assist. Cheers.
  • Leroy will deffo shop around more! Ta..
  • Silent, there are firms that sell data recovery software, like Easeus.com's recovery wizard. But whether it's likely to work or not I don't know although others might! Easeus offer a free version - might be worth a go?
    Anyway have a look here download.cnet.com/windows/ for some options and customer reviews. Your choice obviously - I'm making no recommendations and have no experience of this product although I do use Easeus backup stuff and it's a bit quirky but seems to do the job.
  • Good advice regarding shopping around. Sounds like you have a professional set up so professional advice is needed. Scidbox seems like the best option for you.

    The only experience I've had with this was on a home use only level. My external hard drive was overheating and I couldn't get the data off before it crashed. As a last resort I wrapped the drive in a plastic bag and placed in the freezer for a few hours. Then i connected up to my computer and the drive worked. Each time the drive remained alive for around 15 minutes and I was able to get some data off before it crash again. After repeating this process a number of times I was able to get all my data of the drive.
  • Thanks for the advice here - just had a chat with a data recovery firm who service corporates and was not able to assist (too small a job for them) but stated that as most data recovery firms get paid by insurance companies they tend to "bump" the prices high to maximise the profit margins - fair enough - and that I should shop around again and state that this is a personal arrangement and not insured. This could knock off as much as 50% off the prices quoted... So am going down this road now - hope that this will help others who come across this thread in the future.

    Cheers, SA
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