There is a regional, low-cost data recovery outfit not too far from me that called and asked for my D/R business (the stuff I send out).

I explained that the drives I have the largest problem with are the Western Digital drives w/ lotsa platters (and therefor heads). That, getting heads aligned is a problem. When customers really need those drives recovered, I send 'em to Ontrack (I don't open them). But, Ontrack doesn't have a 100% success record with them, either.

The lady I was talking to said that Ontrack actually sends THEM (the regional outfit) jobs from time to time. I knew that was B.S., but I figured maybe she was mistaken or was just repeating what was overhead from someone else. She offered to have an engineer call me back and tell me about their WD track record.

Sure enough, a few minutes a guy called me and said they had a 90% success track record with large Western Digital drives. Now, I don't know about you, but 90% is impressive. My experience has been that at least 10% of the drives I see have media damage and are ungettable.

Anyway, I asked him if it was true that Ontrack actually sends drives to THEM, and he said, "well, I wouldn't exactly put it that way, but people do send us drives that Ontrack can't get and we can get 'em. And they send us drives when Ontrack's price is too high."

I then asked him if he has a way of fixing 7200.11 drives with the firmware issues I've seen discussed here. He said they never get any.

Furthermore, he said Seagate's D/R business isn't making money and is circling the drain. That, Seagate is going to spin them off or shut them down.

All in all kinda a fun conversation. He was really adamant that they were better than Ontrack and Drive Savers and Seagate/AF. That, they have a class-100 clean room, etc.

Anyone else getting 90% of those big WD drives? I'm not saying it can't be done. I am going to give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

DR is business!
Don't trust on someone else words, i suggest.
The maximum thing, wich this worth, is to simple keep in mind.

Regards,
Janos

would love to see this answer too!

This is not an easy question to answer.
You have to have a large number of those drive in order to figure out a percentage.
Small DR firms won't have such a flow of big WD.
Companies like Ontrack, Drive Savers and Seagate will have that flow, but they will not always meet customers expectations on a price. I believe sometimes they don't want to spend a lot of time on a drive with a low profit margin.

I personally had 2 drives which deemed to be unrecovarable by Seagate and had successfuly recovered data from them. This could be the case of the simply refusing a job, because they returned those drives in 2 days.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

Hi,

I have various results with WD. The latest surprise was a WD2500YS (6 heads) with surface damaged near the parking zone.
It was a component of a RAID0 array just to add some more fun.
I did not believe in this one but the customer insisted and agreed to pay some failure fee in case of a non successful recovery so I went for it.
Without going into deep details I can tell U I could recover this one using a donor drive that wasn't even near concerning the DCM and date code.
We don't receive really large numbers of WDs, so this doesn't show we can do anything, but WD is not a bastard as many people think.

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

I Think, in the worst case, you can recover the 11/12 of the contents (in case of 2 drive was in the array), so this is enough for the 90%?

Congratulations, anyway!

Janos

Hi

U mean with one head damaged in one of the drives?

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Exactly.

Anyway, i know, there is a way for recover (some) data from the damaged side as well.
I have done similar too some times.

Janos

still waiting for a 7200.11 to come in.. So I can fix it :O)

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All went well until I plugged the drive in.

Let's put it this way:
One surface was damaged badly (grinding), all heads were damaged in some extent. There was no way accessing any surface with the original head stack, that's why I am a bit astonished by 11/12...
Example: if U have 2 heads with one head damaged, does that mean U can access 50% of the data? I don't think so. It highly depends on the size of continuous areas that can be read from the good head. If a drive reads only one track from H0 before changing to H1, (~ 1-1500 sectors), all files greater than this will be 99.9 % damaged, and files smaller than this will have a number that still will be damaged, so we can estimate the rate far bellow 50%.
U have 50% of the sectors, but not 50% of the useful user data. That's a big difference.
I said nothing though.

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

yes, i know exactly this issue.
I have done already some damaged surface recovery too.
Additionally, i have a lot of raids, so, i know, what is going on.

The 90% is only was a joke, like the 90% in the first post.

Janos

sorry I didn't get it...

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

New WD easier compared with older models.

Take new working 500 GB as an example - remove and replace head stack,
be patient, you will be amazed at your own skills.

Partially agree, AAKS etc are easier, can swap heads at will, but KD YS etc are proving to be a nightmare!

Sean

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Location? i have one and a mad customer. Should i send that too?

Keep the drive and send the customer