Data recovery from a bad hard drive?

[Tim]

I have a 60 GB Samsung hard drive (IDE) that needs to have data saved off of it. Excel files, Microsoft Word, JPEG photos, etc.

But some of my usual things aren't working on this one. I booted up the computer on a Knoppix 3.6 bootable CD, but it didn't show the hard drive at all. It doesn't even show up in the BIOS screens of 2 different computers.

Installing the hard drive as a secondary in one of my other computers also didn't show the drive at all. I tried the jumpers in a couple different settings which should have made it a slave drive.

So I need to figure out how to make this drive work and run long enough to get the data off of it and onto a USB flash drive.

Any ideas?

[zero.counter]

Is the drive spinning up at all?

[Dexter]

If it is powering up at all, you may want to try an IDE to USB adaptor, like this (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1871517&CatId=470). I have had one for a couple of years, and it has been pretty useful for accessing hard drives that don't want to come up through the BIOS.

If it's not powering up at all, you're pretty much out of luck without going through a lot of hassle or money to pay someone else to go through a lot of hassle...

Dexter...

[Tim]

The hard drive does not appear to be doing anything when power is applied to it. I plugged it into known good power connectors as the only hard drive in a normal functioning system, and even then it doesn't sound or feel like anything is happening when the power is turned on.

This sounds like an expensive repair to get all the data off of it. What do data recovery services normally charge?

[Kwitko]

Data recovery will probably run into the thousands.

[profdlp]

If you can find the exact same model of the drive, it might be worth a shot to try swapping the logic board out. If your data is worth the price you'd pay to pick one up on eBay it may be a gamble worth taking.

[Tim]

It's not my data, it's someone else's who didn't know enough to make backups of their important information.

I'll call a few computer places tomorrow and see what they say, then call and give this person the bad news.

This hard drive is a Samsung Spinpoint 60 GB. SV6003H & SASV6003H seem to be the model numbers.

[Thrax]

To recover data from a drive that won't spin up, no brick'n'mortar you'd probably call have data recovery except Best Buy; they charge an industry-standard $500 to $1,500 per gigabyte of recovered information depending on the severity of the damage.

OnTrack is regarded as the best recovery service available, and they charge similar pricing.

[lezlow]

There Is A Recovery Team In U S If It Will Let Ill Put It In This Reply There Good Bot It.ll Cost May Be Cheaper To Get Format Disk Or Rpair Disk?