[RobOnTheCape]

A co-worker had a hard drive crash, and she brought her laptop to the local computer store. They said they couldn't retrieve anything and suggested sending it out. They use an outfit called Ontrack Data Recovery. The drive just came back and the computer store said Ontrack couldn't retrieve anything. My question is does anyone know anything about Ontrack, and shouldn't someone be able to retrieve the data.

I'm thinking if law enforcement wanted what was on a disk they would find a way, it would be a matter of cost.

Thanks

[OreoCookie]

The company is legit and well-known. Probably they haven't given the full service (assuming the manufacturer covers the cost). They also do computer forensics (CSI stuff), so unless something really crazy has happened with that harddrive, the data should still be recoverable.

If the data can be recovered, AFAIK the prices are all in the four-digit range.

[ghporter]

The basic "retrieve what you can" that most of the name-brand recovery houses do is pretty much limited to "maybe the electronics are toast but the platters and heads are still OK" retrieval. And yes, in effect they swap out the controller board from the drive and see what they can get. If you pay the (hefty) fees, they will disassemble the drive in a clean-room, dismount the platters, and use their own special hardware to see what can be recovered from the individual platters. The labor alone for this sort of thing is excruciatingly dull and especially tedious because of the required level of dexterity and precision, and of course the specialized recovery appliances (all built in-house and all very proprietary) have to be paid for as well. If your data is worth their fees, you find that people like Ontrack are quite reasonable and very much worth the price.

[RobOnTheCape]

wow. She has lots of business information on there, but really it's the thousands of photos of the kids growing up. These to her are more valuable than any business info lost. Just how valuable we'll have to see. Thanks

[Doc HM]

Originally Posted by RobOnTheCape 

wow. She has lots of business information on there, but really it's the thousands of photos of the kids growing up. These to her are more valuable than any business info lost. Just how valuable we'll have to see. Thanks

Indeed.

There are hard drive crashes and there are hard drive crashes. If it's a simple case of damage to the boot sector, or a few bad blocks then data recovery is relatively straightforward. If a reputable data recovery center says that data is unrecoverable then you can be sure that something far worse has occured to the drive.

Sometimes the damage is worse, say the drive mechanism fails and the heads crash into the drive platters causing physical damage. That's harder to recover from.

With data recovery, harder always equals more expensive.

I've lost track of the number of people who only really get the reason for regular backups the second their drive starts to make grinding noises.