hi there... this place rocks hehe... anyway recently my old HDD shat itself and decided that its life was now defunct and has left me with quite a bit of lost data and most importantly my novel and photographs that have sentimental and some monetary value(well my novel has monetary value... I hope!)

my question is... is there software that I can use to retrieve this data by doing a piggyback or linkup through my existing hdd?

if not then I`m wondering how I would access the information by a physical manner i.e:using some sort of data scanning device on the hdd internal sectors themselves...

are there people or companies that offer this sort of service in australia? I have had a little look around but all seem to deal with the government only.

my hdd is a quantum fireball plus LM 3.5" 10gb... it was quite old (bought in '99) and I have been told that its surprising it lasted that long...

anyway comment on my conundrum would be appreciated... thanks again

OK I`ve just had a little stroll through the rest of the posts here and found some that are relevant in some ways to my questions but I thought I would elaborate a little more so unnecessary questions need not be asked...

#1:i`m sure this hdd is not "corrupt" or "crashed", my bios refuses to recognize it at all whether I have it set to primary or slave.

#2:the hdd had not been exposed to any EM source or dropped/mishandled in any way.

#3:there are no damaged pins or cables.

#4:the voltage read out on my bios screen shows that it is drawing power, it does make some clicking sounds but nothing I can interperate as it wanting to work per se

Hope that helps a little :)

Hi,
Since this hard drive does have important files on it, I suggest you take it to a local computer sales/repair store near you. Tell them about, and ask the cost of them trying to recover your files. There is a chance if you try the "do it yourself" methods, they might be gone forever.
I do wish you the best of luck.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by McNuggy@LMC

#1:i`m sure this hdd is not "corrupt" or "crashed", my bios refuses to recognize it at all wether i have it set to primary or slave.

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If the system won't recognize the drive, it could very well be corrupted or crashed. On the other hand, it could be a problem with the interface and the platters are intact.

The premier site for recovery of drives like that is ontrack.com. However they are pricey. If the drive cannot be recognized by the system, then its unlikely that any software will be able to do anything since the software would need to access the drive.

If the platters are intact, however, there is a good chance of recovery, but it may be expensive.

On another note, I hope you have setup a good backup system on the new drive so you don't have to go through this again.

gee fred you are everywhere on this site... good onya mate for having the time to solve peoples problems... you should have a fee haha...

OK in response to scotts post when I mentioned "corrupted or crashed" I meant like totally broken... as it still is drawing power I figure its not totally had it...

and yeah I went searching last night and its going to cost me sum serious coin which really sucks because there is well over a thousand hours of work on my novel there, like the last three years of writing it... but spending the money will equal the time spent and the hours of editing and screaming at myself over such trivialties... I hope... anyway thanks for the replies fellas and I`ll keep at it... McNuggy

I hate to say this, but something has important as that should have been regularly backed up. I hope you have learned what may be an expensive, but valuable lesson about backups.

I backup all my data files on a daily basis.

Yeah an expensive and time consuming lesson it has been... as soon as I got my new hdd I backed up everything on both drives... never again mate I tell you... damn I`m a prize fool... I was told several times to backup but never got around to it... thanks again mate

Zero Assumption, is the beginning of the name, but you should be able to Google it and find it, it has a free demo that will let you restore 4 folders at a time, after it searches your drive, not sure how it works on a drive like your speaking of, but it worked great for files on a quick formatted drive, it listed nearly every folder on that drive.