I have suffered a massive external hard disk drive failure (Simpletech external drive) and my computer technician person cannot get any recognition of the drive with his equipment and is telling me that the only viable option is a data retrieval company.
I have lost a number of very important MPEG, AVI, and Ulead MSP project files for my Salamone's Wrestling Plan for the Jiu Jitsu Man project. Needless to say, this is going to seriously slow me down until I can either get the data retrieved or re-edit, from scratch, a good deal of video which will take no small amount of time.
Do any forum members do this type of thing or have a spouse or good friend that does? I understand it is potentially rather expensive and don't want to get eaten alive in the process, if possible. I would like to work a trade for the entire series or the entire series of videos and the balance in money depending upon the total cost.
Any leads would be greatly appreciated. This situation feels like a death with the amount of work I have put into this thing. I am praying for a way out of the mess.
PS - Rich, I'm the guy from Connecticut who emailed you about coming up North for a seminar. If you need some $$$ for the data recovery I will bring you up here sooner rather than later.....
Is the hard disk still spining? Or does it make a clunking noise.
If the hard drive is actually physically damged, like one of the heads have broken your only option will be to send it off somewhere. The good news is all the data will most likely still be there.
Otherwise if the hard drive isn't physically broken:
I'm not too sure how the external hard drive is wired up, but i would assume its an ide hard drive that has a converter to usb/firewire in it. Much like the external drive chassis you can buy now that have no hard drive in and you just put whatever hard drive in. You could maybe try taking the hard drive out of its casing and wire it up directly to your computer as an internal drive as it might be some problem with the usb/firewire. There might be some software that might be able to help you out aswell if the hard drive isn't physically broken.
Thats what i would do with a faulty external drive if it happened to me.
My computer person actually did take the external drive apart and put it in a desktop computer as the drive is, apparently, a standard size. As when it was hooked up by firewire (externally), the computer does not recognize that there is any drive connected.
I am a very experienced IT guy. It does not sound good. If the drive makes grinding sounds when you power it up it is most likely a head crash. Which is bad cuz when the platters spin the head is scraping. Think of the platters like a record and the head is like the record player needle. The head just magnatizes parts of the platter to store data. Anyway if the head hits the platter that is bad.
Data recovery companies are very expensive and even then there is no guarantee they will be able to get your data back.
Future recommendation: Buy name brand hard drives and do regular backups. The hard drive is the most mechanical part of your computer with the highest chance of a problem. With that said, most good hard drives normally last 5+ years.
The only last thing i can really think of is, did your I.T guy check to see if the hard drive comes up in the bios, before your os loads assuming your using a pc. If it can't be seen at all it sounds liek you will have to send off your hard drive for data recovery. If your using a mac, i would maybe suggest try using norton disk doctor(or utilities).
This link might be of interest for you. As its all about someone who had there drive crash on them.