SUMMARY:Recovering data from a bad hard drive?

Thanks to all who replied.
We were unable to get any data off the disk and did not want to bother
sending it somewhere. I think Justin
sums it up well.

Robert,

>system back up. Does anyone know a way to recover data from a bad disk?
>There is some data from the previous few days that was not backed up and I
>would like to recover.

I'm impressed that the company you spoke to think that they can do the
recovery
remotely, however I'd question how they will do it in your case.

If format can't see the drive then (excluding problems/bugs in /dev) it's
because the OS can't see the drive; if the OS won't recognise the drive
then I
don't see how they or you are going to read any data from the drive....!

Lets say that the failure with your drive is not a mechanical failure, but
in
fact the drive electronics have failed - maybe there's a dry joint on one
of the
components or maybe it's unable to talk down the (SCSI?) bus because of a
component failure. No clever software will fix this, you'd need a proper
data
recovery lab to strip the drive down and read the data off using
replacement/repaired electronics.....

regards,
Justin