liamusin

I posted last week about my computer (15" pbook g4 1.33 GHz) crashing. I called Mac outfitters today to see how the repairs/stauts was on my machine. They said that the hard drive needs replaced as well as the optical drive (I just had a new optical drive installed 6 months ago!). They said they tried a few ways to get the data off but that they need to try several other things, too. Apparently there hasn't been any data retrieved thus far. As you can imagine I’m really nervous/upset/worried about this. I have heard through several people that there is always a way to get the data off and that sometimes you have to send it away to a company that specializes in this. I guess my question is: do these places really work? I really don't care what the price is...I just need all of my lost data. Any thoughts or recommendations of a place to send my hard drive if Mac outfitters cannot successfully mine my data?

psionandy

These people have a the ability to do it... not sure how much they'll charge.

http://www.mobilitysite.com/forums/n...your-data.html

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imported_doogald

You may want to buy yourself a copy of Spinright from grc.com, though you will have to take the hard disk out of the Mac and attach it to a PC. But the app can work wonders at getting hard disks working again.

In the past at work I have used OnTrack Data Recovery. They are expensive (I think that they all are), but they were very successful. I have heard that they can do things like recover data from RAID 5 drives when there is a multiple drive failure, for example, though I never needed that service. We used them only once, and they were great.

Here is my backup strategy for my Mac:

- I have an external firewire enclosure with an 80 GB drive. I use SuperDuper every week to copy to the external drive (you can think of it as the equivalent of Ghost). Great thing is that if the internal drive fails I can boot off of the firewire drive. I run an update of the image every Sunday night.

- I have an external USB drive that I run a normal backup to. I run two sets on alternate weeks, with a full backup of my the data in my account each Monday, with incrementals at least every other day through the week (usually Wed night and Saturday morning, sometimes more often). Again, I alternate backups just in case one set is bad.

It's always important to try out a restore or two as well, by the way, by moving some files and then restoring them, to see if that data is correct. You hate to find out that your backups are worthless when you are trying to restore lost data.

This was I feel like I am in pretty good shape should something like this happen to me. The external drives and SuperDuper are a lot cheaper than using a recovery service.

On Windows I have an external USB drive that I use Ghost (for now - I may switch to Acronis) to back up (full backups each Monday morning, with incrementals each night at 6 pm).

gabriel20

Yes, these places really work. They use techniques which can include the disassembly of the drive and direct examination of the drive surface. Depending on just what is necessary (it is unlikely that your drive requires anything that extreme, but hard drives that have been through fires often do), it could be several thousand dollars. I most certainly hope more conventional methods of data recovery will prove effective. There are many companies doing data recovery services. Try Salvage Recovery Lab. I contacted them once and I got my problem solved. They got 90% of my data back. I was extremely happy to get my data back. You can call them at 1 203-973-0242. I think you will have to send the drive physically.

m_smith78

I had the unfortunate experience of requiring data recovery myself. I priced out a few places but settled on a company called CBL. Unlike most computer places, they actually have Mac specialists. They were great. They got my data back and the price was better than the other places I checked out. I now back up every chance I get. Good luck getting your data back.

DelF

You can Try Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery Software, recovers data from damaged, deleted, or corrupted volumes and even from initialized disks.
Just Download the demo version from Mac Data Recovery Software - Stellar Phoenix Macintosh for Apple OS 9.x and X
Start the scan process and see what demo shows you. If you are able to see your data it means you have it.
Has worked for me, might be helpful to you also.
Best of Luck.

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