Seeking a good hard drive recovery service
A friend of mine emailed me recently with a question that I can't answer. He has a friend whose hard drive has croaked, possibly due to a power surge caused by a lightning storm. She'd like to get as much of the data back as possible, but the usual recovery methods don't seem to be working because the drive's control logic appears to be fried.
The question is: Do you know of a good, reliable, and reasonably affordable service capable of recovering a drive's data in such a situation? Quick turnaround isn't a high priority here, if that helps. Fortunately for me, I've not had to go down that path, so I don't know any place to recommend.
Thanks to a previous conversation here, I do know that if the drive itself is still responsive, GetDataBack is a nice tool for recovering deleted files or inaccessible data on a corrupted volume. I've used it myself and recommend it.
I've also had success swapping in the control logic from another, almost-identical drive and recovering the data, but it's not a procedure I'd recommend to the average guy. I just happened to have multiple copies of the same drive on hand, and I didn't have much to lose. The drive made some scary noises with the transplanted control logic, but it worked long enough for me to grab the data I wanted.
What if a professional data recovery service is needed? Any recommendations?
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