Recommend a data recovery company?

Would anyone recommend a data recovery company you have used to retrieve information from a Mac hard drive? In the USA is fine -- as long as they will accept it and return it by mail. European recs would be fine too, as I'm in Germany.
The hard drive in my new MacBook, bought in December, failed. The nearest certified Mac repair shop could not recover the data. I'm going to try Gravis in Bonn, but have a bad feeling... I think I need a company with real expertise in recovering data.
What a huge disappointment my MacBook is... and the service plan is no help, since Mac requires the broken hard drive to be returned to them in 48 hours or I have to buy the new one -- and as I'm desperate for the data, I have no choice but to give Apple yet more money.

AMarieB, I'm sorry but no computer company (none that I know of anyway) covers data recovery. It is unfortunately standard. Data Recovery is expensive (as you know now) and it doesn't always work. I highly recommend that you keep a current or fairly current backup of your data. I cannot stress this enough. If you have leopard, time machine is built-in and will automate your backup for you in conjunction with an external hard drive. If you don't, there are programs (some are free, some aren't) that will do the same thing as time machine and will take some of the hassle out of backups. If this should happen again in the future (to this machine or another), it will be a lot less stressful for you, not to mention cheaper.
JamieNY, I'm glad to hear that you now have a backup solution, just make sure that you keep it up to date, especially if you are working on a project. Most people tend to forget to make sure that they have backups of projects (unless you have your backup set to backup every day or so).
I only mention this kind of thing because I see it all the time and I know what a pain it is. It's a lot easier to have a backup strategy beforehand than it is to try to recover data, especially if it's something really important like a dissertation or project that's due the next day (Murphy's law, right?). I wish all of you the best of luck.

Similar Messages

Data recovery from a disk that is unmounted

Here is my problem:
disk utility had indicated that I had a couple of bad blocks in my start up disk and recommended that it be replaced. Since I already had a second internal hard drive with plenty of room on it, I simply installed OS 10.4 on the second hard drive and designated it as the startup drive.
Then I ran maintenance on the problem drive. After spending an hour or more grinding through every sector it appeared that the drive would pass master. However for some reason it hung up, stopped making progress and disabled my computer, i.e., I could move the cursor but could not click anything or select anything. Finally my only choice was to manually shut down and restart. Restart seemed to work fine except the disk on which I was performing maintenance did not show up on the desktop.
Finally I was able to locate it using disk utility and discovered that the mount point was missing and it was not mounted. Of course this is what I should have expected since techtool pro unmounts a drive while it performs maintenance and when I had to interrupt, it did not remount.
I spent three days trying to find a way to remount it, including downloading MountMe. Strangely when I ran MountMe it recognized the drive and gave me a successful remount message, but the drive was not actually remounted according to disk utility.
I have moved the drive to a different G-4 with no more success.
my greatest problem -- I had used Backup from .Mac but apparently was not careful enough about where the backup file was located. Generally I download to my desktop and then if I want to save a download I move it to an appropriate location. Unwisely I had done the same with backup which means of course that when the old startup drive crashed it took my desktop files with it.
Included among those backups were all of my financial records (Quicken) for the year. Three checking accounts, all of my credit card accounts, all of my business accounts, etc. I am talking about days of contacting credit card companies and banks for replacement of records for the year and, worse yet, they don't have the details in their files regarding the accounts to be charged nor do they have any info about inter account transfer, etc., etc., etc.
So, I am looking for a reasonably priced service provider to copy my defective hard drive for me. I don't think there is any problem with the data on the drive, I just can't get it remounted.
Maybe someone knows how to work around the mount point problem????
My main desktop computer is a G-4 quicksilver with dual 800, OS 10.4.3 and 1.4 GB of memory.
thanks,
John Cleek

Whenever someone reports issues with their drive my first question is always, "Do you hear any unusual noises coming from the computer?"
What I'm listening for is anything like grinding, scraping, what we always call 'ping-ponging' or other unusual clicking noises that would indicate a mechanical problem inside the drive. If you don't hear anything unusual then the problem is more likely to be corrupt volume information or a broken hard drive controller board.
If you hear noises then my recommendation is to stop trying to get anything off the drive because any more attempts would do yet more damage.
The only data recovery company I've used is www.drivesavers.com. I've called them multiple times to get quotes and their reps always seems to actualy have an idea what they're talking about. It is very expensive to use a service such as theirs but sometimes it is the only option available.

Data Recovery - Failed HD on 2010 MacBook Pro

Hello, I have had a HD failure, or at least what I believe to be one on my 2010 MacBook Pro. I updated to Mavericks from Snow Leopard in October and everything appeared to run smoothly. 2 days ago I was watching a video in Itunes I my entire system froze, however the mouse was still moveable as was the dock. Rather stupidly, i tried to load a couple of applications, they did eventually load, but were not function able. The pinwheel kept spinning, and trying to move the page windows only resulted in lag. The system then crashed completely, and I had to restart. It would not go past the grey screen with the apple logo.
For the past day I`ve tried on and off everything that I know how to do. PRAM and SMC resets, Apple Hardware disk (which resulted in an issue with one of my memory sticks. I switched them out, ran the test again, and the system simply crashed part way through), and Disk utility. After running Verify and Repair permissions/disk permission in Disk Utility, I received the message relating to an "uncorrectable error" and "This disk cannot be repaired."
I`ve had issue with this machine on and off for nearly the past two years. Disk utility has appeared resolve the issues, but sometime later something else would crop up. Kernal issues have become more and more frequent as have crashes, and I`ve suspected the HD is to blame. Back in Aug 2012 I had the logic board replaced under warranty, due to graphic issues and problems display games/video or other media and lag. This fixed the issue for a few months, then the kernal problems started and I have frequently (every few days) needed to restart and gotten error messages. The machine will no longer start up, and though most of my date is backed up, some of it is not, and I really would like to get it back. The apple logo will appear on screen for 30sec-1min then crash and automatically restarts.
System Info: 15' 2010 MacBook Pro
2.66GHZ i7
5400rpm HD
etc.
Also, I have tried booting up with the "Shift" key held and the following message has appeared multiple times on the grey/apple logo screen:
panic(cpu 2 caller 0xfffff80189cd7d4): "Process 1 exec of /sbn/launched falled, errno 2"0/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-24422.1.72/bsd/kern/kern_exec.c:3836
Debugger called: <panic>
0xffffff8100e1bdf0 : 0xffffff8018622f69
0xffffff8100e1be7d : 0xffffff80189cb7d4
0xffffff8100e1bef0 : 0xffffff80189ab867
0xffffff8100e1bf20 : 0xffffff80189dfe51
0xffffff8100e1bf50 : 0xffffff8018620b2b
0xffffff8100e1bf80 : 0xffffff80186dc7d3
0xffffff8100e1bfa0 : 0xffffff80186f35d2
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: init
Mac OS version:
Not yet set
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 13.0.0: Thu Sep 19 22:22:27 PDT 2013; root:xnu-2422.1.72~6/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: 1D9369E3-D0A5-31B6-8D16-BFFBBB390393
Kernel slide: 0x0000000018400000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff8018600000
System model name: MacBookPro6,2 (Mac-F22586c8)
System uptime in nanoseconds: 4597800225
My primary concern is Data Recovery if possible, then dealing with whatever the issue may be. If the HD is in fact to blame, I can replace it, but I`d really like to get the remain date that is on the drive if possible. Looking through the forums I see that others have had similar issues. I appreciate any help or suggestions that anyone can offer. . Thank you to anyone in advance!

Appfan42,
you’ve now discovered where the value lies in making regular backups — to avoid data loss due to a “single point of failure”. If the data that’s currently only on your hard drive is irretrievable through ordinary means, there is still the possibility of hiring the services of a data recovery company, but their services are typically quite expensive. Should it be necessary for you to purchase a replacement hard drive (or SSD), I’d highly recommend that you also purchase an external hard drive for use as a Time Machine backup destination, so that you can make regular backups, and thus avoid a similar situation at some future date.
That being stated, there is a chance that the problem is due to a faulty internal SATA cable rather than a faulty hard drive. The way to check that would be to purchase either a SATA-to-USB or SATA-to-FireWire adapter or an external disk enclosure, and move your hard disk outside of its usual place within your MacBook Pro. After that, boot into Recovery mode and run Disk Utility from there to verify/repair your drive while it’s external, and see if it will boot normally afterwards. If it behaves itself externally, then that could point to the problem lying with your internal SATA cable; that would also be the right time to perform data recovery and start making regular Time Machine backups.

Affordable data recovery service?

Hard drive's dead....can anyone recommend an affordable data recovery service? Tekserv in NYC charges $600 plus the cost of a new drive for a total of $850--online they seem to range from $250 to $850.
Does anyone know how good/reliable the $250 services are? I'd appreciate any advice--thx

I would not use tekserve they are not a data recovery company and either use some high end sw or send it out to a real dr company. I just used ontrack and got a 1200$ quote for my 1Tb raid-0, haven't done it yet

External Hard Drive Data Recovery

Hello Apple Support Communities!
I have a Western Digital 320GB external hard drive and it currently has 0 bytes available. This has prevented me from even viewing the hard drive on my finder window. I can only see it in disk utility. I have tried repairing the disk and verifying it but neither has worked in letting me view my files. I use the hard drive for movies and now i can't see them! Can anyone recommend free data recovery software so i can delete a few files so that i can view my hard drive? Thank you!

I found a way to sort of mount the drive and consequently do a data recovery.
What i did was highlight the 'iphone-dump.img' and opened it with 'Disk Utility'. Inside of 'Disk Utility', I double-clicked the 'iphone-dump.img' icon and low and behold, it split into two drives, despite it giving me an 'Unable to attach 'iphone-dump.img' (no mountable file systems)' message at the same time.
I wasn't able to do much with it in 'Disk Utility' from there on, so I opened 'Data Rescue III' and it became available to scan as a 'Virtual Interface' called 'Apple read:write'. I performed a scan and was able to locate my missing photos. It took a while because there were several duplicates of older photos. I think this is because each time I've restored the phone from a backup, data has been placed in a different location on the hard drive. Therefore, it has not overwritten these very same photos that have been on most of my backups for some time.
I wasn't able to find my missing voice memos from the 'QuickVoice' application though. They appear not to be there. I found the existing ones from the recovery. They must be somewhere surely? Maybe the photos are stored in a different way since the photo application is a default app and 'QuickVoice' is a bought app. ?
Ideas anyone

FCP files will not open after data recovery

We have a TV tech lab in our high school of 15 Apple editing workstations and we archive the completed projects to external firewire drives. Well, wouldn't you know it, one of the drives crashed with all of the previous school years senior projects. The drive would mount, but none of the files were accessible. I sent the drive to a data recovery company and they were successful to a point. They were able to recover the entire drive (about 140 GB). The QT files work fine, but the FCP files are a different story. When I attempt to open an FCP file, I get the error "wrong file type". All of the files do have the correct file extension. Is there anyone out there that has experienced this? Were you able to resolve the problem? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jay in WI

Milwaukee, eh? My mom grew up in La Crosse...
Can you zip one or more of these files and email it to me? I'll take a crack at it.
Patrick

Satellite L850: HDD Firmware issue preventing data recovery

Am a bit confused and need a simple explaination
My L850 hard drive died under warranty and has been sent to data recovery people to attempt to recover data before I get new drive under warranty.
I am being told that my hard drive has a fairly unique combination of firmware and drive which is preventing recovery until they get this firmware. Now 6 weeks after it happened I stll am waiting.
Could someone at support explain in simple terms why this firmware is causing problem and cannot so far be obtained by your partner data recovery company?

Hi
I think you will not get here an proper answer why the data recovery people needs such firmware since this is user to user forum.
But from my knowledge the all the 2.5 HDDs and SSD drive supports different firmware.
Such firmware tells the hardware how to interact with the computer's operating system.
It seems that the data recovery people needs such firmware in order to get access to the HDD and I assume without the compatible firmware its not possible to recover the data.

Apple Data Recovery?

I am about to return my MBP to the Apple Store for 3rd time for repair to my hard drive. (Technically, repair, replace, and now new one is not mounted.)
The last two times I brought the MBP in, they told me that they could try to extract data from my hard drive by sending it to a data recovery service. The way the tech explained it, it seemed that it would take much more time for them to repair the hd if they did that. She also told me that they would not be able to give me back the bum hard drive if I did not elect for data recovery so that I could send it out myself.
Because I had reasonably recent backups from October, I elected no data recovery. This time, the HD failure also knocked out my most recent backup of my calendar, notes, contacts to my iPod and I am tempted to have them try.
Has anyone ever used Apple's data recovery service?
Did it take weeks longer for repair?

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-1689 Shows several ways you could attempt your own recovery. If those fail, go to your local http://www.apple.com/usergroups/ and see if people have tried that data recovery company. Sometimes colleges and universities nearby may know of them.

Hard-disk Data Recovery

Anybody have any personal experience or recommendation about data recovery specialists for a hard-disk that has hardware failure ?
Would appreciate if you would share your experience or rating for any companies that you may have used for this service, in the past.
I've heard of names "Drive Savers Inc", and "Total Recall".

[DriveSavers|DriveSavers.com], [Ontrack Data Recovery|www.ontrack.com] and [Lazarus|www.lazarus.com] all have excellent reputations for data recovery. They are not cheap, however, but they do not charge if they don't recover anything.
Best of luck.

Finding parts to repair drive for data recovery

I have had a hard drive on a Powerbook 12" go down. I bought it in 2004, and it seems that the data recovery company I have sent it to are having problems sourcing another drive so they use parts to repair it and recover the data. They seem top have gone to lengths to try and source what they need, but I thought the discussion forum here might have some experience with this. The disk is Fujitsu Model mht2060at, the original 60Gb disk that was in the laptop. It now lives(?) outside of the laptop which has had a replacement disk fitted...
...Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Well, as far as they have said, they need to find comparable donor parts to repair the disk in order to recover the data, and so far they have not, in spite of an extensive search.
Also, they were not quoting cheap either. They have given me the option of simply having the drive returned, which I am inclined to accept, or else go and collect it in person. They have after all had 2 months. I think my real problem has been that at the start I was really hesitant in choosing a company as I could verify the quality or value of any of them: I took quite a while to pick one, and I picked this one finally after asking around, and finding there wasn't really anyone who had a better idea than myself.
Now I am in the position of potentially being back where I started, 1 down, all the rest to go, with a carriage fee every time I send it back out, and with the prospect of losing the disk in transit, or stumbling across a completely rogue operation.
Here I am therefore, needing to find a company with an established reputation...
... if there are some testimonials for the company you suggest from other apple users, I would really app[reciate them. I know it isn't cheap. I need to be convinced on the next choice though before I part with another bean, and I would appreciate anyone with advice on what process may take place, and what I should reasonably expect to pay...

Toshiba SSHD MQ01ABD100H - Firmware / Data Recovery Issue

Hello!
I have mission critical data on a SSHD Toshiba MQ01ABD100H that was in a Sony VAIO for less than a year that decided stop working overnight. All I care about is the data. A seemingly reputable professional data recovery company evaluated the drive, told me it was a "mechanical failure", said they could recover the data, and gave me an $1500.00 quote. One week later they told me something different; they said that the platters and the heads appear to be okay, and that the problem appears to be on the pcb and/or flash drive, and they did not know how to recover the data. They told me they consulted with Toshiba too. I asked them if they replaced the pcb board and they would not tell me, or answer any more questions. I have the drive back in my hands and am searching for options. I really believe my data is recoverable if the platters are okay, right?
Here is what I know for sure; the bios on the Sony VAIO Windows 8.1 machine, does correctly recognize the drive. However it does not boot, and is not accessible or recognized with the Windows 8.1 UEFI cmd prompt options. The drive is not encrypted. After putting the drive in an external enclosure, and connecting it to another Win8.1 machine, the drive starts up with no extreme sounding noises. It very softly clicks a few times as if the heads are searching, but then calms down, and continues to spin quietly. I have installed Data Rescue PC3 software which recognizes the drive and its attributes correctly but cannot read it or clone it. I have Partition Wizard mini-tool software which recognizes the drive correctly, but shows the disk as being unreadable.
This is what I am trying to do. I am looking for a donor drive on my own, with the same model, date, firmware, site, pcb number, hdd code.
Now here are my unknowns and I appreciate anyone's insight with these. If I change the pcb board myself, I still most likely need to transfer the firmware to the new board, though I may try it without doing so. I do not know where the firmware is stored, is there a rom chip or is it stored in the Flash drive. I am not certain if, with this model of SSHD, if it can be done with chip replacement or with software? If it is stored on the Flash drive how can that be accessed independent of the HHD portion? Does the Flash drive itself have to be harvested? But what if the flash drive is bad, how can the firmware ever be recovered? Any ideas anyone??? ... other than shooting myself in the head, just kidding. I believe this may be a common issue that often goes unsolved.

This is an update to my post.
I've figured out that the firmware on the MQ01ABD100H drive is stored on the main controller board, the the Marvell 88i9317-RA12 controller, on the pcb board.
There is a controller chip for the flash drive as well but everything I have read leads me to think the firmware is on the main controller chip. I have located a used drive with a pcb board that appears to be an exact match to my pcb board, with every number matching up. I ordered it and will be swapping boards sometime next week.
I am hoping and praying that this will work. If it doesn't at least I have a the donor drive to send along with my non-functioning drive to another data recovery company, who is a little more versed in "hybrid" drives. I am guessing that the previous company that I sent my drive to just could not track a donor drive.
I think I got lucky, cause I found one, myself, after looking for a week. It is being shipped to me now.
Any thoughts?

Recommend UK based data recovery specialist please?

Hi all,
My friend accidentally dropped his iBook and his hard drive no longer works. I've replaced the hard drive, but he has valuable data on the old hard drive, and he hasn't backed it up, and I was unable to recover the data myself. So he wants to send it to a data recovery specialist - can anyone recommend one in the UK that can recover data off an HFS+ formatted hard drive? He'd like a company that's reasonably priced, but aren't cowboys. If you've done business with them, how much did it cost?
Thanks very much for your time in advance!
Regards - Piers

I was recommended Datarecoverycorp (see their website)but they were bad news. Very costly and IMO a bit shady. When I visited they were OK but they kept themselves secret and were controlled from Florida.
I dealt with a Birmingham firm called Microforce, 0121440440 in Moseley. They had had trouble with DRC and were using someone else. But in the end, I just gave up.
But if you are stuck, try Amit at Microforce. He was honest.
Malc

Data Recovery software recommendations?

I want to try to recover any or all of data lost on my iMac in Fire Vault. Would you recommend Data Recovery II, Disk Warrior, Stellar Phoenix, or something else? Pros, Cons?
Thanks!

When I took my iMac to the Apple Genius he said there was a large chunk of data that was something other than the usual OS, software apps, etc. He thought it was the Lost Data but wasn't sure if it was just bits and pieces of the Fire Vault encrypted contents mashed together.
I have a Post Archive and Install folder containing a Previous System Folder. Within it is Previous System 1. I snooped around but found little to nothing in any file marked Start Up or User. Nothing on the Hard Drive either.
In my search, I noticed that there were no dates on any Folder or File between July 7, 2009 and August 17, 2009. Apparently, 07/07/09 is when something terrible happened and I couldn't log on to my iMac. (August 17th is the date I brought it in to the Apple Genius and he was able to open things up.)
As I searched I looked at anything with the date 07/07/09 and noticed 2 files sitting outside the Extensions folder within the "Previous System" Library folder: 1) Extensions.kextcache (340 KB Document) and 2) Extensions.mkext (8.6 MB Document).
I tried to open the 8.6 MB doc and got a "can't open/go to Recommended Applications" window. I chose Text Edit and the doc opened revealing a bunch of code or something which I can't decipher. I'm not sure if anyone could decipher it. I then cringed thinking that I may never be able to get back to the original (non-TextEdit) version of the file. Also worried that I may have messed up an important Extension file.
I checked my current System folder and the same two files are sitting outside the Extensions folder in the System Library. Unfortunately, that same 8.6 MB doc has also been changed to a TextEdit doc. I'm not sure how that happened since I only opened the doc I found in the "Previous System" folder in TextEdit. I thought the "Previous" folder was totally separate from my current System folder.
My questions:
What is a "Extensions.mkext" file? Is there an application that can open it?
Can I revert the Extensions.mkext (8.6 MB Document) back to it's original state?
Have a total messed up my computer again by changing the .mkext file to a TextEdit file?
8.6 MB seems to be quite a large chunk of something--might it be significant?
Would reading the TextEdit version reveal any important clues and who might be able to read it?
If I wrote down everything that has the date 07/07/09 on it would it reveal clues as to what happened and whether I could find the Lost data?
I'm afraid to do the Disk Utility procedure you described...not sure what would happen or if it might change whatever data might still be in there into something totally undecipherable.
Help!
Thanks for all of the time and thought you've put into my issue! I really appreciate it!
G

Data Recovery companies, UK - Any recommendations?

Hi everyone,
Again sorry if this topic has already been covered...
The HDD in my MacBook died a couple of weeks ago (since replaced with reinstalled Leopard - all fine now) - it was ticking at startup, and the file folder with the question mark ( ? ) on it upon boot. This just happened randomly one day, and the screen froze with the 'you must restart your computer' prompt. Then the white screen of death!
Took it to the local genius bar. The guy basically said it's had it and you need a new HDD - so did this. However, I did not back up much of the old hard drive and so, I wondered if anyone could recommend any good data recovery companies in the UK that may be able to retrieve the data? I'm hoping it won't cost more than around £200! The guy at the genius bar said these recovery co.s charge around £1 per gb. I had about 70gb of data on it (I know, lesson learnt about backing up, believe me!)
Thanks folks - any pointers would be great.

Can't help you with evaluating these companies as I've never had to use them. But, as you probably realize by now, the prices are not out of line.
I found some positive reviews for DriveSavers and I'm sure if you search for reviews for the others you'll find one or two at least.
I also found a photoshop blog that claimed it was a reseller of DriveSavers services and offered a coupon:
Receive An Exclusive 10% Discount
We have become an Authorized DriveSavers reseller, which means we can offer special discounts. Simply mention Discount Code DS1-32-30 and you'll instantly receive a 10% Discount on your invoiced recovery fee. You'll also be eligible for DriveSavers' exclusive No Attempt Fee – if data is not recoverable, there is no charge. DriveSavers will evaluate your unique situation, decide what course of action to take, and help relieve panic and stress that is common in data loss crises.
G4 933 mhz Quicksilver Mac OS X (10.4.8) Wacom Intuos 2 tablet; Epson 2400 Photo; HP Deskjet 6840; LaCie 80gb D2 FWDV

Need to find PowerPC Data Recovery Software

So, I was working one day inside my Power Mac G5 Quad by putting in some additional memory. Suddenly, my arm accidently pushes over my external hard drive with lots of my back up software. The drive falls to the carpeted floor. Next, I hooked it up to my mac to see if there was a problem with it. I found no problem other than all my programs were gone. The drive does post to the desktop and no clicking or bad hard drive noises come on. I then go to hook this up to my windows laptop and Windows chkdsk refuses to run, saying that the drive is not formatted.
Can someone recommend for me a good data recovery software, other than Prosoft Data Rescue 3? I have had nothing but problems with that software as when it gets to stage 3 of 3, it hangs at 71.93 percent and stays there.
I really want my data back as I also have a backup of my Gateway's windows image on there. I looked up a software called Boomerang Data Recovery, but they want like 140 dollars for a basic licence, and not to mention I heard bad things about that company such as, scamming people, no customer service, etc.
I am looking for something affordable, but with which can do the job.
Thanks.

Ive never run into any trouble with Data Rescue (granted Im still using 2.0), but it sounds like what BDAqua said. Its probably hit a bad spot on the drive and yes it will sit there reading and reading and reading until it can get around it.. Last time I had to recover some stuff due to a lovely power outage, it took a few hours to get everything off of my 500GB storage drive..
Id go with Diskwarrior for my 'second opinion'. DW is pretty good about it, and in the event it finds a problem, I like its reports alot better then Data Rescue. Data Rescue wont really wont tell you anything about the drive's problems other then it cant read data, but DW will let you know whats going on..
If you need a general diagnostic tool for the whole system, TechTool Pro also has some nice disc tests in it amongst all the other memory/cpu/etc tools..

Recommend a data recovery company?

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