Hoping someone here knows of a reputable company able to retrieve data from a PC hard drive.
unfortunately my puta decided to crash, and contains about 10,000 photos of rebuilds over the past 16 years.
Plus valuable contact details and customer history.
Most I have as back upon disc, but the last 6 months were not done ( yeah I know, don't remind me) Anyway if anyone can help I'd be most grateful.
It's quite possible that yout computer hard disc is mostly ok - depends on the "crash".
If the fault was due to the Motherboard/processor or powersupply, then it's odd-on that the disc is OK.
If it's a disk going dead, then it's often possible to connect the hard drive into another PC, and quickly copy off the files you want. (repeat as necessary!).
My 'puta man' says that he's tried recovery discs, but now the info seem on the disc is getting less, ie full folders were seen, now only some with no headings. we have tried fixing into another puta but to no avail. I feel that any more pobing might render the disc useless, hence the need for a pro recovery. I'm told that the hard drive is 'mechanically damaged' hence the issues, thanks for your replies though folks
Sounds like you need the services of someone like 'Ontrack'
I've heard good things about them. We use their software for secure destruction. (yeah, I know, the oppostie of what you want but it prooves the understand disks)
If its physcial damage it could either be the platters (sounds like) or the control board. Control boards are easy - you just swap them out with one from the same model disk. Platters require specialist care.
What does the disk sound like when its running?
If its a business thing I'd send it to ontrack and just swallow the cost. I believe these people have clean rooms and the faciity to remove and examine individual disk platters so recovery prospects are very good.
Jonathon - Check with your insurance company first. As a business you may be covered by a 'business interuption' clause. I had a similar disaster about 2 years ago. Hard drive crashed & burned (it actually caught fire due to a short circuit!).
It had a lot of client data on it & needed specialist recovery, at a cost of over £1,000. We were covered for the data loss & computer by our insurance policy.
Thanks guy's good info. I'll try both suggestions and see where we get.
The Hard drive is currently sitting in a box on my puta table at home, so I'm afraid its just the sound of 'silence'
Suprisingly I have had results with customers hard drives that are dead by putting them in the freezer overnight, I then have about 10 minutes to copy the disk before it dies again. This only works on dead disks not one like yours with bad sectors. I have a laptop and 2 computers and always leave the photos on my card until they have been copied to all three as I figure I would be really unlucky to lose all three hard drives.
I've succesfuly used a free program called Recuva to recover deleted data. I shouldn't think it will work in this instance, but a good back up program to have on your pc.
It's important to install this before you actually need to use it, otherwise installing a recovery program could overwrite the files you want to recover . If you have more than one drive then it's not an issue.
iddy
First things first, but not necessarily in that order.
"This is what I do for a day job" The PM simply says... "plumber" 
. If you have more than one drive then it's not an issue.