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Data Recovery from Jaz Disks
mach-5 writes "I recently had an Iomega Jaz disk fragged by the drive (the data is corrupt from simply using the disk in another drive). I know that I can easily get a free (beer) replacement from Iomega, but what I really want is my data back, which is far from free. This is a little unfair considering their drive corrupted my disk. Has anyone had any success in having their data recovered by a drive company. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with this particular company?"
I had dozens of bad hard drives over the last 10 years, but never heard about free data recovery. I think by using the hard drive, you accept the risk it might go bad and be replaced with a blank one. The same is probably true for any media (tape, jaz, floppy, zip)... But then, IANAL...
If your data is that important, make backups (i.e. more than one)
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
I'd take the drive and be grateful it was offered. Most companies wouldn't do that much for you.
If the data was that important, you should have been backing up. Maybe that sounds trite, but it's true. You've learned a leason. I hope you can rebuild/replace the data that was lost.
GRC makes a very nice piece of software called Spinrite. I have used this in the past to recover tonns of data. I have not used the newer versions but if it anywhere near as good as the old version it would be worth a try.
-- Tim
TKrabec Pahh
I've found this to be an effective option when dealing with Iomega. Be sure to follow these instructions exactly.
On a level surface, place your feet, about shoulder width apart. Place the Jaz disk on the floor between your feet.
With your hands on your knees, slowly bend over. SLOWLY! Ok.
When you get your head as far as it can go between your legs, pucker up and kiss your own ass.
After you're done, look at the Jaz disk, gurgle up a bit of phlegm, and spit on it. Repeat as often as necessary.
No sig is worth reading.
Well, mach-5, I hate to add another negative voice to the chorus, but yeah, the disk is fsck'ed. If you can't fsck it with the standard commercial recovery packages, you are also fsck'ed. But the first thing you hear when you get a warm body on the other end of the Iomega Hotline will be, "we'll replace the media, but we can't be responsible for the data."
And as unkind as it may sound, they're right. Check your documentation, it says it right there. the drive can grind it's happy little heads through your magnum opus, negating all those thousands of hours of grad-school, and all you're going to get out of Iomega is a new disk. That's the way it is, and that's the way it always will be. Every piece of mass-storage equipment in my house and office has a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) which is a fanciful metric that tells you how often you can expect said piece of HW to go tits-up and die. Iomega knows that their storage solutions have these limitations, and they inform you of this up front, with that MTBF rating.
Jaz drives are great for backups, but you can't expect them to last forever, and you're a fool if you think that Murphy's law isn't hiding around the corner looking to fubar your day.
You cannot expect Iomega to take responsibility for every cartridge they produce, no matter what conditions it is exposed to. It is not Iomega's job to ensure that they can recovery everything that is every put onto those spinning platters. I do not know of any company that has that kind of a guarantee, and I'd be very wary of a company that promised it could. Entropy will always increase, and 3am hardware failure can deliver more entropy than you can shake a stick at.
None of this does you any good in your present position, but just like any other emotional tradgedy, there are steps and goals to help you with coping. Don't hate Iomega, how old was that disk, how much use had it gotten? Was it something you re-wrote over every evening to transfer stuff from work to home? Unless it died right out of the box (right on the leading edge of the bathtub-curve) you got at least some measure of use out of it, and Iomega succeded in delivering a product that worked. I know people who have used the same Jaz cartridge for 5+ years, millions of cycles, without incident. Others have had bad media that went south in a week.
Iomega is not to blame for the statistical blip that you were on the receiving end of, and there is almost nothing they can do for you at this point. I'm not trying to push responsibility onto you for the failure, but you can't really blame Iomega, and they are not going to eat the recovery cost for the data.
And that brings us to the next step, recovering your data. This is something you're going to have to pay for out of your own pocket, and you probably want to analyize your options before you start writing checks. There are several companies that do drive recovery and have a 'free-evaluation' process. You ship them the drive, they tell you how much cash to cough up to recovery it. This gives you an option to decided if all that pr0n is really worth $4000 of your student loan money. I would suggest talking to someplace like Accurate Data Recovery, Flat Rate Data Recovery or some other place that isn't liable to hand you a $3000+ bill for pulling the data. note: I have no experience or interest in these companys. YMMV, do your homework, google.com is your friend.
All else fails, rip off the housing, drill a hole in the platter and nail it to the wall in your data center. This may act as a gruesome deterent to the other equipment in the room and keep them in line. Good luck.
"If I wanted your input on my pet project, I'd stick my hand up your ass and use you like a sock-puppet." - Muse
Everyone who I've ever heard from who has used DriveSavers has been delighted. Their Hall of Fame is pretty fun too.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Seriously. Consider this a lesson. If you do it again, we'll have to smack you around.
If it's important to you, back it up. It doesn't matter how you do it: a rdist to another machine every night, a stack of floppies, CD-Rs, another Jaz disk, printouts, or getting it included in the next Information Society single as 150 baud line noise. The three key words: back it up. You're fully free to blame whoever you want, but, if it was important, it was up to you, and nobody else, to make sure it didn't get destroyed.
Life sucks. Next time, back it up.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
1) Dont' use scandisk. It'll destroy.
;-)
2) Don't use defrag. Same problem.
3) http://grc.com/intro.htm
Try using spinrite - there's a chance the data can be recovered with that.
Failing that, get Dolly - it's used to clone partitions. Clone it to a HD and then start looking at repair options.
It's possible, its time intensive, and it's a royal pain- I hope you know what is on that disk because, otherwise, it's goign to be nearly impossible.
Oh, and remember to have fun