Urgent help required

Bradders09

Bradders09

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Brad
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Hi all,

well my computer has finally crashed and I am now in the position of having to pay out £130 to pc world to recover my data to an external drive and do a total restore!

I have one question though, I'm happy that photos etc and documents will hapily transfer accross, but what about programmes? For example I have paint shop photo x2. Will they be able to transfer this on the the drive or will I need to re install?

I'm panicking a bit so would like some advice on how the process works and will everything transfer accross ok?

Any help or advice would much appreciated

cheers all
 
Tell me about it! They want 100 for the hard disc recovery and 30 for the restore! That's without the external drive too! I know it's robbery but they know how much you need your precious documents, photos in my case! Terrible really bit lets say I have learnt my lesson out of this one!!

Jason: it spools up windows but halfway through booting up in freezes, can't even get in via safe mode!
 
You could do it yourself, as it looks as though the data's still on the drive, just windows is corrupted.

You may be able to do a repair on Windows, but nobody ever creates the updated discs each time they add a service pack etc, so it's easier to go an alternate route.


Remove the HDD, then stick it in an external caddy
Put new HDD into the PC
Install windows, update it etc
Plug external HDD into the PC
It should be readable, and you can copy the data off
If it's not readable you need some recovery software. If it gets to this state, pop back and we'll point you in the right direction.

Alternatively, you could find someone local who'll probably do it for a couple of beers. I would, but it'd cost you a tank of fuel to get here.
 
What Jason says - doesn't sound like the hard drive is screwed all that badly, more likely Windows has become corrupted. Cheapest way to check would be either a) if you have a computer friendly mate, pop the drive in their PC and see if the data can be accessed or b) get an external USB caddy and do similar with another PC (such as the one you're using to post).

£130 is daylight robbery though, seeing as you clearly have some kind of internet access, search for some more local repair guys or something if it does come to that.
 
divine` said:
£130 is daylight robbery though, seeing as you clearly have some kind of internet access, search for some more local repair guys or something if it does come to that.
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I have to disagree. £130 is dirt cheap if you're getting a replacement hard disk, fitted, and software retrieved/installed/transferred. Throw in typical shop overheads and it's not excessive in the slightest. The reality is it's no different to getting your car serviced - it will always be more expensive at a main dealer...

The problem is there's many of us who could do it ourselves and know the true physical (cheaper) cost involved, but then we don't have to make a profit, do we?

Ultimately, what price do we value our data at? :shrug:
 
JasonRS said:
You could do it yourself, as it looks as though the data's still on the drive, just windows is corrupted.

You may be able to do a repair on Windows, but nobody ever creates the updated discs each time they add a service pack etc, so it's easier to go an alternate route.


Remove the HDD, then stick it in an external caddy
Put new HDD into the PC
Install windows, update it etc
Plug external HDD into the PC
It should be readable, and you can copy the data off
If it's not readable you need some recovery software. If it gets to this state, pop back and we'll point you in the right direction.

Alternatively, you could find someone local who'll probably do it for a couple of beers. I would, but it'd cost you a tank of fuel to get here.
Click to expand...


+1:thumbs::thumbs:
 
neil_g said:
but hes not.
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Yep, i reread his post about it not including the disk cost. But I still maintain that in the greater scheme of things, for a high st store, it's a price i'd expect to be charged...

Personally if I lived a lot closer to him i'd offer to have him bring it to me and i'd do it for the price of a pint, but sadly I don't...

There's a lot to be said for multiple backups and external drives... :)
 
Bradders09 said:
Tell me about it! They want 100 for the hard disc recovery and 30 for the restore! That's without the external drive too! I know it's robbery but they know how much you need your precious documents, photos in my case! Terrible really bit lets say I have learnt my lesson out of this one!!

Jason: it spools up windows but halfway through booting up in freezes, can't even get in via safe mode!
Click to expand...

Bradders where about in Dorset are you? I'm in the Bournemouth area

You can download a Bootable CD for free and I have a ext hard disk you can borrow so you can copy your data over??

Tim
 
£100 for hard disk recovery!! I do this for friends in exchange for a bottle of red :bonk:
 
if that's all it needs you can buy a sata & IDE usb gizmo for about £14 and do it yourself. But if it *does* need stripping down and platters removing you're looking at a hell of a lot more than £130
 
levihaynes said:
£100 for hard disk recovery!! I do this for friends in exchange for a bottle of red :bonk:
Click to expand...

So would I, but the point is when you have no idea how to do it you will pay whatever the data is worth to you, at the most convenient location.

Can't say this is any different than paying £100/hr at a main dealer garage or £50/hr at a back street garage, or parts only and doing it yourself for £0/hr :shrug:
 
Bill Roberts said:
if that's all it needs you can buy a sata & IDE usb gizmo for about £14 and do it yourself. But if it *does* need stripping down and platters removing you're looking at a hell of a lot more than £130
Click to expand...

If the hard disk needs stripping down and recovery carried out by a professional company it will cost over £1000, as that what I have just paid at work for a hard disk recovery at work.

PCWorld and Professional are two words that should not used in the same sentence.

Tim
 
Wouldn't trust PC World as far as I could throw them.

Went in to see if I could get SQL and the sales person basically said, and I quote "Ah thats a fantastic game mate, played it myself for many hours. I'll see if we have one in stock but you will have to buy extra memory to play it????"

Needless to say I walked out. :gag:
 
Bill Roberts said:
if that's all it needs you can buy a sata & IDE usb gizmo for about £14 and do it yourself. But if it *does* need stripping down and platters removing you're looking at a hell of a lot more than £130
Click to expand...

Precisely.

If it can just be bunged in a caddy you can do it yourself for £15 and a bit of reading up. If it can't, PC World won't be able to do jack **** anyway, so whichever way you look at it, PC World is a rip off.

There will be plenty of independant local repair outfits who will do the job for half the money I would expect if you really can't do it yourself.
 
my laptop crashed last month, i didnt back it up and i had tons of important stuff, PC world said the HD had come off the spindle, it was sent to a special dust-free lab, the data was recovered and it cost me the princely sum of.....£699
 
xendistar said:
If the hard disk needs stripping down and recovery carried out by a professional company it will cost over £1000, as that what I have just paid at work for a hard disk recovery at work.

Tim
Click to expand...

If you paid that much then maybe you should be spending your money elsewhere, on some proper infrastructure. No company should ever spend money on data recovery, Thats why you RAID. When a drive fails you lob it and just push in a new one.
 
I'm in Bournemouth and would be prepared to slave it into my PC and see if we could get the data off. Gotta be worth a go first. If you're close to Bournemouth that is.

Let me know mate.
 
chris_f said:
If you paid that much then maybe you should be spending your money elsewhere, on some proper infrastructure. No company should ever spend money on data recovery, Thats why you RAID. When a drive fails you lob it and just push in a new one.
Click to expand...

Chris I whole heartedly agree with you, but unfortunately I don't hold the purse strings to buy new infrastructure despite how much I ask. The hard disk (and PC) in question were due to be replaced 2 years ago as part of a new system but it has not happened yet. Add that to a failed backup (the PC simply copied relevant data files from the PC to a server for backing up) and the whole lot came tumbling down.

The PC was never meant to be doing what it was doing (it was 5+ years old). It is just a case of those in control can't see the sense of spending a few pounds now will save spending a lot of pounds when it goes pear shaped.

Tim
 
The irony here is that if we were discussing doing a wedding on the cheap or giving away photos for nothing there would be all hell breaking loose...
 
robrevens said:
The irony here is that if we were discussing doing a wedding on the cheap or giving away photos for nothing there would be all hell breaking loose...
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Hehe, I was thinking the same. What if we had some PC World employees here and you irksome amateurs were trying to steal their business! :P
 
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