Hello hard drive experts,

The story goes like this. A linux system. I am remotely logged in and it tells me I have a read-only filesystem .... uh, oh! So I reboot, and the disk has never been heard from again. The bios does not even know it is there. I removed the disk and hooked it up to a USB gadget, this has been fruitless, but I can hear the disk spin up, no clicking and it sounds OK to me. I have to put my ear next to it to hear it spin up (and it keeps spinning), so it is not excessively noisy.

It does have important data. I am reading here the recommendation over and over that if it has important data, I should get a professional involved. I am game for that with a budget of up to $300.or so. I am looking for recommendations of professionals here in Arizona, maybe even in Tucson. Here in the United States. I understand some forum members do disk recovery, but it would be nice to work with a local shop or individual. I am also more than happy to listen to any advice or suggestions. Scolding for not keeping good backups is of course appropriate, but I am doing plenty of that already.

The closest place that I know of to you is http://www.datarecoverysanantonio-tx.com/, but their pricing is a bit over your budget. http://www.300dollardatarecovery.com is in California. Of course, if your drive has head issues, there is no way that you will find anyone honest and reputable who will be able to do the work around $300.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

I'll do it for $300. But I am not in US. I have US address from where I can take drive if it's suitable.

If it is logical i will do it for $300. I am in Austin, TX

oopssss

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Well, assuming that it doesn't require heads, my lab charges about $270USD ($350CAD) for such recoveries. But, I didn't mention it because the OP was looking for somewhere close to where he is located...not in Canada.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Based on your description and the model, I'd say it's around a 90% chance the issue is the media cache or auto-reallocation functions. Assuming that's the case our rate here in Providence, RI is $450 flat. In the off chance that it does need read/write head replacement, then the cost would be $650 + cost of parts.

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

As lcoughey said, Brian from http://www.300dollardatarecovery.com is good enough choice. I do not think, that shipping from Arizona to California cost too much.

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http://www.alfadatarecovery.com

I have questions about information on their site. I would not say that pro wrote this information.

Honestly, I can't say that I have great experience with Brian's professionalism, but at least his website has been created professionaly. You have to have a concrete facts to say you have doubts about his pro's level.

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http://www.alfadatarecovery.com

You can try Tim @ http://www.desertdatarecovery.com/ he's right in Phoenix

I am not talking about his professionalism. I don't know him. I am talking about site.



"Diagnosing the cause of “clicking” often depends on the hard drive manufacturer. For example, if your Western Digital hard drive is clicking, the most likely causes are a bad PCB or corrupt firmware module(s)."
In which reality?

"Even more dangerous, swapping the PCB (without moving the ROM information) could seriously corrupt the “bad” hard drive’s firmware by overwriting unique and unrecoverable modules. It’s possible even the largest and most expensive data recovery companies cannot recover from this type of problem."
Really? Any example?

"There are a few theories behind the “freezing” and “heating” ideas. Some people say the temperature change from hot-to-cold or cold-to-hot will expand the metal inside the hard drive (in particular, the spindle/motor) and allow a non-spining drive to spin again. Other people say that freezing will cool down a drive that has a problem overheating."

Freezing and heating are really working on exact models and exact problems, but it's look like author doesn't know about it.

And not only those. I just don't want to look for all of them.

drHDD, yeah, those texts are not sounds good, but I'm talking about effecience. Site satistics will tell you much more than texts.

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http://www.alfadatarecovery.com

Thanks for the shout out Luke & Martin!

@drHDD: I've revised the "Clicking" and "PCB" myths with more specific model information. As for the freezing/heating myth, I guess you're one of the few pros who recommends this kind of procedure. I don't think you'll find much agreement on this site that using a freezer or heating a drive is a good approach to recovering data (aside from extremely rare circumstances).

-Brian

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$300 Data Recovery - Los Angeles Data Recovery