Need recommendations on data recovery service provider in Philadelphia area

self

[calvin sun]

I am getting the dreaded "operating system not found." I have backup, but still would like a recommendation for a data recovery service, if anyone has used one. Thanks.

[MineralMan]

Try a search on Google for "data recovery philadelphia." I did and there were lots of hits. Google is your friend.

[Reeses]

Do you have another PC you can borrow? You can attach your disk drive as a slave on the spare connector on the ribbon cable, usually the middle one. You may need to change the jumper settings per the diagram on the slave drive. Next boot up. You should be able to access your old files. If the spare PC has the exact same operating system you may be able to copy missing operating system files to your hurt drive and have it return to normal. If you don't have a spare PC, you can buy a new disk drive and install an operating system on it before attaching your old drive. Disk drives are cheap these days. You could try to fix the problem by booting from a floppy or CD though that is probably more work and more risk.

[Da Du]

Before you go to all that trouble - why don't you try booting the system with a diskette. It sounds like one of the IO system files are missing. (Or, possibly, you have a floppy in the A drive and it won't let it boot.)
Da Du

[Reeses]

True! It could be a floppy causing the trouble. :-)

If Calvin Sun has a floppy or CD that boots available then that is the least amount of work. If none is available then it becomes a lot more trouble. It usually takes 10 minutes to attach the disk as a slave on a spare PC though. I have found it to be the least hassle option many times.

[wildbill]

I use an online back-up system called 'back-up.com' which has been very good and the price is excellent. THe program automatically backs-up your selected data files every night at your chosen hour to an off-site storage facility. You set it and forget it.

I've had to download my backed up files twice after hard drive crashes without any sweat at all. The prices are reasonable.

[Who dat?]

Data recovery is an expensive process. At least it was the one time we had it done after a minor head crash.

They took your drive and started hunting around for other drives identical to it that they could cannibalize for parts. Then they took it apart in their clean room and removed the heads and platters.

They said it may be impossible for different heads (even though they’re identical) to be aligned properly so you’d typically have to have two or more drives to use parts from.

IIRC, it was something like $3,500 up front with no guarantee that anything could be recovered. Then it went up from there depending how long it took and how much data was recovered. In our case the tab ended up being about $7,200.

But that was in San Jose during the boom-boom “easy money” times so it may be cheaper now.

Backups are indeed your friend. ;-)

[calvin sun]

FOrtunately, I have a backup CD that has MOST of what I need. I still want to get one "large" file (ie greater than 1.4 MB.

I have created a Win98 boot disk. When I insert it, it brings me to a command line interface ("C:>").

I would like to copy this file off my problem PC. But it's too large for one diskette. Also, I PKWARE no longer supplies PKZIP for DOS. What other alternatives do I have? Thanks.

[Reeses]

The Win98 boot disk has a special program on it that may restore your operating system. I can't remember the command exactly, it is something like "sys c:". If you see a file like that on the boot diskette using a "dir" type it as "sys /help" or some junk and see if it explains the parameters. Also, try microsoft's website. It takes a lot of researching but you may find the info there. There may be a readme on the diskette or Win98 CD that explains it. It's worth a try. It worked for me once.

There are several tiny file splitter programs you can download for free off the internet, used for copying parts of files to small diskettes. I seem to remember one from IBM. Try to find one using google. If you can't I'll give it a shot for you later today.