Here’s the situation: my hard drive on my PC recently died (mechnically- makes all kind of funny “washing machine spin cycle” type noises when powering up)
I only bought it recently so it is still under warranty. However, in the meantime, I have put a lot of personal stuff on there. I don’t want some technician in the manufacturer’s repair site fixing the drive, then browsing through all my Quicken data, personal letters etc. I would quite like to get the data back myself too…I’ve heard of data recovery companies but they seem outrageously expensive (I guess they are more targetting corporate users). Of course, I honestly cross my heart was going to back up the data SOME day…let this be a lesson to others.
Any ideas on how to deal with this situation? (it’s a SCSI hard drive if that makes any difference at all) I don’t want to try to repair the thing myself because of course as soon as I touch the seals it invalidates the warranty.
You seem to imply that the drive works but makes bad noises. Buy a second drive. Set it at a different SCSI id. (Higher than the current drive id so it still boots from the first.) Start copying from C to D.
Next time, back up all that porno. You ain’t foolin’ nobody, pal; Quicken files, my butt.
Is the data accessable? Can you get to your data yourself? If so, go buy a tape backup unit, and run a backup before you send the drive in.
Otherwise, if it’s just dead, my guess is you’re SOL. Even if the drive is under warranty, all they’re going to do is ship you out a new drive - data recovery is not covered under any warranty I know of. If you’re not concerned about getting the data back yourself, and are just uncomfortable with a technician looking at your data, I’m not sure how I’d proceed. Chances are, if the drive is dead, it’s dead, and they’re not going to go through the bother of recovering your data. If you do have something horrible on there that you don’t want anyone to see, my suggestion is to just buy a new drive and don’t worry about getting this one replaced.
Sorry - should have made that clear. The data is totally inaccessible; the SCSI BIOS detects the drive, but the init fails with some weird sense code data (I looked it up on the manufacturer’s web site - something about the disk not spinning at the right speed - not a surprise given the noises it makes).
I guess if I’m not going to get it replaced, I should say to hell with the warranty and go at it with my trusty screwdriver - what have I got to lose?
By the way Bill - why would I back up the porno - I have a cable modem to get more Oops I mean, what are you talking about…this is erm, other data, erm, yes that’s it.
What!? You think they are going to “fix” your drive.
Here’s how it works.
Unless it’s your controller screwing up the drive (very unlikely given your description of the problem) 99.99% of the time your drive will be swapped for a working unit and your current drive will either be trashed or if they can determine that either the media or electronics are recoverable they might use them for another service job. Under no circumstances is anyone going to poke through your drive and under no circumstances will your data be recovered. An empty working drive will be returned to you.
If you send it in for service your data is gone.
As far as “repairing it yourself” goes, regardless of warranty issues, given the tolerances and complexity involved in drive manufacturing you have about as much chance of doing this as assembling a cyclotron out spare bicycle parts.
If you want to use a data recovery service be prepared to write a very sizeable check as this process is time and labor intensive. They will have to go through your data to make sure it is intact.
If it’s a Mac, boot from a different SCSI device. You may be able to access the faulty drive even if you can’t boot from it. Try running Norton if it doesn’t just pop up on your desktop when you boot from the other drive.
If it’s a PC, it will (presumably?) be expecting to find its bootable SCSI hard drive at a specific address. Switch the SCSI ID of the new drive to that of the old, and the old to something altogether different. Then, as with the Mac, chances are good that you can access the drive when booted from a different one. (I’m assuming you can install an OS onto the new drive in the absence of being able to boot from the old drive)
Computer techs are like gynecologists, darren. YOU may think your files are exciting and intriguing, but after working with hundreds of them it really is just another hard drive to them.
Actually, I suspect the cyclotron would be the easier of the two projects.
DarrenS, you’re correct that the master/slave thing only applies to IDE and its ilk. And astro here is completely correct when he says your data is gone for good unless you’re planning on writing a big check to a data recovery service. Those guys definitely cater to the corporate market where the value of the data exceeds the value of the recovery service. I looked into recovery services a long time ago, and they seemed to start around $500 and go up rapidly from there.
"This is a SCSI drive - I thought the concept of master/slave only applied to EIDE? "
Ooops
Sometimes people try to get another drive the same as the one they have & swap the control board then get their data off. It’s an option although I haven’t done it.
Well nothing except that you will make it that much harder to recover the data. Drives are built in dust proof sealed rooms. You open up that thing and it’s toast. The ambient dust in the normal atmosphere will destroy any chance you have of being able to read the drive again and then you’re only recourse will be one of those expensive data recovery shops. Btw, we once used Ontrack at work and it cost about $4k to recover data from a a couple of DAT tapes. Drives are probably easier.
Do you have any friends in the radio/TV/DJ biz? You could use a degausser to wipe your hard drive… The degausser must have a minimum field strength of “1500 Gauss”. (ch 3.4 sect f)
Warning: this will most likely kill your hard drive. I’ve done it before prior to sending in drives for replacement, but use at your own discretion…
Replacing the controller board will not fix the problem. The noise and error code strongly suggest mechanical problems. Also, don’t give much weight to Handy on computer-related topics, Darren.
Degaussing the HD will indeed wipe it and will make it unusable. Reason: Hard disks contain special data called “grey code” that the hard disk uses to track the head’s position. No grey code, HD won’t work.
While you’re quite right about the dust-proof sealed rooms, a hard drive isn’t going to become instantly unreadable after opening it in a normal room.
My roommate actually managed to recover the data on a drive that wouldn’t spin up by opening it, giving the cylinder a “push” to get it going, and then sealing it up again. NOT recommended, but as the OPster said, if you’re not going to go for the $500 data recovery option, and you don’t care about the warrenty, why not break out the screwdriver? Just make sure you’re of the mindset where you’re going to use the drive ONE more time to get the data off it, no matter how good it looks like it’s running, because the dust in the air is definitely going to eat away your data eventually.
Oops I mean, what are you talking about…this is erm, other data, erm, yes that’s it.
