Warbird Information Exchange

Sorry if this is in the wrong place...

I recently had a bad experience with a nationally known computer repair shop. Took my old computer in to have the power supply replaced and somehow the genius doing the work ruined the mounts for holding my harddrive in the tower. Only thing to be done is to replace the harddrive with a new one and try to figure out how to get the 1,798 pix off of the disabled harddrive! Kind of boring stuff like museum and airshow pix, but the important ones are of my son from K-6th grade.

If anyone here knows of a reputable place to send the disabled/removed harddrive that knows how to retrieve those pix, I would certainly appreciate that info. Gotta remember that I am also a working class guy as I was told that it may cost into the thousands of dollars to get my pix!

Two things I learned...always save all pix in a safe place, outside your computer...and don't always listen when people tell you that you can get something done cheaper by a rival of another company

Thanx in advance for any help!

Darrell the disappointed

_________________
Earn my respect and never lose it.
Demand my respect and never gain it. -Me

...just another plane dreamer.

Since I have no idea how badly your hard drive mounts were damaged, all I can do is offer a solution that has worked for me in the past:

Go to Best Buy (or Fry's, or whatever computer store) and purchase an external drive case. They run from something like $30.00 and up.

Install (not difficult, just a couple of screws to keep it in place) your old hard drive on it. Then connect the USB cable to your new computer, and your old hard drive will work as a removable device.

I did this not three weeks ago for a friend, and were able to not only recover all of his data, but now he uses the old disk as a removable hard drive.

Good luck.

Saludos,


Tulio

_________________
Why take the best part of life out of your life, when you can have life with the best part of your life in your life?

I am one of them 'futbol' people.

Will the previous owner has pics of this double cabin sample

GOOD MORNING, WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Press "1" for English.
Press "2" to disconnect until you have learned to speak English.

Sooooo, how am I going to know to press 1 or 2, if I do not speak English????

Thank you very much for the info Tulio...it does sound simple enough for a novice computer guy like me!

The pix I was trying to retrieve were actually removed from the folders I had them in, but when I call them up, it says they were removed, but still on the harddrive. That is where I am having all the trouble...trying to retrieve/restore the pix. I talked to a friend of a friend today who said about the same thing you are suggesting and [u]thinks he might be able to retrieve the pix...keeping my fingers crossed!

Thanx again for the help Tulio

_________________
Earn my respect and never lose it.
Demand my respect and never gain it. -Me

...just another plane dreamer.

Darrell: If you can get the drive running again, there is software out there that will allow you to recover damaged and lost files. I don't know any particular name offhand, but your local PC gurus should be able to point you in the right direction. If not, try the downloads section and the forums on Kim Komando's website for file recovery tools.

Darrell,

Whenever you find the solution to your problem, please let us know. We may need to have that trick saved for a future opportunity : ) either for ourselves, or for friends.

Good luck!


Saludos,


Tulio

_________________
Why take the best part of life out of your life, when you can have life with the best part of your life in your life?

I am one of them 'futbol' people.

Will the previous owner has pics of this double cabin sample

GOOD MORNING, WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Press "1" for English.
Press "2" to disconnect until you have learned to speak English.

Sooooo, how am I going to know to press 1 or 2, if I do not speak English????

I had a hard drive go through a fire and saved it on the chance I might be able to recover it. Any hope????

Depending on the damage, yes you can have some hope. HD's are not black boxes, but they can withstand some damage. If the disks inside the "carcass" are not melted or bent, what they usually do is transfer them to another "carcass" and go from there on. If you’re willing to do that, I’m sorry to say this but it's not going to be cheap.

It may be useless what I’m going to comment, but here it goes.

If it’s one of Jack Cook’s (:)) images then maybe you can ask him to post it again. But if it’s one of your new born child that you only have in your HD then STOP everything you’re doing. The deleted file may be overwritten by a new file if you continue to work on your computer.

So, basically, the thing to do is to go to a friend’s house and plug your HD is his computer as a secondary device. From there you can install recovery software in your friends HD and undelete the images (or anything else). The software’s I’m fond of are: System Mechanic Pro and/or Recover My Files.

As a preemptive thing, you must install recovery software when you first install your computer. That’s one of the right things to do.

And finally and this is not to add insult to injury, but always backup your data. I’ve learned that the hard way (didn’t we all?). What I have now is an external (actually it’s two) USB HD's. One is 250 GB and the other is 120 GB. I run Microsoft SyncToy to sync my primary HD to both of these external ones. And I do it every single day.

Y’all may have asked yourselves what would happen if you had to leave your houses in a hurry. Considering your family is safe and you had some time available then what would you take? What would you leave behind? What would be most precious to you? I would surely take these HD’s with me.

if this was a shop with any standards, they screwed the drive up replacing a power supply they pay the $$$$ to fix what they fowled up !!!!!!

You guys are the BEST!!! If I had known that there were so many of you here that could offer the kind of advice I am getting, I would have come here first instead of taking my tower to the unnamed computer expert!

After more phonecalls yesterday, I think I may have found someone local to help me get the pictures. He suggested exactly what Tulio said in that we can hook-up the dead harddrive externally, save all the info from it onto a server first and then try to retrieve the pix from the old harddrive. If we mess something up, we will still have the harddrive in it's original format.

This stuff gives me a bit of a headache as I am so computer illiterate! Knowing that there are fellas here who are so much smarter than I and willing to offer your help to a pathetic dummy like me makes me so much more glader that I joined this here fine WIX community!!! You guys ROCK

Thank you fellas and I will let you know what we find out this week.

_________________
Earn my respect and never lose it.
Demand my respect and never gain it. -Me

...just another plane dreamer.

If it's just the mounts that hold the drive in place, then Tulio's solution should work just fine. So long as the connectors on the back of the drive are in good shape, you should have no trouble getting the data off.

It's pretty hard to lose data off a drive unless it really, really, really, blows up. Heck, I've pulled data off of drives with a frozen spindle by pulling the top cover and manually turning the platters while wearing latex gloves (getting it past the spot where it was sticking), then putting the cover back on and placing the drive an external enclosure. The drive wasn't trust worthy after that, but it worked long enough to get the data off.

_________________
Phil K.
Yankee Air Museum
Systems Admin / Ramp Crew / Professional Photo Ruiner

Easy Recovery is a good tool. ( I used to work at Ontrack the developer of it )

If it's only the mounts it's not a problem at all.

I've had hard drives running for years just sittng on a table next to the PC when I ran out of room in the case.

If it really is dying, sticking it the freezer for half an hour before plugging it in can sometimes (50/50) revive it long enough to get some data off.

The freezer things works usually when you have the ticking noise of the arm slamming the disks.

The arm ( needle ) will reset back when frozen, but once you have it, get the data off it, before it dumps on you again.

I've always heard that if you're putting it in the freezer, you're probably going to want to put it in something like a ziploc bag to prevent moisture & condensation issues.