I had my work computer take a crap last week. The hard drive failed and the company that I took it to said that the problem was the controller board. Anyone know how to get the data off a HD for a relatively reasonable price? This is the main computer here and I have lost everything. My luck was so shitty last week that my backup, external HD failed too. So far, I have only been able to get minimal files salvaged, but I need to see who, or what I can do to get the old info off my old HD.

Suggestions? Anyone? Someone? PLEASE HELP ME!!!

An IT guy I used to work with would pull the hard drives out of the computer and put them in the freezer overnight. He'd install it back in the computer straight out of the freezer the next morning. Sometimes it would take several iterations of doing that to get all of the data but he was usually pretty successful in recovering data off failed hard drives doing that. Cheap thing to try.

I don't have the knowledge to help, but there is a data recovery place next to MicroCenter in Aurora. I've heard good things about the freezer trick as well, but not sure that'll help a fried control board.

I tried the freezer trick once already and got nothing. The problem is that the darn thing isn't even being recognized. I pull this one off and plug my new HD in and the comp. runs fine. Unplug new & plug old in and nothing. I don't even know if anything is even reading once it powers on. I'll put it back in the freezer to see what happens and keep trying that.

I have had two fail in the past year. When the first one failed we did not have a backup and ended up spending a bunch of money through best buy for data recovery. They got it but it was something like $1500. It had a couple of years worth of family photos on top of all of the normal stuff so we spent the money. Now we regularly back up onto an extenal drive very regularly.

The second was the replacement for the first and it failed a couple of months ago. Luckily we had a good backup so I bought a new drive and dropped it in. Still a pain to get everything reloaded but we did not lose any data. The second was still under warranty when it failed so I now have a spare waiting for next one to go.

An easier option as compared to external drives is cloud backup. I use Crashplan and have used both Carbonite and Mozy in the past. Was happy with all, but changed when Carbonite and Mozy eliminated their unlimited flat rate plans as I've got about 5.5TB of data that I like to back up.

If it really is the controller board on the drive itself you're pretty much hosed. You'll have to take it to a data recovery place. Unfortunately it's not cheap either. Dan's experience at $1500 is not uncommon.

Well, I found a company who would replace the controller board for $50, but the guy said that the symptoms that I am getting doesn't sound controller board. They sound more internal stuff, but that his company does offer recovery services. The price they have is $300 for recovery, free digital upload (up to 2GB) or an additional $60 for a 1TB USB drive. If the data is "un-obtanium" then there is no cost unless I want the drive back. I think they are a Canadian company, so I might go that route. I'm still swapping emails with the guy.