Disk Data Recovery?
A friend lost many prized pictures when his hard drive failed. The drive quit suddenly rather than making any noise hinting at a problem. I believe motor or electronics have failed rather than a head crash.
MANY choices are found searching for "data recovery service"!
Can someone recommend a particular company to deal with?
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try
http://www.computerforensicalliance.com/.
based near london
probably not likely to be cheap
why not try to buy another drive of the same spec and bastardise it
Couple of choices to do this one.
Pay a fee for it to recover from the professonial which it is not cheap.
Put the harddrive in the bag in put in the frezeer for an hour and take it out and it good for one shot to get the data out and if it fail.
If you dont want do both then you are screw
Data Rescue
One well known and professional company is Ontrack but they're expensive to use but good they'll get you pictures back, look at there site here http://www.ontrack.com/
If the hard drive completely failed, then you will need a company that will install the platters to another hard drive. That will be very expensive.
This company will give you a free estimate, and has been around for a while. Make sure you tell them that the hard drive has completely failed and not just crashed.
http://www.drivecrash.com/
Phone: 800-233-3648
Look for a PC repair company in your area. Most PC repair shops will have data recovery tools available. Call around and see what they can do.
No, I have no recommendations, but if I tried everything and had to get the data, I'd probably contact Seagate.
But first, before you go off the deep end, what symptoms does your friend's failed drive have? Has he/she tried assigning the drive as a slave and reading the disk that way? Does Windows Explorer recognize the drive? Has he/she tried command line?
Having worked on pcs since they arrived in the 80's, a statement like "drive failed" or "quit suddenly" just doesn't really describe what really happened. And your belief that the motor or electronics have failed is very possible, but I think quite unlikely since all the hard drives I've seen don't have any loose wires to break. In fact, I've never seen a drive just die.
I have seen drives have their boot sectors corrupted where you can't get it to boot up or even be recognized, but I've been able to salvage the data.
Good Luck