FOAK: Hard disk recovery?

I have in front of me a very dead Hitachi disk (1), making noises which I
can only compare to a micro angle grinder. Its owner, sadly, isnt as up to
date on the backup front as could be (2), and it looks like many pounds
(3) will be soon spent on someone with a clean room to dismantle and
recover what they can. Quotes from this have ranged from 'HOW MUCH?!?',
(Seagate),through fairly high (Ontrack) to a whole raft of people offering
around the £300 / 400 mark. I'm loath to trust the thing to 'just anyone',
so does the FOAK have any recommendations, positive or negative please?
Oh, and I know it might all be futile, but it has to be tried (see (2)
again).

1: Not mine, honest
2: Business stuff backed up, pictures of kids growing up not backed up
3: Not my money, but I dont want to get into stupid numbers if it can be
helped

 

I think Sir will find that you end up with more of a subtle flavour to
the data if it is blanched for 2 minutes first.

 

I've used him before, after thumping a laptop made the drive go all
mardy. Very helpful guy - even offered a choice of what types of data
I needed recovering and managed to recover about 95% of the relevant
stuff.

Cost about £130, which may or may not be worth it to you. In my case
the lappy wasn't mine and it contained about 3 years worth of
un-backed-up family photos, ergo it was a *bargain*.

 

On Thu, 10 May 2007 19:57:44 +0000, YTC#1 wrote:

Well indeed - if it had been important to me, it would have been on a
raid, and an external drive and on DVD. Well, thats what I usually tell
people who phone me up with a drive problem, anyway.

 

Google for Spinrite
excellent

 

If it *has* to be got back, I can heartily recomend Vogon

http://www.vogon.co.uk/

Not cheap, but *very* good.

 

I can second that - very professional service (used in a work context
to recover data from a very dead[1] laptop drive).

[1] as in, wouldn't even spin up.