Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> down and searching the yellow pages for data recovery services.

Back when I was a medical tech, we lost a hard drive with patient data on it. I ran a chkdsk with no luck, and out of ideas, called a data recovery company. They stated it was $3-5k to attempt to recover, and asked if we'd done anything to the drive. "Just a chkdsk, nothing else". The guy on the other end of the phone was genuinely annoyed by this. "I wish you people wouldn't do that" delivered with that tone. Yes, this guy's position was that if you ever have a disk problem, your first port of call is to drop $3k+ at a data recovery place, don't even attempt to do some preliminary checking.




I can see his point though. From his point of view, by the time the disks arrive on his desk anything that tried to repair the damage has likely made it worse and hence his job that much harder. But of course $3-5k is sufficient money that most companies will make the first attempt themselves, especially since the alternative does not make any guarantees and will cost money either way.


I've had to do some data recovery during the course of my personal life. If the data is valuable, the #1 rule is "always run a dd backup to another device first" IMO. Then you can play around on a device that you know isn't on the brink of failing.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: