Data Recovery

[Adams Serra]

I have a WD passport that crashed with about 1500 family pictures. I am looking for a reliable data recovery lab.

Thank you,
Adams

[Rocky Sharwell]

I have a WD passport that crashed with about 1500 family pictures. I am looking for a reliable data recovery lab.

Thank you,
Adams

Adams:

What exactly happened to the drive?

Are you a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals? I ask only because there is a discount from one service to members..

Rocky

[Adams Serra]

Hi Rocky,
I don't know exactly what went wrong with it. My local computer guy was not able to retrive the images for me. He told me that it would have to be sent to a professional data recovery lab.
I am not a menber of that association.

Thank you,
Adams

[William Malacarne]

Adams

I have never done this for my own use but have a friend that went through it. If you want I can see about getting the info of where she did it at. Not real sure but I think the cost was something like $2000(USA)

Bill

[Adams Serra]

Hi Bill,
please talk to your friend and let me know. It wil be a very expensive lesson for me to learn. Next time back up the files to different hard drives.

Thank you,
Adams

[Dug Threewitt]

I have used RestorerPro(software with bootable CD) to recover files and it worked very well on a crashed drive. That was quite a while ago though, and depending on how tech savvy you are, it may be a bit overwhelming.

[Alfred Forns]

Adams joining NAPP will not be expensive, I'm a member. Might want to check on the discount Rocky is talking about, could be worth it !!!

bummer I had that happen to a Micro Drive long ago .... vintage Canon D60 days ... I really needed the info on the card but four services I called wanted around 4k !!!! Three years later a friend of my that builds computers was able to read the drive for $55 ... more amazing !!! I'm sure it has to be a lot cheaper now. Good luck !!

[Lance Peters]

Hi Adams - is the drive still operational???? Can you still see it is there in windows??

If it is physically not working (hardware) - you will have to send it to someone and it will be expensive as they physically dismantle and replace the controller with another one exactly the same - if they have one.

If it is still working - there are a number of software programs out there to help - the best of the lot is WINHEX - however it requires a fair amount of skill and time but is very good - so good in fact that it is used for computer forensics.

The best USER level recovery tool (Automatic - let it run takes hours) is ZAR - zero assumption recovery, does a very very good job.

As I said - depends if it is a HARDWARE (drive doesn't work) or SOFTWARE (Drive has been formatted, just cant see the files, those sorts of things)

[William Malacarne]

Adams

Here is the response I got from her.

"It was my portable 500 GIG HD and I took it into Geek Squad at Best Buy and they tried what they could do...I think it was a $50 fee and then they sent it out to a data recovery company where they have a dust free room they open it up and then try to retrieve what they could. Out of almost 500 GIG there was less than 1/2 GIG that was corrupted and they couldn't restore. I had them put everything on a 1T HD and it took them a couple of weeks at a cost of $1,850.00."

Hope this is of some help.

Thanks
Bill

[Bob Ettinger]

Here is the place Artie Morris used a couple years ago in a similar situation

http://www.americandatarecoveryinc.com/

You might contact him for more information.

[Adams Serra]

Adams

Here is the response I got from her.

"It was my portable 500 GIG HD and I took it into Geek Squad at Best Buy and they tried what they could do...I think it was a $50 fee and then they sent it out to a data recovery company where they have a dust free room they open it up and then try to retrieve what they could. Out of almost 500 GIG there was less than 1/2 GIG that was corrupted and they couldn't restore. I had them put everything on a 1T HD and it took them a couple of weeks at a cost of $1,850.00."

Hope this is of some help.

Thanks
Bill
Hi Bill,
Thank you for taking the time and posting again. I will take it to best buy and see what they say.

Adams

[Adams Serra]

Hi Bob, Thank you for the info. I will call them tomorrow.

Adams

[Adams Serra]

Hi Adams - is the drive still operational???? Can you still see it is there in windows??

If it is physically not working (hardware) - you will have to send it to someone and it will be expensive as they physically dismantle and replace the controller with another one exactly the same - if they have one.

If it is still working - there are a number of software programs out there to help - the best of the lot is WINHEX - however it requires a fair amount of skill and time but is very good - so good in fact that it is used for computer forensics.

The best USER level recovery tool (Automatic - let it run takes hours) is ZAR - zero assumption recovery, does a very very good job.

As I said - depends if it is a HARDWARE (drive doesn't work) or SOFTWARE (Drive has been formatted, just cant see the files, those sorts of things)
Hi Lance,
when i connect the passport to the computer, it does not regonize the device.
I will take it to best buy tomorrow and call the company that Bob gave me.
I hope that either one of them are abble to recover the pictures for me.

Thank you,
Adams

[Maxis Gamez]

Good luck Adams!!

[Roger Clark]

Adams,

Like others have said, I had a friend have a drive crash and he paid about $2000 to get the data back.

Disk space is really cheap, and disks can fail at any moment. I keep multiple backups. 1) I carry enough CF cards to never have to erase them while on a trip. 2) I back up images to DVD, and to 3 USB hard drives, plus keep them online on my main desktop. That's 5 backups. I rotate the 3 sets of USB drives backing up the system. I also took an old 1.8 GHz PC and made it a linux machine and with Samba it works as a file server and I can back up to it for fast intermediate
backup. I also keep 2 of the 3 system backups off site in case of big disaster (fire/flood/robbery).
You can never have too many backups. One disaster and those backups pay for themselves many times over.

This thread should probably be moved to digital workflow.

[Alfred Forns]

Moving to Digital Workflow Roger !!!

[Adams Serra]

Thank you all for the info. Are any of you using a DROBO to back up data??

[Adams Serra]

Geek squad was able to get the pictures back. It cost me $650.00.
Thank you all for the help

Adams