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Data recovery: The option of last resort (Part 3 of 3)

by Robert Palmer Jan 22nd 2009 at 8:01AM

Back to Part I: losing all the data on a hard disk, and Part II: the trials and tribulations of paying to get it back. Now we find out what happened, and what you can expect from a data recovery specialist.

Greg, the technician from Iomega Data Recovery, sent back two documents two days later: One was a Word document containing a list of files that were recovered from the disk.

The document had most of my files in it, but some were missing. Many of the files were grouped by file type in an "orphans" folder, meaning that the files were on the disk, but their place in the disk's directory structure was lost. Some files were only named according to their file type, such as "m4p-00195.m4p" and "InDesignCS-00003.indd" because their filenames were gone. I would find out later that some files were copied several times (sometimes as many as six times): once as part of the directory structure, and again in the "orphans" folder. Still: many copies are better than no copies.

They offered to return the data on a new hard disk, but the cost of it is not included in the recovery fee. The second attachment to the tech's email was a price list. I chose the cheapest bare hard disk at the necessary capacity, since I had an enclosure to put it in. They offered (more expensive) USB and FireWire hard disks as options for return as well. So add another $55 to the total price.

Greg also asked for a list of the 20 most critical files that could be used as a test for successful recovery. I emailed him a list of mostly files for work I had in progress during the failure, a brochure for a client of mine that manufactures propellers. He called the next day, walking me through the contents of the InDesign document and its support files. "This one appears to be a picture of a propeller blade. This one has a big headline that says 'simply the best.'" Relief. I was satisfied that everything was recovered, approved the recovery, and thanked Greg.

The next part was the hardest: Paying the invoice. The grand total wasn't as bad as I thought: I was prepared to pay tax on all $1,500, but (in California at least) services aren't taxable. So the only tax I had to pay was $4.54 on the replacement hard disk. The grand total was $1,559.54. I'm writing that off my taxes this year.

Once my payment was processed, which took a day, two drives were overnighted to me: the original (failed) drive, and the new replacement drive. I popped the replacement went into my enclosure, and -- tah dah! -- there were my files.

The most significant casualty of the data recovery, however, was the loss of 10 years of painstakingly collected Mystery Science Theater 3000 videos. Many were videos I had recorded originally on VHS, some had been, uh, acquired by other means -- as youthful indiscretions, shall we say. Thankfully, all my project data and purchased music was safe and sound. Everything that was lost could be replaced.

Files on the replacement disk were painfully disorganized, though, which gave me an idea of just how logically corrupted the volume was. Files that were added to the drive after it had been connected via the AirPort Base Station were mostly in the Orphans folder, apparently scattered hither and yon across the disk's platters. I spent the better part of a day copying files, reorganizing everything, and preparing my new backup strategy that included a brand-new, 1.5TB external disk to use with Time Machine.

I learned my lesson the hard way. I had a good experience, but paid dearly for it.

If this story saves anyone any amount of money for data recovery, then it's done its job. Please: Back up your data. The money you spend on a hard disk for backup is far less than what you'd spend on data recovery.



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Back to Part I: losing all the data on a hard disk, and Part II: the trials and tribulations of paying to get it back. Now we find out what...
 

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Scott Moulton

I guess you guys have never heard of www.MyHardDriveDied.com? Scott Moulton has hundreds of videos up of in depth recovery as well as tons of videos on YouTube on how to do everything from Head Swaps to Platter Rebuilds. He gives a ton of information away and tells a lot of "trade secrets" from data recovery companies.

January 26 2009 at 9:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rob

A drobo-type solution, as others have mentioned, is ideal but not always practical, unfortunately. Stay away from RAIDed HD's, like the G-RAIDs, they are impossible to rebuild if one drive goes down.

I feel like you missed a step here, though. My last stop before the professional data recovery (and I agree you got off cheap on this one, too), is the very excellent Prosoft Data Rescue II, which has both a Mac and PC version. I have recovered drives when nothing else worked, including DiskWarrior, etc. It's relatively cheap and has saved me a lot of times - it takes a long time to recover, but I couldn't possibly recommend it more as an option of (almost) last resort.

Rob

January 23 2009 at 4:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
starfish

not to fear, your mst3k collection is not gone for good. the entirety of mystery science theater 3000 is available online (except for the 4 missing episodes) at the digital archive project ( tracker.dapcentral.org ) . or you can even find the whole thing as one enormous batch on torrent sites.

January 22 2009 at 8:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David.H.

That's a sad story that had a happy ending at least! It's a fact of life with HDDs unfortunately. I've never made a backup of my data in my life and i'll cry the day that i lose a HDD.

I've recovered data for clients 100's of times with HDDs in all sorts of conditions, especially as you described Robert. DataRescue II is an amazing tool and has helped make alot of people happy. I wouldn't be suprised if it was used on your HDD to recover the data.

Thanks David Hoelzer for the heads up on the free alternative ddrescue, will check it out.

January 22 2009 at 5:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Felix H

And regularly backup your files to other removable media, such as DVD-R and BD, then put them into your parents' house or your girl friend's apartment. Do regular backup to online backup services, such as Amazon S3 or Mozy.

These instructions would save your life.

January 22 2009 at 12:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Felix H

Get a RAID-1 array and connect it to a UPS.

January 22 2009 at 12:21 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rick

In 2004, I used a program called FileSalvage to rescue a failed drive.

If I remember correctly, it recovered almost all of my files, but without any folder structure, so the files all had to be gone through and either discarded or rebuilt into their former folder structure.

In researching when I bought this, I notice I purchased SuperDuper, and an external drive at the same time

I now have two 500GB FW drives in different locations that I back up on arrival and departure. I also have a physically small portable USB drive that I travel with, and never keep in the same place as my laptop, should the laptop bag get stolen. In a hotel, it gets locked in the room safe.

People make fun of me, but there's just too much important stuff to leave to chance.

January 22 2009 at 12:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David Hoelzer

Physical flaws on the drive (heads and platters) are the worst but not the most common problems when hard drives are failing. I've been down this road recently with a MyBook drive that failed. Before you fork out $1500 for the security of your data, you may want to look at a free alternative:

http://www.enclaveforensics.com/Blog/files/6c8ff926c4507ba328b1f59fda717de5-20.html

If you have to pay you have to pay, but it's sometimes worth the effort to try a DIY!

January 22 2009 at 11:47 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to David Hoelzer's comment
Gregory

I have had three My Book drives fail on me, and in every case, it was not the drive that was failing, but the power supply. You can purchase replacements for about $15, or just extract the drive and put it into a new enclosure (preferably a fan)

January 22 2009 at 4:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
darren

Like Paul, I see this story a lot at the AASP's I work for. Both through drive failure and user error. (You'd be surprised how many users I have spoken to over the past four years who use the trash can for storage.) Its never an easy situation to deal with on both sides of the conversation. I'd say $1500 is pretty reasonable when compared to the UK prices I have seen thrown around to some of my customers though.

Had a couple of hard lessons like this myself too all down to user error, while testing scripts/fixes than drive failures though. Since then I use a combination of a Drobo for my Media Server storage at home, a MyBook for my laptop when I get home after work and also BackBlaze on the laptop for added peace of mind. You can never overdo backup plans...

January 22 2009 at 11:34 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
erick

what do u guys think about online hard drives, are those a good solution for backup??

January 22 2009 at 11:19 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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