HDD Data Recovery

[KickEm]

Anyone have a recomendation for someone who does data recovery off of a dead HDD? The motor took a dump and the drive apparantly has a ton of valuable information (not mine, honestly...they used to sit next to me in 304 [hint]) on it.

I know about Ontrack, but apparently a lot of the info stored is for their non-profit neighborhood (Atwater) council so they are hoping to get a sympathetic discount and free publicity in their newsletter if such happens. This guy needs to be taken apart in a clean room and 'bled' from there I think.

If not, any other recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Any estimations of what it might cost? A Samsung 80 Gig drive. $500? $1,000? Six months worth of gas?

[rbochan]

There's a trick that can work _sometimes_.
Put the drive in a zip top bag, and put it in the freezer for about an hour. After that, slam it on a hard surface (concrete floor, counter top, et al). What happens is that the metal contracts and the slam loosens things up - you might get a few more minutes of spin out of it. I've done it, and it works perhaps 30-40 percent of the time.

Also, tell the folks what I tell all my clients:
1. Your hard drive is a complex system of parts moving at extremely high speeds.
2. Every hard drive will fail, including yours, including mine.
3. Some will fail tomorrow, some will fail in 2039, and nobody knows when yours will fail.
4. When your drive fails, you will lose all the data that you didn't back up.

[job]

Relax, all right? My old man is a television repairman, he's got this ultimate set of tools. I can fix it.