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

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Contact the nearest Apple store for a definitive answer. We are users like you and cannot provide you with an accurate answer.
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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.
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I sent a failed ext. FW drive (clicking sound, wouldn’t mount) to a fairly-well-known data recovery specialist that advertised PC and Mac formats. The drive contained numerous Mac-only files, including Sound Designer II audio files (.sd2), Final Cut Pro (.fcp), and Digital Performer files (native, no suffix), to name a few.
After said specialist started working on the drive, it became frighteningly apparent that they were not up to speed on Mac systems. To make a long story short, after a couple of weeks I received a hard drive formatted FAT32, and every Mac-only file showed up in Finder as a Unix Executable file.
My first thought was they were using Windows-based software and had corrupted all my Mac-only files beyond repair. Forging ahead and knowing nothing about scripts, I used a 3rd party program called Super Get Info and was able to change the Type and Author of the Digital Performer files, and got them to open. So far, so good. But changing the Type and Author of the .sd2 files didn’t yield the same results; Finder sees the type, size, etc. but no audio program (DP, Peak, Jam) will open them.
Thinking I was screwed, I opened another project in DP that contained audio files which were still recognized in Finder as Unix Executables, and they played! I have no idea why this works---no other program will open them independently---but it shows if I can get an app to recognize them, they are still valid files.
Is there a way to dig deeper, besides just changing the Type and Author, to essentially get back all the header(?) information that was originally there in the .sd2 files (before the "data recovery") so an audio program can see that these are indeed valid files and legit to operate on? Something in Developer Tools, 3rd party, etc.?
Thanks,
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G5 2.3gHz Dual Power Core Mac OS X (10.4.4) 2.5 GB RAM, multiple FW drives

Extern firewire drives often come formatted as FAT32 - so unless you reformatted it yourself that may have been the way it was. When Mactintosh files are saved to a FAT32 file system, the resource information is written to a file with a ._ added to the front of the file name. If you go to a terminal window and cd to your extern drive, "ls -A" will show if the resource information is there. For a file call "file.s2d", you should see a hidden file call "._file.s2d". Some utilites have trouble creating resource forks on FAT32 drives - so your utility may not be working. Try moving some of your files back to your main drive and correct the Creator and file type there - may be that will work.

Dead Drive: Data Recovery?

The hard drive on my MacBook died--my last back up was about 2 months ago (I know, not wise on my part.) I took the machine to the apple store today where they confirmed the drive was dead. I'm under apple care still so they will replace the drive. However, they said that they could not give me back my original drive to take to a data recovery specialist.
They said that if I wanted to do that, I would need to take the drive for data recovery before getting the hard drive replaced by apple or replace the hard drive at my own cost. I need a working machine quickly as it is my sole computer for work/persnal use (right now I am borrowing a super old PC laptop that is not adequate for work) so I can't wait to get my machine fixed until after I try to recovery my data. But, since I'm under apple care, I don't want to have to buy a drive myself just ot keep my old one, which I may or may not even be able to recover data from.
Given these options, I left my computer at the store this afternoon for them to replace the drive. But, now I am having second thoughts and wondering whether I should try to get my data back. They said it would be 3-5 days before they can replace the drive (which they will do on-site), so I think I could likely get the machine back before they replace the drive tomorrow.
My questions are: (1) does anyone know of a way to get the apple store to give me my original drive back after they replace the old one (e.g., talking to a manager, etc.)? I'm a life-long Mac user, but am honeslty a little surprised and annoyed that they have this policy, which puts people with dead drives in the position of either postponing repair or having to pay fo their own repair even when they are under apple care. It's especially annoying as I don't see the benefit to them of keeping a drive if it is truly dead and only potentially useful for the chance of recovering data.
(2) What would be my options for data recovery if I kept the drive? The data I will lose if I lose the drive (or if it can't be recovered) is moderately important (ie, would be very frustrating to lose but not devistating.) Given this, I don't know if I would even pay the $300 plus it would cost to go to a data recovery place. Is there software out there that is known to be good at data recovery that I could get for less (say $100 or less.) I'm hesitant to go back to the store and ask for my machine back if the only result is that I have to put off getting my drive replaced by a week only to spend $300 plus and possilbly not even get any of my data back.
Any thoughs, advice, suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I apologize for the long post, but am stumped about what to do (and still pretty upset that Apple is making this situation more difficult by iisting on keeping my original dead drive after a repair.)

adk97 wrote:
Thanks so much for the reply. I guess I can see why apple would want to keep the drive maybe to refurbish it, but still it seems odd they don't have an option to pay some fee to keep the old drive. Requiring people to do all data recovery efforts before getting a drive replaced through apple care, with no option to get the original drive back, seems to make already difficult data loss situations even tougher IMO.
If the drive has crashed, it's way beyond any economic sense to try and refurbish it. I would guess that Apple's bulk purchase price on a 5400RPM 160GB drive is probably somewhere in the $50 range. Besides that, I can find several places that sell 160GB for $75-90. When I said that it might cost upwards of $1000+ to recover data if the head has detached, that's because it would have to be taken apart and a new head attached in a "clean room" similar to wafer processing facilities. This wouldn't be the heavily automated procedure (i.e lower cost) used for most production units.
It's just standard operating procedure for the manufacturer/seller to keep warranty replaced parts in exchange for the repair. In many cases, they'll want it to perform failure analysis, especially if it's a warranty replacement from the drive manufacturer.
Even though data recovery costs a lot (and I may not ultimately do it), I am going to get the machine back and replace the dead drive on my own with a new larger one. My original drive was small (160 gigs) and it has been in the back of my mind to upgrade to a larger drive anyway, so after thinking about it, this seems like the best solution. (On that note, if anyone has suggestions for good/affordable internal drives for the MacBook in the 250-320 gig range, please don't hesitate to pass them along.)
Best Buy seems to have a 250GB 5400 RPM Hitachi Travelstar drive on sale this week. I don't know if it would be in stock in a store near you, but you could check.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8699492&type=product&id=1199494484 147
Good luck with the data recovery efforts. Let us know how it turns out.

Hard drive data recovery UK

Hello friends,
It seems that my iMac G5 hard drive has died! Upon boot, the grey screen appears, the hard drive clicks and eventually the question mark folder pops up.
Firstly, am I right in thinking it is well and truly dead? Upon disc start up, the HD is not read in the disk utility.
If this is indeed the case, can anyone recommend a reliable UK based data recovery firm? I have my most important files backed up but not things like photos and media etc you see!
Many thanks,
Sam

Hey Ian,
Most hard drive's when sent in for repair are not replaced with Fujitsu drives. The drives I see commonly used within Apple's notebook computers are Toshiba HD's.
You're best option would be to call technical support and ask an agent for sure what type of drive would be replacing your current iBook's HD (pending it needs service.) Don't buy another drive yet and have it installed by someone else. When you have some free time, call Apple's technical support line to clarify what manufacturer of the HD will be replacing your Fujitsu.
As far as the AppleCare question referring to a non-Apple certified tech installing the HD you may buy separately, the technical support line would also be able to answer this for you.
Hope this helps.

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.

Macbook - Dead Hard Drive? Data Recovery?

A friend has asked for my help - his Macbook (1st generation - about 4 years old) suddenly refuses to start but displays a grey screen, sometimes with a question mark. You can also (sometimes) hear a few clicks from the hard drive. I'm assuming the drive has died - is that most likely?
The machine will not start in target disc mode (my laptop cannot see it and there's no firewire icon on the screen) but it will start quite happily from an install DVD, Disk Warrior DVD (DW could not see the internal drive at all) and an external firewire drive. Can it be anything other than the internal drive itself - any other tests I can try?
Now, I have to whisper this bit - he has no backup! I'm comfortable with fitting a new drive for him but is there any way I can try to retrieve data other than a specialist company who are talking around £600.

The only other thing I would try is physically removing the drive from the Macbook and, if you have one, installing it in an external FW enclosure, connecting it to a Mac using a raw SATA cable, or using a (preferably read-only) SATA drive dock.
If that doesn't do the trick, I would say you've tried everything that a non-data recovery specialist should try, so at that point my professional advice for him would be to judge the value of what's on the drive, and, if appropriate, seek the help of the data specialists.
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My girlfriend's N95 8Gb came to something of a nasty end over the weekend. No screen, no keyboard, camera unit's out, but, with a battery the lights still come on. The question is whether we can recover anything from the internal 8Gb flash memory. Any thoughts as to whether anything's salvageable and/or how to go about it? Has anybody been in the same position and succeeded in recovering any data?
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The main problem I've got with mass storage mode is that with no screen nor keyboard I can't really select anything. I suspect when I connect the USB cable its probably waiting for me to select mass storage or PC Suite modes before it registers as a device on my PC. At the moment I therefore don't know for sure the connection's working. As I say the lights come on, so I'm hoping the main board is still in some sort of working condition. Guess I could see if the Nokia service centre could add a keyboard and screen??
Although costly I'd be quite happy to pay a data recovery specialist to get the images back, but I'm wondering how to even find such a specialist. I've searched google for a data recovery specialist in Singapore, but to no avail. They all seem to be fine with flash memory cards (as I am), but seem to baulk at an internal flash memory chip.

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thanks

Check out File Salvage
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Hard drive failure - options for data recovery and AppleCare coverage

I have been handed a relative's 12 month old MacBook Pro with a factory-installed 500GB hard drive which appears to have failed. When attempting to boot the MacBook I am met with the classic clicking and grating noise which I know is a tell-tale sign of hard drive failure. The drive will not boot and I am shown the question mark folder icon, indicating that the operating system cannot be found. Have booted into internet recovery mode, Disk Utility appears to have found no sign of the hard drive's existence and shows none of its partitions. I have attempted putting the MacBook into FW target-mode and mounting the disk from another laptop, but to no avail; while it will go into target mode the drive simply isn't visible. The SATA connection to the drive is definitely OK - I have tested with another 2.5 inch hard drive which showed up fine in Disk Utility and was bootable. Have run Apple Hardware Test/Diagnostics but this returned no errors. It seems like a pretty clear cut case of drive failure.
I put this all to the relative whose laptop this is and asked them whether the MacBook had been dropped recently, explaining to them that this is one of the likeliest causes for such sudden failure. Sheepishly they admitted that they had indeed dropped it, although not from too great a distance and onto a carpeted floor. Apparently in the days immediately after the shock the hard drive continued to boot but the system was very slow and beset by spinning beech ball hangups. It is only in the last few days that the hard drive has become completely unbootable, and seemingly unreachable.
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Firstly, is there any possibility of recovering data from this drive without going to a data recovery specialist? The user did have backups of most important data, but some recently imported photos were not backed up. Is it any use me trying any third-party data recovery software utilities, bearing in mind that I can't even mount the drive in target mode?
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1, Data recovery software is your only alternative if there is no backup. It may or may not be able to revoker anything from that hard drive. If it does then the only other choice is to go to a data recovery service. If have to go that route expect to pay for it, like $$$$.
2, Yes. They will at least tell him what the problem is and the cost if any to fix. There is a good chance they will fix it for nothing and only charge for data recovery if they can do it.

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

Data Recovery Expert Needed

Do you know any experts on data recovery on a MacBook Pro?
Two catastrophic things happened:
- A user's FileVault encrypted .spareimage completely went away. I believe that there is some kind of major drive failure corruption that occurred.
- The user's Mobile Account was manually sync'd every day before she would go home. But unfortunately everything except for her /Library folder was getting sync'd with the Snow Leopard Server (also a bizarre misfortune).
Thus, she has lost all of her Sent mail and other local email folders that only resided on her laptop.
I can't even boot into the laptop anymore. We tried Firewire initially which showed an empty user folder...no .sparseimage to speak of in the /Users/username folder.
So I'm looking for a data recovery specialist that may be able to locate and resurrect the missing .sparseimage FileVault file. It's a longshot but would be worth it if successful.
Thanks!

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2631

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?
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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

Recommend UK based data recovery specialist please?

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