The hard drive on my Powermac G4 did the click of death and took 2 years worth of photos of my son with it (not to mention all my other data!). Can anyone recommend a good yet affordable company to try and recover the data from my dead drive? I'm not a business, I'm a working class shmoe with a mortgage and no job security...
Matt
Tunstall and Tunstall. http://www.datarecoveryservices.com/
No matter where you go this is going to be expensive. At least they will show you what they can get, before they get it, and how much it will cost.
Ed
I hate to say this now, but you should always have a backup of your data, whether it's an external HD or a CD/DVD and you should backup regularly. HD die and it can happen anytime.
I was burning backup CD's, but I got complacent. Well, we all have to learn the hard way, right? I ended up going with a company called "ReStoring Data". I'll post a follow-up to say how it went. I now have a new machine running 10.5 with Time Machine. I've learned my lesson...
Well, here's the latest: The drive is so badly damaged that nothing can be recovered. The company, at my request, will now send the drive to Maxtor for a free second opinion. Maxtor/Seagate owns Quantum, the maker of my crappy drive.
Here's a bit of advice for all you PowerMac owners out there: check your drive with the System Profiler. If it is a Quantum Fireball Plus AS, buy a backup drive IMMEDIATELY. Every data recovery company that I have talked to says that those drives have a reputation for crashing HARD. Especially the "AS" models. Better yet, buy a good hard drive and trash that Fireball, because if you don't, you'll probably end up going down in flames....
Well, not even Seagate Maxtor (the company that owns Quantum) felt that much could be done. They were willing to try - for $3500 - but I couldn't afford it (and they didn't think they'd get anything). I guess I'll just hang onto the drive until someone invents the "tricorder", and then they can just wave it over my dead drive and recover the data that way...
Matt