swarb.co.uk

Got my laptop back, bust, broken, minus one hard drive other side claim it was a faulty disk drive, our IT expert feels the hard drive is shot because it has stood for 20 months. I have got to find a new hard drive to see if our personal and work related data can be retrieved from the images so you can probably see why I am not a happy bunny .

The puter worked before it went to them so I feel that they are to blame for this. I had been trying to get the laptop back since March 09 and tbh, they had no need to hang onto it since Oct 08 as both parties had images of it so can I claim for the damage they have caused? bear in mind here I may not be able to retrieve data that no money could ever replace The search order states that the clmt shall be laible for any electronic equipment/data that is damaged or destroyed.

I would ask for payment for both a new drive and a proper recovery attempt of its contents, of of the image they took.

It is hardly as if the drive will have had much use. In principle, they identify its size, turn it on without running anything on it, and take two copies.

Hard drives are nor expensive, and they should have an image.

Given the court order they shouldn't even think twice.

What application was used to make the image? also have you any idea what the format is - ie ISO .bak etc sometimes you dont have to restore a full image to restore data, only the files you choose/need.

Also to restore a broken drive all you need is another drives thats identical (same model), then transfer/swap the part/s that are faulty. Nowadays most drives fail due to the electrical circuit and thats a simple board replacement. The only way drives are completely useless is if the disk (metal) is broken hardly likely or that its been hit by an electrical current, cleaning it and potentially blowing its electrics - this used to happen sometimes in some scanners - not for a long time.

drives can be left unused for years, 10 years plus but reaslly no time scale, I Know I have plenty in the garage in computers that if I switched on now, would work just as they did when I put them there,

I've had the data recovered from 2 different 250 MB hard drives twice. Cost me about £25 a time. Unless the hard drive has broken up mechanically inside, the data should be recoverable via a computer shop which offers such a facility.

Frank - You don't even need an identical drive to the buggered one.

A 500 MB internal hard drive costs about 35 quid nowadays.

And what chopper suggests will be cheaper than a Court application; and not create an unnecessary sideshow to your litigation.

I know, but then if you have an identical one you are guaranteed to have ALL the parts you need. BUt in this case there is an image of some sort or other - its a case of what created the image, this could be restored onto a partitian on any drive thats large enough so long as its not the boot/root partition. But sometimes its just easier to restore the files you want and not the whole damn lot of it.

The real expense is in re-establishing the operating system and all the things which go with a hard drive.

Good latter point there, fh.

The poor lass has more than enough shit going on without getting unnecessarily involved in any more.

If its a Symantic Ghost Image then it could well restore and be bootable, depends on the type of image made. Ghost is what is normally used by IT admin staff to create images, although nowadays with deployment software we do it over the network rather than from disk CD or DVD. However if it is you will need a HDD hard drive thats the same to guarantee success, maybe a larger one of the same model family will work - but I would NEVER guarantee without trying. Thats why I suggested a restore onto an extended partition, then you dont have to worry

Focusing on the practical aspects for a moment and not wishing to question the technical abilities of the Swarbies or your IT expert, but it is an extremely easy job to connect a laptop drive to another computer as an external USB drive for approximately £25 you can buy the requisite parts.

If you have a maplin or similar near you, remove the hard disk from the compute enclosure and take it to maplin and ask for a USB drive enclosure, depending on the type of disk it is most likely to be one of these:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=44932

but they will be able to look at your disk and work out which one it is.

You then connect the drive to the enclosure (if you fluttter your eyes and the shop is quiet they may do this for you) and plug the enclosure in to the USB port of another computer. The disk will then mount like any USB device and you should be able to poke around the disk and copy the files. If of course the data has been damaged, then you will need some recovery tools, but for 25 quid its probably worth having a go.

Personally I don't buy that the disk is shot, its far more likely to be other components in the laptop, like the mother board, or bios, because these are normally powered by a li-ion cell which will have gone flat.

If you find that the disk is sound you then have a handy external disk for 25 quid.

It wasn't as simple as that. The IT Experts could see the files on the hard drive but it just wouldn't work in deleting certain folders/files leaving us with our personal/work data so I had to make a decision late Thursday night so, I agreed that the hard drive could be completely wiped and removed as our IT Expert said that he could retrieve hopefully, our stuff from his images. The problem with the images is that there was a lot of bad sectors on the laptop apparently when imaged so not sure these will be retrievable as no-one can see what was on the bad sectors. having looked at the files, I can already see certain things are missing.

OH has been out to find a new hard drive but no luck, it is an exceptionally old laptop so will see if our IT expert can get one as my laptop does not have a hard drive at all at the moment.

I am just really peeved that once again, we are having to pay for something that they did not need to keep for soooo long

As dls has said, the systems are going to be a nightmare and certain old packages that I had on there I cannot get back either

So, a part from this laptop that is now failing due to overloaded litigation case, old laptop in need of fixing, the clmt has, in my mind broken both of them and possibly lost me data that it so personal to me, and personal items we have had to sell, I am gutted and full of hatred Don't tell me to forgive MC, I just cant and tbh, I never thought I could ever have so much hatred in me until now

I have some - more than a little - understanding how where you're coming from and how you feel, BoJangles, believe me.

Take care. Try and relieve the situation by enjoying your little grandchild growing up.