Help. Platter full of fingerprints, is there hope?

[pclab]

I'm curious too :mrgreen:

 

[Jared]

I'm not going to "name drop" here, but here's a video I bet the OP really wishes he'd seen before:

[bbvideo=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31rsjemi2Sg[/bbvideo]

 

[w.simon]

Thanks for the information, now i know who is "You-Know-Who"

 

[Imadeamistake]

Received back the hard drive. Maybe it's never been opened although on the phone I was told that the fingerprints were in the process of being cleaned, that luckily the plates were not damaged, and that the data could be saved.
I certainly don't want to open it again and check if it's in the same conditions it was sent or worse.
On monday I will call Sean and send it to him.
I know that platters with contamination (full of fingerprints) like mine, are the hardest to work with, but there is still a chance of recovery, right? Can I still hope?
Please explain, do fingerprints and dust remove data, or they make it difficult to read data?

Also, as in the initial post, what do you think of the first guy I brought my hard drive to? As soon as he saw it (it was already open, with the platter uncovered and full of fingerprints, although I put it in a closed plastic envelope), he told me immediately that there was no chance, and that I could throw it in the bin.
Then he took a cotton bud and tried to clean the fingerprints. He stopped after two seconds (literally), saying that it was even worse.

 

[slingshot]

Either way, just tell them that you found a backup and would like to cancel your ticket and get your drive back.

This is good advice, take the advice !

I'm also curious as to who this company is :?:

 

[Imadeamistake]

Unfortunately Sean got back to me and said that the hard drive was unrecoverable.
Even though he cleaned the platter and felt the situation was pretty good, he said that he used two donor drives for replacement heads and each time the new heads were destroyed almost instantly by the damaged media.
Do you think it's really over? Do you think there might be somebody in the world that is a genius and works on impossible cases?
Please let me know.

 

[pclab]

If he says it's not possible, I don't see a way that other guy can help.

 

[slingshot]

If Sean couldn't do it then its highly likely it cant be done, however, there are extra factors to consider in him coming to that conclusion, mainly time vs money. With several other cases to work on, each with their own tariff and time slots, its sometimes just uneconomical to thrash away at a drive from hell for standard pricing (+ a bit extra). Hence, unrecoverable!

I think the question you need to be asking yourself is this, how much am I prepared to pay ?

You're easily in 4 figures territory now, so unless you're OK with that, I would just accept your losses and move on.

 

[Imadeamistake]

If Sean couldn't do it then its highly likely it cant be done, however, there are extra factors to consider in him coming to that conclusion, mainly time vs money. With several other cases to work on, each with their own tariff and time slots, its sometimes just uneconomical to thrash away at a drive from hell for standard pricing (+ a bit extra). Hence, unrecoverable!

I think the question you need to be asking yourself is this, how much am I prepared to pay ?

You're easily in 4 figures territory now, so unless you're OK with that, I would just accept your losses and move on.

I would be prepared to pay if I can get the data back. If it's 4 figures and no guarantee, then no.

 

[pclab]

Unfortunately that is why we say that is not recoverable (for the prices that the "ordinary" client wants to pay).

We cannot be spending 2, 3 or more donors + time, for the same price of a case that only needs 1 donor and getting 20% or 30% of the data (or maybe nothing)...