So, my storage hard-drive died

I might as well kill myself and get it over with.

No backups at all? This is why you should have shared everything in YLC!

Seriously though, for enough cash you can recover nearly anything from a broken HDD.

I'll have to spend whatever it takes then, I can't go on without it.

  impakt said:

I'll have to spend whatever it takes then, I can't go on without it.

Here's a place in the UK - http://www.datarecoveryuk.co.uk/data-recovery-pricing/

I've never had to do this so I'm not sure what a typical price is or what a good company is to perform it. I just know that it's entirely possible, especially with the drive being undamaged (the FBI can (and has) recover data from drive platters that have been partially burned in fires, so I'm totally confident that with the media itself being undamaged that a substantial portion of your info is recoverable).

You'd have to ship it to the US I think, but these people, from my quick research, are some of the most recommended in the biz: http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

you can even go on google maps and type in hard drive recovery around your location and find a local place to do it (if you don't want to ship it that is)

  impakt said:

I'll have to spend whatever it takes then, I can't go on without it.

yeah! whatever it takes! you have to GO ON!

Also some people have mentioned that if it's not the disk media thats the problem, and instead the electronics or the motor on the drive (which is always the more common failure), you can likely have the drive manufacturer move the media into a replacement drive housing and it will almost certainly work like new. That won't be free, and you can actually do this yourself if you buy a second drive of the exact same type, but umm, I would trust a company with a clean room and dedicated technicians for something that sensitive.

did you drop it? or did it just stop working? if the latter you could try the other freezer trick or just let it be for a few days and try again, if it works move the data to a new drive immediately!

I recently resurrected a hard drive that had been out of commission for a while. The computer itself died and I was too broke/lazy to buy an enclosure for it for a while.

It's nice to have another 500 albums again. Oh, and all of the original .wavs from numerous tracks.

"died" is a bit vague...

does it click? does it make strange noises? does it just not appear on your desktop or in my computer?

is it part of a *gasp* RAID0 config?

there are little things you can try on your own in an attempt to recover the data yourself... like the freezer trick... just depends on what the symptoms of your "dead" drive are.

  sysex said:

"died" is a bit vague...

 

does it click? does it make strange noises? does it just not appear on your desktop or in my computer?

 

is it part of a *gasp* RAID0 config?

 

there are little things you can try on your own in an attempt to recover the data yourself... like the freezer trick... just depends on what the symptoms of your "dead" drive are.

I hate RAID0 :devil:

this happened to me last year. it was incredibly annoying.

i'm soon to be purchasing a memory card setup so i'll be saving on to those little memory cards... more chance of losing than them stopping working...

I had a 60GB mp3 player fail on me, and sent it to these guys (Uk, Wales based)

Rapid Data Recovery

http://www.rapid-data.net/

They DID get the data back for me, which was good, although they quoted £99 but charged £300. Still, thats cheaper than some quotes I've seen.

They couldn't get the actual drive working but they managed to recover all the data and copy it onto DVD-Rs for me

Are you really based in the Pitcairn Islands, Impakt?

  zazen said:

I had a 60GB mp3 player fail on me, and sent it to these guys (Uk, Wales based)

 

Rapid Data Recovery

http://www.rapid-data.net/

 

They DID get the data back for me, which was good, although they quoted £99 but charged £300. Still, thats cheaper than some quotes I've seen.

 

They couldn't get the actual drive working but they managed to recover all the data and copy it onto DVD-Rs for me

 

Are you really based in the Pitcairn Islands, Impakt?

lol you paid 300 for 60gb of mp3s?

please a bit more info bout noises and behaviour and stuff. does the BIOS detect it?

i don't think anyone has mentioned this yet, but if you hear bad clicking/clunking sounds, please do not continue to power up the drive! if the head has fallen onto the disc, you will do further damage every time you try to spin up.

good luck! i can second ontrack, a project i worked on was lost on a shitty mybook and they got almost everything back. i think it cost in the realm of $1500-$2k.