If, and when, I ever get rid of this g_d, mthr-fkn, miserable son-of-a-female-canid, deadly existential experience of a final hurdle for a PhD, I am going Linux. I began the thing on a Unix platform, have moved it to Windoz, and only my SAS data sets (HA!) were able to make the transition. Go figure. Microsh*t will be part of my past. It ain't in my future.

Thanks again, Jim, $400 for the entire recovery would be very near the cheapest price I've gotten all day. Arne, I have a cable problem between me and the secondary drive solution. Wabanatta_3, I've done linux, but mostly I did Ultrix (microvax stuff, seems like distant past). bystander: Keep on keepin on, the night is always darkest just before...your oral defense. Thanks for the SF based company ref. I will also look at Seagate. My desire for a local company is that I could drive over there with the drive instead of mailing it and praying.

It's too bad it happened now, I had several charts and lists and pointers to all the FISA, MCA and other stuff on there that detailed all the changes and abuses.

"As a last ditch effort before spending big dollars for a professional recovery service, pull the drive out and put it in the freezer for a few hours. If it is a hear related issue causing the heads to be stuck freezing the drive could allow for a small time frame whenever you'd be able to then copy the data off it.

I have heard this works sometimes. I had a Maxtor (more than a coincidence I hear) die, and it did NOT work for me. Someone I trust says he has witnessed it working, but that still comes across as an urban legend so "your mileage may vary". It is cost free to try it. Just be ready with a reliable drive when you spin-up the cold drive."

This is *not* an urban legend but rather a tried and true method for un-sticking the heads on a drive going south. Is it 100% reliable? Of course not. Nothing is.

Also, a rubber mallet can be used to smack the top of the drive. But this needs to be done by someone who has experience, as well as on a drive that the user doesn't really care all that much about.

Don't forget, drives are still basically mechanical beasts. More moving parts are in a drive than the rest of the system combined.

As for Arne's external drive, I seriously doubt there is a different format on the drive. Otherwise, Windows would not be able to read from it. What I would guess at is that the electronics on the drive (it may be a USB interface but it is still at heart an IDE device) are not typical for your standard IDE port.

There are two formats on a drive - a low-level and a high level. Low level formatting is done these days at the factory since it isn't necessary to "introduce" the drive to the computer by using debug and low-level formatting it.

High level formats as we all know are the old FAT/FAT16/FAT32/NTFS/HPFS/etc that the respective operating-systems (drivers) can understand and work with.

HTH

but my experience would sound like one. I am fully convinced it works sometimes. I did not mean to cast doubt on the cold-drive possibility, but I can see why you took it that way. I was making the point that my experience was somewhat "friend of a friend".

GG:

He is, in essence, demanding immunity for vast numbers of his former partners, clients, associates and scores of business interests in which he had, if not still has, a substantial stake.

Don't government ethics regulations prohibit this very thing? Didn't he have to file a Statement of Economic Interest? In fact, shouldn't any elected official who received campaign contributions from one of the companies shielded by this legislation recuse themselves? There's a manual, and a video, and a Committee for goodness sake!

http://ethics.senate.gov/

It would be nice if they had some actual ethics enforcement. Their duty is to the public interest, of course, but you'd think the Democrats would also have their own self-interests in mind. I mean, what if it turns out there was just a tiny bit of, say, political spying going on by their arch-nemeses? Don't they want recourse against the companies that facilitated it?

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound so strident about it. Just sometimes people forget that computers aren't magic boxes, that there's actual moving parts involved, and cables with connectors that work themselves loose.

I can't tell you how many systems I fixed by simply disconnecting, cleaning, then re-seating all the cabling in the box. It's kind of pathetic. A 50 cent cable gets used in a $1000 piece of hardware holding untold valuable information. Now they do sell much better cabling, but of course most people think you're crazy when you suggest it.

And FTR I run a super-set of an old IBM operating-system, OS/2, that goes by the name of eComStation. While I like Linux, it's only to a point. There's too many fingers in the pie and everyone is trying to sort-of kind-of re-create the windows experience. IMHO some group needs to sit down with some professional software/interface designers and work out the kinks in KDE and Gnome and come up with a true set of UI standards, based on the actual strengths of Linux. Rather than adding all the bullshit eye-candy so Linux can be compared to Vista.

:-)

I found this data recovery svc in San Jose. Their website claims they will beat any competitor price and disc recovery runs around 300.00.

http://www.drtgroup.net/contact.html

"I found this data recovery svc in San Jose. Their website claims they will beat any competitor price and disc recovery runs around 300.00"

Actually the cost *starts* at $300 and goes up from there. For $300 you probably get your basic software fix for erased data, etc. The more the hardware has to actually be rebuilt or the data manually recovered the more expensive it is going to be.

The last time I had to do this it cost $1200 to recover from an asshole partner in the firm, who against all IT regulations and warnings decided to keep 300 megs of data files within his Windows profile structure. One day a junior System Admin went up to correct a problem and deleted his profile then recreated it. By the time the partner discovered this and freaked out much of it had been overwritten.

It was nightmare of epic proportions. Worst of it was the poor kid got called on the carpet for it. Even though we trained all our people that *all* files, whether program or data on the local drive(s) were fair game for us to trash if necessary, that everything of any importance was kept on the server farm.