Help! Hard drive data recovery

[Wile E. Coyote]

Last night there was a power outage and my PC hard drive was fried. I would like to recover some of the data on there but preliminary looks into this look quite pricey. Has anyone out there had experience with this and if so what are my options? Thanks very much.

[GadgetGeek]

1) pray
2) get a new harddrive
3) make new hardrive primary and old hardrive slave
4) once machine is up and running, see if anything is salvagable off old drive
5) use norton (or similar) to see if anything else is salvagable off drive

If old drive is physically damaged, you are pretty much hosed (short of expensive recovery services). That is why we have backups, right :smile:

[I_actuate™]

I'd say no need to get a new HD yet. Just use a boot disk and see if you can still view the data on the disk. If you can, then do the above. If you can, maybe do a new install of windows with out formatting the drive.

Or are you saying that the drive doesn't even work at all anymore....then you're s.o.l. Sorry.

[Patience]

I once paid an outside company (through my job) to try & do the recovery.

It cost $1000-1500 (don't remember specifically, but it was three years ago)

The amount recovered was pretty good.

If you back up regularly it probably isn't worth the investment (gamble). If that is all your work & the company is willing to pick it up, it may be worth it.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Thanks for the help. The problem was definitely the HD, got a new one and everything was fine. I'm going to hold on to it and if I really need the data I might pay to get it. $1000 seems pretty high. I'm sure the actual hard disk is intact, but some of the circuitry surrounding it has been compromised. Oh well, c'est la vie. Thanks again.