I have a drive from a work laptop that I uploaded some vacation pics to from my camera, and then promptly dropped the computer. It has been sitting around for a few years because I don't really know what to do.

Drive spins up, but click-click-clicks, then beeps and stops. I'd gladly send it out to a data recovery pro and spend to have my pics from joshua tree recovered, but my employer absolutely forbids me sending the drive out. I'm a software engineer and all of our very proprietary code is on the drive, too. (I don't care about the code, that's all in source control and anything I lost after I dropped the drive I rewrote, it was probably only a day or two worth of work).

So what to do? I doubt any data recovery place would allow me to stand over them while they worked on the drive as my employer would want. I bought an identical working drive (all the same numbers, even made on the same day) thinking "oh, I'll just swap the heads myself".... then I started reading here. And reading. No, I don't want to do that! Not to worry - I haven't opened it up or anything yet. I don't know really what is wrong with it and I don't have the hardware equipment to diagnosis it. I do suspect a mechanical problem since I dropped the laptop while it was running.

(I also bought a junk drive to play around and discovered I could take it apart and put it back together pretty easily, but on the junk drive I think I messed up one of the heads by not separating them before I yanked the ramp out.)

The drive is a hitachi travelstar 60GB from a thinkpad. IT keeps bugging me to give it back to them so they can destroy it. I feel like I should at least try something because it is going to be lost anyway.

The way I see it you
option A you screwed.
option B find a data recovery pro firm at right price will allow you to stand there.
option C learn the profession
option D give up (which is pretty much option A)

I didn't think 'B' would be an option. Ideally if they could just fix the mechanical issues with the drive, I think I could figure out how to get the data off.

I guess I should start calling places locally.

Option E, provide the camera memory cards to a DR pro and let him recover what he can from it/them.

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Sabo Computer Repairs & Data Recovery

You really should be able to trust any pro data recovery firm with your data. Let's be honest, if any of these places are crooked they have access to data that's far more valuable than anything you probably have. For example just here in my small lab we've handled as of late:

• Data Pertaining to Internal Affairs Investigation Within a Police Department
• A major university's storage area network containing dozens of research projects
• A half dozen lawyers hard drives full of case data
• A few small medical practices entire server data
• An electronics manufacturer's server full of designs for new products in development
• A hospital's administrative computer drive
• About 50 hdd's containing a Quickbooks file
• And hundreds of drives that contain people's personal tax returns

Just in identity theft alone we could take people for millions if we were crooked. But, to be honest I don't think many crooks are passionate enough about data recovery to ever break their way into the field. And most DR companies with a number of employees will have safeguards in place to prevent data breaches.

If your boss is so concerned, I'd recommend to him that you send it somewhere that's able to meet HIPAA compliance (I see you're in USA). If they can meet that standard, they should have measures to prevent data breaches.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

Just FYI ...

http://hddsurgery.com/data-recovery-too ... h-ramp-set

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Maybe your company now has an IT head that lives in the real world and you can negotiate getting it recovered. As Jared said, you should be able to trust a DR firm, just use a well known one or one that's been around a while. I wouldn't hesitate to send to Jared himself, or Luke at Recovery Force, but there are many more. I know what I would be doing, and it does not involve talking to my company if they think a DR Firm would try and steal years old source code. But that's me, and NDRs and rules are absolutely important. If inconvenient at times.

I did some contract work at various defence centres, both in Australia and overseas. I was always escorted on and off the property, and I was never allowed to remove any storage devices. All my repairs had to be done on-site. I believe that some DR shops have portable gear for this purpose, but I suspect that such services would not be cheap.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I am sure you have been escorted off of a lot of properties.

Very few DR firms offer ambulatory services for lots of good reasons.

And no pro shop would let a random person watch over a recovery (there are exceptions for appropriate military or other agencies for sensitive or top secret work).

You know that the hardware you "recommended" costs 500 Euros, right?

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

It is my employer that is the problem here. They are very strict about this stuff - our IP is obsessively guarded. We used to have staff on site that did data recovery, but not we have a trusted contractor that does this stuff for the company and only our company, but my employer won't cover it since no work stuff got lost, only my personal stuff and I don't even think I could hire them for a personal job. Plus I don't want to spend more than a grand on this.

So what's the algorithm for determining what needs to be done? Hook the drive up to the PC3000 thing and look for errors and clues and then take it apart for inspection? If I buy those head removal tools, I could probably recoup some of my expenditure by selling them on ebay after [s]screw up my drive for good[/s] get my pics off it.

My intention was not to recommend any hardware. That link has instructional videos which I thought might be illuminating to the OP, especially after the misadventure with the junk drive.

BTW, I never had any problem with customers who chose to watch me while I worked on site, unless they offered to help. In fact I would even show them what to do if they asked me, and I provided spare parts for them as well, often at no cost. It's called PR.

An additional service I would provide would be weekend work or night work, so as not to interfere with their production, all at no additional cost.

One more thing ... Data recoveries were free for those customers who had hardware maintenance contracts, even though such work was not obligatory.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I guess this should be a good warning to those who use their work equipment for personal storage. I find it strange that we get more concern from the smaller businesses about their data security than the really large companies who have much more to lose.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

I work for a gigantic internet company, though a small research arm kinda separated from the mothership. Yes! Never be lazy and use your work equipment for personal stuff. This was dumb on my part.



So, are there any DR pros in the bay area willing to do mechanical repairs on a drive while the customer is there overseeing it? I'll pay the standard fee plus 10% more for the extra hassle. I have the a donor drive with matching numbers manufactured on the same day, too!

That would not be worth it. You realize that by your entering into the lab area, you have access to dozens, if not hundreds of other client's data which is likely more critical than anything you might have on your drive. So, if I were to have you come in, I'd expect you to be paying $250/hour to cover my security risk and the cost of me paying someone to stand by your side and watch every move you make. And, what do you do when the drive takes a week of 24/7 imaging, digging through the bad blocks?

I honestly don't expect anyone to take you up on your offer unless they are the very type of unsecured facility that your employer is concerned about.

As for the matching donor drive, are you sure that they have the exact same head map? My guess is that you have a 60GB ATMR with 3 heads. I've purchased drives that have the exact same model, firmware and date...the only difference on the label was the serial number, which was very close and they still were not a match.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Thank you for pointing this out.

It's a hitachi HTS726060M9AT00. The donor has the same Model number, part number, MLC number and same first two lines of the PCB label number. Is there any indication of head map on the outside of the drive or in the firmware?

Is this your PCB?
http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/ODAwWDExMjA=/ ... Q/$_57.JPG

If so, then the head map will be stored in U6, AFAICT. If you can dump the contents of this chip, I may be able to tell you whether the head maps are identical. I suggest you practice on the junk drive first, though.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Your employer's terms are simply unreasonable.

It's a liability to have you as an observer, as well as a security and intellectual property risk. What bona fide firm is going to take that risk? As as has been pointed out, what are you going to do during the imaging phase?

As a courtesy, I showed a fellow who trains wannabe data recovery folks my clean room area. Subsequently, the list of equipment that he recommended to his students included some of the special tools we use in our clean room. No good deed goes unpunished . . .

Since then, unauthorized folks are NOT allowed in our work areas.

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

I pulled one off my parts shelf and it has 4 heads. So, it seems likely that they will all have 4 heads, but there are no guarantees with Hitachi.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery