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Data Recovery from non working hard drive

Avatar Derek Wright
A colleague has had a disk failure (it clicks) and cannot boot up - the drive contains valuable information and he wants it back. I suspect that even in Target Disk mode it will not be readable - this has to be checked out first.

Can anyone recommend any organisation that have a good reputation for data recovery.
The drive is a 60MB in a Macbook.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Re: Data Recovery from non working hard drive

Avatar Mick Burrell
I investigated this for someone a year or so ago but it was too expensive so can't make a recommendation. Be prepared for something approaching four figures!

Now, to everyone reading this, you do have a good backup system don't you?

Re: Data Recovery from non working hard drive

Avatar Gordon Clyne
Clicking is usually fatal, it is likely the head assembly has parked off the platters for the last time, and it can't find a spot to read anything from. At least that's what my buddy at WD says, and he designs hard drive head readers.

Re: Data Recovery from non working hard drive

Avatar Gordon Clyne
Is the unit young enough to have SMART?

Re: Data Recovery from non working hard drive

Avatar Derek Wright
The driver is in a Macbook that is about 4 to 5 years old - so I would expect it to have SMART built in - however I do not have access to the machine. Although if there is away of getting the data off locally then I think I could get access to the machine.

There is a story going round that deep freezing a drive will help get it readable again.

Re: Data Recovery from non working hard drive

Avatar Euan Williams
Deep freezing a drive would probably result in water condensing on the electronics from the warmer room atmosphere, zapping everything. This is a common reason for failures (and is NOT covered by Apple warranties).

Some background information... nothing, nothing at all, beats proper backups kept in sensible places.

Nascent drive problems will generally manifest themselves early by slow or erratic date transfer:
untraceable oddities pointing to corrupt or difficult to read data. Note that this may be an isolated bad sector and won't in itself mean a bad drive. Modern Hard drives will often reallocate occasional bad sectors if necessary without the user noticing, so if there is a problem you do notice it's time to back up your important data.

In emergency, the need is to backup your most important data, not to do a leisurely clone or time machine backup. Those should always have been done many times before, and could tip the drive into an unusable state without actually saving your most special data.

A drive can pass the SMART data test and still fail within a few minutes. I have seen it happen.

Remember that a backup means three (3) copies, one of which is in a different place from where you normally work (fire, etc.).

Sounds heard from the drive can tell you a lot (listen to your drive from time to time to establish a sense of "normal"). See below.

Among the many results from Google for the request "bad hard drive symptoms" are these:

General sounds not specific to any drive
> http://www.labnol.org/gadgets/strange-clicking-sound-in-hard-drive/5377/ <

Choose your drive manufacturer, and check if the sounds you may be hearing are like these:
> http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php <

Explanatory video and advice
> http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-ticking-hard-disk-head-problem.htm <

Good discussion about SMART status and drive failure.
> http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=328122 <.

Re: Data Recovery from non working hard drive

Avatar Derek Wright
Issue closed - my colleague has spoken with one of the local Apple Shops and they have recommended a company to try to do the data recovery.

I have also discovered a Apple tech support company in Norfolk that can do this as well.

Thank you for all your collective head scratching.

Re: Data Recovery from non working hard drive

Avatar Euan Williams
...and to pick up the pieces now that all the fuss has died down: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/31/iphone-controlled-robot-vacuum-transmits-photos-of-its-work/
 
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