Data Recovery Company Recommendations

[william_h._wiley]

Can anyone recommend a data recovery company? Like anyone who's had a

hard drive crash, I don't want to trust the recovery of my image files

to an inexperienced outfit. I have/had a LaCie d2 Big Disk 500GB with

about 400GB of files on it. Evidently, the problem is most likely

electronic, as there is a small hole burned on the control card. Some

of the files are backed up, but not all, and they are all important to

me.

 

It's my understanding that the 2 Maxtor drives inside are RAID O

configured, which makes recovering the files more complicated. If it's

risky to fix, then I want to use a reliable, established company.

 

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Bill

[danielho]

If you are pretty sure it is the control board, you can do what the recovery company would probably do anyway...that is to replace the electronics.

<p>

For a proprietary drive like the Big Disk, the easiest and probably the most cost effective thing to do is to buy another drive. Assuming that the data hasn't been corrupted by the circuit board dying, you should be able to swap the drives out of the new unit and put your older drives in . If all is well, you will see your data.

<p>

This will obviously void the warranty of the old drive and the new drive. But the cost of the $350 drive is nothing compared to the cost of lost data (priceless) or the cost of recover (expensive).

<p>

Your mileage may vary...and if you aren't comfortable with swapping drives you may make things worse. However, this is what I would try.

<p>

How did the drive die? Was it a power surge?

[alexdi]

Drive Savers (http://www.drivesavers.com) has an excellent reputation.

 

RAID-0 has no purpose in an external drive. USB 2.0 can only manage about 20 MB/sec sustained. Firewire 800 is no better than 35 MB/sec. Every modern hard disk can max out both of them alone; the speed is wasted and reliability suffers.

 

DI

[peufeu]

Hehe. I had a good laugh when I saw that "product". Who would buy this ? Raid 0 offers no reliability. Using this is asking for trouble. I'm really sorry for you. I think selling that kind of crap is near criminal. The docs don't even say "RAID0". Of course they don't say "if one of the drives fail, you're hosed".

 

Anyway. From what you say, I assume what is burnt is the LaCie board, and not the electronic board from one of the drives. This is logical : a company daring to sell an external raid 0 solution like has absolutely no respect for customer's data and thus must also use the cheapest and lowest quality components possible.

 

In that case the drives are probably alright.

 

In that case, go to the store, buy an identical enclosure, transfer the drives to it, plug, it should work. Copy your files somewhere else and return the enclosure you just bought for refund. Throw away your LaCIE crap.

 

For the future :

 

I just assembled a 1 terabyte RAID5 array on a linux box out of 5 x 250G disks. You can mix sata and pata, plug them in any slot and order you want, when one fails you replace it, and besides, the cool thing is it just works. (and it saturates the PCI bus, at about 120 MB/s read speed). Also, there is no RAID controller, so RAID controller failure can't happen. And if the motherboard burns I can plug the disks in another PC, boot knoppix from the CDROM and get access to the data. And it's cheaper than the big LaCIE...

[beauh44]

You might also look at http://www.ontrack.com They're very good too.

[william_h._wiley]

Got another question which is probably basic to you archival pros: I have about 400GB of data that I want to recover. When I do get it back (one way or another), I will natually set up things differently.

 

Do I need to start with at least a 400GB drive and add to that, or could I purchase 2 250GB drives and use those? Should I definitely go with RAID 1 or higher? Obviously, I want to have a higher security level than before.

 

Thanks,

Bill

[b. c.]

First, here is another vote for Ontrack.

 

Second, as for what to do when you get your data back, I would use RAID 1, but keep in mind

that it will not protect against a drive controller failure, if the disks are on the same

controller. That situation is best handled by regularly scheduled backups to tape, disk drives

on another controller, DVD, or to another computer.

[waysail]

Yet another vote for Ontrak.

 

Using a mirroring solution (2 drives attached to one controller), or a duplexing solution (2 controllers with one drive each), or a more advanced, say RAID5 solution does NEVER address the issue of the backups.

 

What it does is let you recover faster from a drive failure, OR, in the case of RAID5 give you better throughput.

That's all...

 

You can easily end up in a situation where the corruption is logical, and the drives, per se, are doing just fine.

 

If you didn't do your backup, you'll be SOL even if you spent 10Gs on a 20 drive SCSI array...

 

Back it up!

In the end, if you need perdormance use a drive array, and once again, back it up!

[william_h._wiley]

Bennett and OB: Thanks for the feedback. I'll definitely contact Ontrack per your advice.

 

I'm beginning to grasp the pros and cons of the different ways to backup my files. I certainly didn't realize when I started digital photography (2001) that protecting important files would be this complicated.

 

Bill

[waysail]

William,

it is not that complicated today, and there are plenty of tools around that will let you solve your backup problems.

CD backups are pretty much a no-no with the amount of data you already have (and the size of today's RAW files), and DVD backups are IMHO a pain to manage but might be well suited if you work on a project basis (frex for clients), and do not need very quick access to your IMG library. Tapes are another option and offer (for a price) higher capacities.

Drives are fairly cheap today, and will keep getting cheaper and bigger...

 

WHat a drive solution does for me, is give me the ability to put all my eggs in the same basket, and WATCH that basket!

 

Anyhoo, read about full, differential, incremental backups as your workflow and way of doing business will (or should) dictate the media and sofwater solution you go for...

 

Feel free to ask further questions, these is way more down my alley than, say, photography! ;-)

[mikewolfe]

<p>I've used ontrack for some data recovery at work. They've done very good work. They always seem to come through. If it's just a control card, they should be able to get back all of your data.</p>

 

<p>Good Luck<br>

<a href="http://hesaidshesaid.ws/hesaid/blog">Mike Wolfe</a></p>

[a_barrier]

RAID 0 is a very tricky animal. I had a Lacie Big Disk which is (2) 250 GB drives in a RAID 0 with 500 GB total capacity.

 

One of my drives started failing, making the Lacie inaccessible. All of my data appeared lost.

 

I contacted ReWave Hard Drive Recovery and they were able to somehow perform RAID 0 recovery on the Lacie disk. I was told that one of the drives had to be repaired in the clean room and then it worked again- making the Lacie accessible.

 

Good luck!

[customer_support1]

Well you guys do realize that instead of actually trusting a posting on a random website you can check out a site that allows you to review your experience and see other people's data recovery experiences. This website is www.datarecoverycomparison.com and is a great way to vent anger at a bad company, or search for a very highly rated one. I suggest checking it out, it helped me pick drivesavers for my company.

[george_swartz]

<p >Make sure that you check this site (datarecoverycomparison.com) out thoroughly before you believe a word that is said about any of the companies listed there. It appears that it is owned by a data recovery company that is just engaging in liable and defamatory statements so that honest hard working data recovery companies look bad. If you look at this website you will notice that there is no real way to contact them if your company has been wrongly bashed by one of their so called reviewers. The site is a total scam and has been created for the soul purpose of bashing other data recovery companies. Like everything on the internet don’t believe everything you read.</p>

<p > </p>

<p >If you really want to know if a company is capable and legitimate ask some questions about your data recovery situation. If they know what they are doing they will be able to give you information about what is wrong with your drive, how much it will cost to recover the data, and how long it will take to get your data back to you.</p>

<p > </p>

<p >By the way the post on datarecoverycomparison.com are all random and the person posting above works for them. They are going around to all the forums trying to post and build back links to their website.</p>