OK so awhile back I recall someone offering data recovery services. I have a hard drive that failed and I need to get atleast the digital pics off of. It's a Maxtor DIAMONDMax Plus 9 120GB drive, it sounds like it spins up then beep click does it again. My bios does see it all though it sees it as a 2GB drive now. I'd rather give someone here some business then send it off to a bunny suit lab.

My best,
Mike D.

I might be able to get the data off, I have a dedicated computer for data recovery (or rather, I will soon). If I do need to retrieve data, you'll need to give me a drive to dump the data on to. Send me a PM with as many details as you can and I will let you know if I can recover it.

A bunny suit lab is going to cost you. I've seen data recovery charges anywhere from $60 to $6000.

Is it hooked up as the primary boot drive or a slave?
If it isn't connected as a slave already, do that and then see if you can copy the data over to your primary drive.

Unless someone here has some high $ software (which I haven't had any luck with here at work) they are going to do just what I mentioned above.

Do what rjames suggested, but if you can't see the drive at all (ie. windows doesn't acknowledge it's existence) then you could ship it to me and I'll do my best.

I may have a drive to send also...

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=77163

though Im going to mess about when I get some time tomorrow and check that the bios is set correctly etc.

The BIOS should be fine if you haven't touched it. Check all connections to make sure they're firmly in place. Check the wires to make sure they're not damaged in any way, shape or form. Check the jumper settings (although I doubt this is it). Get another hard drive, set it as master, set your old boot drive as slave, install windows to the new drive and see if you can access the old one. If you can't, then shoot me a PM. Also, look for physical damage to the circuitry of the hard drive, listen for oddly metallic clicks and/or scratching, etc. Either post here or PM me with what information you collect this way, and I'll let you know what might be the perpetrator.

I have two crashed HDs myself that need some recovery as well...

I have used these guys for my work and they did recover everything. It wasn't that expensive as I recall. Give they're 1-800 number a call and just talk to them to see what it might cost. They say on their website that there are two types of hard drive failures. There is logical (which is when you need to recover something you deleted) and physical (which is when the drive actually had some kind of hardware failure). Most of the time when it just stops working, it's a physical failure and no software that anyone has is gonna get your data back. These guys will actually open up your hard drives and mount the platters on a machines made specially to read them to get you data back and they will send you DVDs with your data coppied on them. If you know where your data resided and you only want specific data (like all your pictures), the price is usually cheaper than recovering the whole drive. They have locations around the country - give them a call.

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/data-re.../north-america/

As mentioned above, check the connections.

My brother had his HDD apparently go out two weeks before the end of the semester a year ago and several projects were hopelessly trapped on it. Turns out, the SATA connection to the MB was loose. The SATA connections don't seem to be as secure as the old PATA connections.

And for my own personal experience, never, ever, buy a Maxtor drive. I've owned three and they've all failed before the warranty was up. Maxtor was actually very good about replacing them, but to me, its not worth the hassle. Spend a few extra bucks and get a better brand. I like Fujitsu, IBM and Western Digital. I've also heard good things about Seagate, but haven't personally used them.

The first HDD I ever owned was a Fujitsu 540MB monster back in '94. And the last time I fired up that old beast last year, it booted like a champ.

Put the drive in a ziplock bag and freeze it for several hours, then plug it in and see if it will boot. Its worked for me...

Only put it in the freezer as a last ditch effort as you get 1 boot out of it afterwards (hopefully)

If you have a friend with Linux skills and the drive still spins. You might try:

(1) downloading a copy of Knoppix
(2) make sure your new drive has enough space
(3) attached your bad drive as a slave
(4) use dd to read your bad drive to a disk image on your new drive

dd performs a low level copy, reading your disk byte for byte. Make sure you use the noerror option so it skip over bytes it cannot read instead of stopping.

(5) mount the disk image
(6) copy files from the disk image to your new drive.

I have used the above procedure with 2 bad HD's and it works but takes a long time (hours).

Dan