Howard LEIGH writes:
Sounds a serious issue. Perhaps the best way forward will be to buy bare
drives and install them into a suitable case. I upgraded my old macbook
last
summer and stuck a 500 GB drive in it. The old 160 GB drive has made a
splendid little portable unit!
That has been what I personally have been doing since the days of parallel
externals - buying cheap cases and bare drives to go in them. My last few
were teeny ZIF interface HDD's and a small 2.5" SATA and all the cases were
ebay chinese cheapies. I might have felt like a cheapskate when I saw other
peoples name-branded slick cases, but I feel a whole lot better now knowing
what is inside those things!
Interestingly I've seen a drop off in people willing to pay me to recover
their data, which is probably why I haven't encountered this drive style
before. The last job was an architect who needed some plans off a couple of
encrypted floppies that none of his floppy drives could read (superdrive to
the rescue! - suck on that Iomega Zip..) and a few photographers with wiped
or formatted cards. In all though, even though I charge FAR less than the
big data recovery firms, of late, people still seem happier to accept their
data as gone than put their hand in their pocket to get it back. I guess
it's part of the 'ease of use' mentality .. easy come, easy gone.
Years back they looked at the $300 they spent on the 4Gb hard drive and
figured data recovery was worth it, now a $100 1 Tb hard drive goes belly
up, they weigh the cost of recovery against a new drive and just seem to
figure it's not worth the cost. Even businesses - they lose their data they
just seem to shrug and tell their customers they had a data failure. And
people seem to forgive this (as many more people have experienced this so
they're more understanding). I've even had a few people who when I've told
them I'll check their drive for free, determine the problem and discuss
their recovery options have said things along the line of 'eh, can't be
bothered, I'll just get a new drive next time I'm at the store'.
I guess ther data is seen ephemeral and the drive is where they perceive the
value lies.
Either way, this was really just a heads up to PF members that some of the
new drives out there are built with this new style of interface and they're
a *lot* less salvageable in the event of a problem than other more
standard drives.
I'm waiting to hear back from this customer as to whether he's prepared to
pay the $80 for a sacrificial drive to let me examine the failed drive.
We'll see..
k
