Call for help

[Ares de Borg]

Hi friends,

I'm in serious trouble. One of my hard disks failed today. The guy at the PC store told me that the board on top of the disk is damaged but the data should be okay. What I need now is an identical HDD to exchange the board and recover the data.

The problem is to get one of those. They`re no more for sale (HDD is from 2005).

I need a Western Digital Caviar SE 200 GB
DCM-Number: DSCACTJAH

If anybody of you has got one of those or knows anybody who has one or sells them, I'd be grateful.

The data to recover includes all my university work (last backup was 10 weeks ago), lots of private photography (holidays, family etc) and all of my photoshop files for my civ terrain!

Thank you for reading.

 

[Keroro]

Ares, you may be in luck. There seems to be one on ebay for one pound. I don't know about the DCM number though.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2-GB-Western-Digital-Caviar-IDE-hard-disk-s_W0QQitemZ280110531061QQihZ018QQcategoryZ16178QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

The auction is only open for another 11 hours, though the item doesn't have any bids so far, so you might be able to contact the seller and arrange a deal.

 

[Ares de Borg]

Thank you Kerero, but I need a 200 GB HDD, not 2 GB.

Thank you for your help.

 

[Keroro]

Ah, what's a few decimal points between friends? Sorry for getting your hopes up. I thought that was a bit cheap. I'll keep my eyes open and put some feelers out on your behalf.

 

[utahjazz7]

I looked through Amazon.com and there's a hard drive that sounds like it might be what you're after. The description says that the item was first available in July of 2005.

Should it be the right one, there is a drawback. It's only available through the Amazon.com marketplace though, not from Amazon.com itself. And, it seems like shipping is only available in the U.S.A. But, I'm coming to Germany for the summer on May 15th. If it got to me on time, I would be more than willing to bring it with me and then send it to you; you'd just have to trust me to do that.

Here's a link for you to check out, if you want to.

Amazon.com

 

[JSnider]

Another site to look at is spartantech.com .. has 2 diff WD 200GB avail, not sure if they are what you are looking for as may be later models. most sites are selling only the 250 and 320 right now.

 

[Blue Monkey]

As a last ditch solution have you considered sending the drive to a data recovery service. I know they're expensive, but sounds like you've got a lot of work on there (2 1/2 months of university work!).

 

[Ozymandias]

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=38

-Oz

 

[Ares de Borg]

Alright people, many many thanks for your help.

The past few days were quite horrible, I had to drive around a lot, spent too much money and tried to get things done.

After all hope seemed to be lost (2 exchange boards didn't work) I was able to get my hands on a older HDD with the same production day as mine. Now the HDD runs, but the data needs to be recovered.

The first recovery run took nearly 20 hours, then stopped. The second run is proceeding as we speak.

Now everything is in the hands of my PC specialist. I can just wait, hope & pray.

THANK YOU all for your kind words and help.

 

[Plotinus]

Good luck, Ares. Hope it all works out.

 

[Keroro]

Yes, good luck. I can't quite imagine how frustrating it must be. [sets HD to backup more often] Hope you get everything back in one piece.

 

[utahjazz7]

I hope everything works out well and your data is recovered. I lost everything when my hard drive went out last year.

 

[Yoda Power]

I can't help you, but you have my best wishes. I know how much it suck to loose your harddrive.