Data recovery experiences?

dalecosp

Anyone have any experience with "data recovery" companies?

I've a client who doesn't give me 24/7 access to admin their server (either from console or network), and hasn't had many recent issues, so we haven't been there in a while. Recently we discovered, when the fileserver's system disk failed, that the backup "script" (windows batch file, actually, guess we could bikeshed whether or not that qualifies as a scripting language, suppose maybe it does) hadn't been running for about 8 weeks. Yeah, shoulda had RAID. Could have, maybe, but not hardware based, 'cause someone else sold them the server (kinda) long ago. So, anyway, one month of financials, big grant project, etc. all "down the tubes". They might consider recovery at the right price and a good chance of success.

I've started a list of 'possibles', but I've never had any of them do recovery:

BAD REVIEWS: data-recovery.com (Reynolds Data Recovery), Fields Data Recovery

UNCERTAIN, BUT NOT IMPRESSED AT FIRST GLANCE: Advanced Data Solutions (adv-data.com). Maybe it's just that they aren't good at web programming. However, even doing investigation of the people who supposedly have given testimonials have caused a couple of "brow raises" (Acromedia System's main page is "Diet Fads"?? Come on!).

UNCERTAIN, BUT ASSUMED OK/GOOD: Seagate Recovery Services (they made the drive, after all), OnTrack (talked to them once before, decided to forget it, thankfully, still have my client).

GOOD REVIEWS: Data Tech Labs (datatechlab.com).

Has anyone dealt with any of these people/companies? Any others?

Thanks!!

stolzyboy

a couple/few years ago, a company i did work for used the seagate recovery... now i can't recall how much it cost, but it did work and they were able to salvage like 95% of all HD and 100% or recent files(w/in a couple months of creation)... only old stuff and some windows filesystem stuff was not recovered

not sure how much that helps you... i wasn't in on the process of getting it done, i just remember it being done...

dalecosp

Well, thanks, and yes, it helps a bit.

Although, you'd figure Seagate wouldn't be in the disk manufacturing business if they couldn't handle some recoveries as well.

On their site, prices are stated to generally average between $700-2900.

I'm looking at a few others in case they quote less --- yesterday the client called and asked how much I was gonna charge for what I've done so far, and I'm pretty freakin' sure it's not yet up to 700 bucks or even close (although, for the headache of sitting on the telly for hours getting little else done, perhaps I should consider taking all their houses and firstborn children as well as billing the cr** out of 'em).

Roger_Ramjet

Do you know what the cause of the HDD failure was? Head crash or component failure?

dalecosp

Not with certainty, but it doesn't feel nor sound like a head crash. AFAICT, the platters are "spinning up", and the BIOS get's the drive's model number but can't read its capacity, so SCSI gives up at that point.

I've heard and felt plenty of "head crashes", and it doesn't feel like one. Feels like logic/component failure, but of course anyone I talk to at Seagate is understandably cautious about stating such.

All the same, I'm guessing the chances are pretty good for recovery. Just need to know if there's anybody better (less expensive, maybe? Like I said, the client is a non-profit and concerned about costs) than Seagate to do the job.

And, of course, whether the client really wants it done.

dalecosp

bradgrafelman wrote:
Have you tried putting the HD into another computer (so you're not trying to boot from it) and see if it shows up? When you say it "spins up," does it spin up normally e.g. without any clicking sounds?

Well, I've not got many comps with Ultra-320 SCSI controllers 😉, but the answer is "yupperz, of course".

It doesn't matter, tho, 'cause the problem is the same no matter what we do. Knoppix or FreeSBIE Live CD's, or, we installed win32 on an IDE and booted it, same problem.

My impressions (unfortunately, not based on much experience or RTFM at this point): SCSI isn't like IDE/ATA. ATA controllers just keep on attempting to read and/or write regardless, which is why we see "clunky" disks, head crashes, etc. with IDE disks. OTOH, SCSI bails at the first sign of trouble, and in doing so, possibly, "saves" the disk platters at the expense of actually being able to use/mount the drive. I could be way wrong on this, but that's what appears to be the case here. Like I said, I've little experience with SCSI drives.

Perhaps Seagate has something similar?

Sure; "SeaTools", which is for Seagate (and now Maxtor, since they were acquired by Seagate) drives. SeaTools DOS is for PATA(IDE)/SATA drives; to get to SCSI drives you have to use SeaTools Enterprise, which is a Win32 program. I like SeaTools, actually; we have used it to "reclaim" junk drives, but not the data from them (e.g. zero fill/low level formatting).

The WD version is called "Data Lifeguard Tools" last I checked; we also have Samsung's Data Advisor and whatever Hitachi calls theirs, plus a program from the Netherlands called "DiskPatch Pro" that can do a few things the manufacturer's proggies can't (for one thing, it doesn't care what brand the drive is).

If you think it's the logical board that's gone south, you could always try replacing it with one from a similar HD...

If I had it to spare. I'd prefer to keep the "spare" drive working, since it's still warrantied too. And then, of course, there's the question: what if I think that's the case, but I'm wrong. Oh, well....

Heck, you might even try freezing the drive for a few hours!

Hmm; do ya think that'd be good on the electronics? I'd heard about that technique, but I thought it was primarily an attempt to cause the metals inside to "contract" to disengage a "dug in" head.

If the data were less "important", head crashes were suspected, and the drive was OOW, we might indeed try that, though. 😉

Thanks for the replies, guyz 🙂

gardnc

For what it may be worth and I realize this post is about recovering data that has no backup -- I've owned a computer related business since 1976 and have considerable first hand knowledge of "backups". All through those years I strove to insure my clients had adequate backup including any data we maintained for them on our hardware.

When we wrote our own scripts and maintained our own hardware - including hard drives and tape drives - we regularly were able to produce reliable backups.

Later as our clients migrated to their own hardware we attempted to provide enterprise level software products that would do as well as we had done.

It was always a major nightmare. Almost never were the backup media viable. In the late 80s and early nineties it was an inside joke that most backups sent to the local backup vault had nothing on them. At one point it was common knowledge that one backup product was for people who didn't need to restore. I will never trust a backup to tape again.

Recently things have gotten a little better but the backup applications are so bloated and costly that we abandoned them and began to use open source OS's and backup products together with our own server farm (NAS) to backup our clients over the internet - and again doing this we have NEVER lost a single bit of client data. It's costly, requires administration, but it works.

I've recent sold that company and have a small home based company where we again need to backup client data. Small business systems accounting data and web server/database data. The best source we have used so far is a company called e-backups ([url]http://www.e-backups.net)[/url]. They have internet based, mirrored server farms and a locally run software product (based on NovaStor) to automate real backups. I like these folks because my clients, on their own can backup, verify and restore a sinlg file to an file system with ease. And it's really cost effective, especially compared to another soultion that looks like it works, but doesn't.

I'm sure I went on way too much here, but I wanted to give evidence that I know what I'm talking about re backups. I been there and done that - way too many times to want to repeat failures.