Reply With QuoteMy desk top PC died six months ago, PC world couldn't repair it but for £50 they transferred all the data onto my external hard drive. Worth asking them?
Just tried a back-up and the external hard drive spins for a few seconds and then whirs to a halt. It's mounting on my desktop but isn't responding. It has all my photo's and music on it and there's a lot of both!
Does anyone have a recommendation for a data recovery service in Bristol and/or a rough idea of the costs involved please.
I use a mac mini and the external hard drive is an Iomega, model number HDD1H-2.
Cheers,
Gary
My desk top PC died six months ago, PC world couldn't repair it but for £50 they transferred all the data onto my external hard drive. Worth asking them?
Hi Gary,
Sorry to hear this, you could open the case, check what type of drive it is and buy a empty drive case from Amazon or Scan and try yourself before trying a commercial outfit. the cases aren't that expensive compared to commercial data retrieval.
One of these would do but the exact type depends on the type of HDD in your drive.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_...0Drive%20Caddy
hth
Si.
This is a little more serious though as your desktop PC died for a reason other than a hard drive failure, hence it was straightforward to transfer your data from the old working hard drive to the new one.Originally Posted by justin44
The OP has a drive failure and recovering data from it isn't straightforward and it will almost certainly cost several hundred pounds.
A quick Google search for 'data recovery bristol' throws up many options:
http://www.maindisc.co.uk/
http://www.dialageek.co.uk/services/...overy-bristol/
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=data+recovery+bristol
etc.
Good luck but be prepared for the cost.
If it spins up and doesn't make any strange noises then it should be possible to buy an identical Iomega and swap the hard drives. Btw, have you tried a different power supply? The drive might try to boot only to find there's not enough juice and then shut down.
I know it's a bit late for advice but look into external backup like Amazon S3.
Just buy a new drive and restore from your backup. If this drive had everything on it, you were backing out up - right?
It's quite often just the USB electronics. Take it out of the case, buy a data dock and you might be fine.
i think this is the one i have, it works well
http://www.amazon.co.uk/TeckNet%C2%A...=sata+usb+dock
Ok, as per the above suggestions the best thing to do first is to try the hard disk in a different caddy or dock just in case it's the USB interface in the existing caddy that's dead. Whatever you do, do not write anything new onto this disk (assuming you can read it). Copy data onto a brand new separate disk.
If this doesn't allow you to recover your data then you will need to resort to a professional data recovery company.
Note that there are many scammers and chancers in the field of data recovery. Here are three data recovery companies who are genuine:
Kroll Ontrack
http://www.krollontrack.co.uk/
0808 231 7719 or 020 3642 9478
Disklabs
http://www.disklabsdatarecovery.co.uk/
01827 55999
[the third recommended company has been removed -- see edit below]
If you need to go down the data recovery company route, beware, it will be expensive. Prices will start at around £200. You will be paying for their service plus the cost of any electronics they need to attach to the drive plus the cost of new media.
And last but not least: Backup, backup, backup! Even if you use RAID arrays with redundant disks, you still need to backup. And don't just rely on cloud storage. Cloud is a useful backup but keep your own physical backups on separate disks. Use cloud as a backup to your physical backups.
** edit **
The above list of recommended and genuine data recovery companies had three members before this edit. However, I have removed the third one (whose name begins with 'X') because I am reminded that I posted their name previously on this forum in a similar list (see http://forum.tz-uk.com/showthread.ph...=1#post2847693). However, a representative of the company contacted Eddie and insisted that their name be removed from the list of recommended data recovery companies. Let me confirm that: The representative of the company insisted that their name be removed from a list of recommended companies! And so, although they have not contacted me directly to insist that I do not recommend them, I will not recommend them here and have removed their name from the list. If you'd like to know the name of the company who no longer wish to appear in a list of recommended companies then please feel free to PM me.
Last edited by markrlondon; 10th August 2014 at 07:05. Reason: Edited to remove a recommendation
I definitely agree with the above. I've had an external drive fail, but it was the enclosure electronics were the problem. If you take the drive out and connect it via a new usb link (or even SATA connection internally if you're happy doing that), it may well be fine.
I have this dock and it is a great piece of kit! I have about a dozen hard drives as I like to keep backups of backups and all you do is slot one in this dock and switch on and it shows as an external drive on your PC.
Last edited by KavKav; 10th August 2014 at 07:24.
Costco currently have a 1TB Toshiba USB 3 external drive for £41.95 + VAT, cheapest I've seen.
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
Thanks for all the advice chaps, much appreciated.
I've been to Maplin this morning and bought a 2TB portable hard drive plus a SATA HDD docking station. Doing a Time Machine back up as I type to the new hard drive and once that's complete I'll see if the old hard drive disk works in the dock. Fingers crossed and all that.
Cheers,
Gary
Very odd!
Well it took an awfully long time but I think I've backed up everything from my old hard drive onto my new one. Looks like everything's there and I even remembered how to sync itunes with an external HD. Looks like it was just the enclosure gubbins on my old HD that was playing up as the HDD ran fine in the docking station. I'll probably get another housing for it and keep it for addition back ups.
Many thanks for all the advice, you've saved me a pretty penny I reckon.
Cheers,
Gary
Yes, very odd.
I think it was probably a case of an intellectual property protection agency going off half-cocked. The problem is that these agencies can do more harm to your company reputation than good. I will no longer recommend the company is question and they have lost business because of this.
Good news. :-)
Good to hear Gary, tbh while there is a question mark over the drive, given how cheap disks are I wouldn't bother and would bite the bullet and buy a whole new unit, if it's a mac then a time machine enabled nas would make backups painless and you could then backup the backup periodically for piece of mind.
now that you had your scare and it worked out well go ahead and back up to the cloud. I've got Raid 1 2x 1TB disks which back up my laptops at home and store all photos I've done over the years and about 130GB backed up to Amazon Glacier in the worst case scenario if I lost the data from my server at home due to hard drive failure.
Just to add to the above (and, to be clear, I am not disagreeing with anything mac83 said)...
The cloud is not a reliable sole backup target. By all means use cloud providers as secondary backup locations but always, always, always control your own physical primary backups. Putting your only backups into someone else's physical hands is always inherently less reliable compared to keeping your own physical backups, and this is true no matter who the cloud provider is, no matter how big they are, no matter how reliable they appear to be, and no matter how popular they are. As I say, by all means use the cloud as an additional safety net but never trust it as a sole backup location.
I realise that my advice might seem a tad old fashioned. It is old fashioned. It is also sensible and correct. :-) The cloud is great! But it's not a replacement for personal, local, physical control.
Also, RAID is a hugely useful tool for resilience but it is not in and of itself a backup solution. Even RAID arrays should be backed up (as mac83 does, if I read correctly).
Just to add to what Mark and Mac said, one of the best reasons to use a cloud based backup along with local backups is the possibility of flood, fire or theft etc.
Bad enough if the worse should happen but with an off site backup you have a good chance of getting your data back.
I was idly Googling backup software and found this: http://free.cloudbacko.com/
Looks interesting since you are able to add on multiple cloud accounts and treat them as one. At least that's how I read it.
Thanks for the advice guys. Just to clarify that I replaced my old hard drive with a new 2TB unit. Amazing how cheap storage is these days. Oh and unfortunately my Mac Mini is pretty ancient in computing terms and won't run the OS required to to run iCloud. I keep thinking about replacing it with a more modern Mac Mini but it's running fine, still meets my requirements and has never once crashed despite some fairly intensive use.
Cheers,
Gary
Do you need anything recovered Gary?
I've got some Mac based recovery s/w, I could attempt a salvage job.
Text / PM me if needed.
Johnny.
Saverstores are doing a Samsung 250GB SSD for £83.99 if anyone's interested.
http://www.saverstore.com/link/20336...50GB_SSD_Drive
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
Whilst SSD's are very quick and rugged, they do not die in the same way as a spinning rust drive does. When an SSD dies it will take all your data with it, usually without warning too and with little hope of recovery! Just sayin'...
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