HELP! Data recovery from dead hard drive

[cotswoldcs]

I have a dead Seagate hard drive:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
S/N: 9QM887J9
ST 3500620AS
P/N: 9BX144-033
Firmware: DE12
Date Code : 09163

I can't see the drive under BIOS, Windows or SeaTools for DOS on either the Dell Desktop PC it was installed or another PC.

Sadly the user who owns the hard drive has no backup whatsoever. Does anyone have an idea how much it would cost to have the data recovered professionally?

[WhiteGiant]

When you say dead, do you mean it simply isn't recognised, or that it doesn't spinup at all?

One trick I once read about was putting a dead drive in a freezer for an hour (in an airtight container), then trying to recover the data quickly before it heats up too much. No idea if the source was being genuine but if the data is very important and you can't afford a recovery service it might be worth a try.

Oh, if you blow your house up, it's not my fault.

[Splash]

WARNING: While the freezer trick has been known to work (it has for 2 or 3 disks in the past for me) it's a big gamble and can completely screw any chance of recovering data. If the data is valuable take it to the professionals.

Disklabs are pretty highly rated, but it's difficult to give you a ballpark figure without knowing how much data needs recovering and more about the failure: you really are best off calling round a few recovery companies for quotes.

[peterb]

Read this thread

http://forums.hexus.net/help-technic...rive-dead.html

Saves me re-posting the same stuff!