TwinOaks Report post Posted March 22, 2008 It appears that I have a fatal crash on my laptop HDD. I have a replacement drive on the way, but all the goodies are still on the old one. Does anyone have a suggestion for data retrieval from the old disk? There's some personal info I don't want to distribute (tax returns, etc.) when I send the old HDD back for warranty swap out, so I also need to do a complete DOD wipe. Any suggestions for how to do this if the drive is bad? TIA, Mike Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
akhawkeye Report post Posted April 8, 2008 Hi Mike - just saw this. Do you still have the drive? If it died because of a head crash, you can try putting it in the freezer for about 10-15 minutes, then throwing it back in your laptop and see if it'll boot. Then just grab what you can untill it gets hot again and crashes. Then repeat. You do have to be careful of condensation, though. Otherwise, there are data recovery specialists out there that will actually take the drive apart and rebuild it. This is spendy, though. As far as wiping the drive, it's much easier to do via software if the drive spins up. If not, well... you could try a really really big magnet... but then you'll never really be sure if it erased it completely or not... There are other things you can try to get the data back, but these involve a pci adapter, a desktop, and some forensic utilities (software). But again, this is only if the drive spins up. It all depends on how the drive died. Sorry this isn't a definitive answer, but maybe it'll work for ya... good luck! Colin Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Johanna Report post Posted April 8, 2008 Sorry, Mike- I didn't see this either until akhawkeye bumped it. If the hard drive will still spin, buy a cheap exteranl hard drive enclosure, and put the old one in there. Use another computer to retrieve the files and back them up. To minimize the chances of anyone else having your data, use fdisk or a sturdy hammer. HTH Johanna Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
TwinOaks Report post Posted April 12, 2008 Talk about bumping on old post..... Well, things sorted themselves out ...kinda... I found a place here in town that offered data recovery for cheap- Geek Squad does full data backup (up to 9 gigs) for $99. If they can't get it 'in store' they offer an off site recovery center starting at about $250. If they can't do it at all, they refund $70 bucks of it. I called Dell, and got a new drive sent, and pulled some hair out, then went to GS. They called me back that night, and via automatic dialer, informed me that my item was ready for pick-up. So, I scurried back to the store. The first work out of the technician's mouth says it all. "Dude...." Apparently the read head took a nose dive into the disk surface, evidenced by "...this horrible screeching noise as soon as they hooked up the power..." Total mechanical failure of the drive. They informed me that anyone trying to recover info from the dumpster wouldn't even try on that HDD. There are services that can get the remaining info, but it involves clean rooms, rebuilding a partial disk surface, special manually operated read heads, and a few thousand dollars. Now, if I was a large corperation with a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of invoices on the drive, then yeah, itd' be worth it. However, my wife and I decided that 200 family pics couldn't justify the money. Now that you're all sad for me, here's the good news: Thanks to my procrastination and general laziness in regards to technical matters that I don't initiate....I've still got most (70+ %) of the photos on the memory chips for the camera. Do you realize how many 3.1 megapixel photos will fit on a 1 gig SD chip?!?!?! And there's room for 700 more! Then there's the 128 chip, and the 1G flash drive.....so I'm really only out a few dozen pics. Mostly happy ending. Since this happened, I've backed up the photos on CD (2 copies) and also on a 160G external HDD I got on sale -$80 for a Seagate. Yes, I was tempted to get the Terabyte....but...well, I needed leather too. More happy endings: Thanks to the crash and my reloading of the software/ OS, I now have a laptop running with two new ram chips, doubling it (upgrade to a gig for $22 ) and I'm running with absolutely NO third party software to slow things down. I only have to reload the GRUB, and re-install my Linux OS (and add the VM) and I'll be just fine. Now, if anyone would like to volunteer to come over and help me re-plumb the water main under the house tommorrow.... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Pip Report post Posted April 12, 2008 Don't forget cd's can degrade over time, I lost a whole bunch of pics cause the cd messed up.. only five years old. So take care and update your cd's every now and again. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Myriam Report post Posted April 12, 2008 You got that right, Pip. Depending on the quality of the CDs, they'll last anywhere between two to five years. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
