Drive recovery?

[logansrogue]

Hey everyone.

Do any of you know any good drive recovery services in Perth? It's just that a drive from my old PC in my room has totally shat itself. It's a WD Caviar Enhanced IDE HD (WD400). 40GB, apparently. I've tried sticking it into my tower to see if it'll work, and it won't. I think it's actually buggered in some horrible way, so the data on it needs saving. There are some very important songs on there that I absolutely *must* get back, it'll be a heartbreak of I don't. Gorgeous recording of my songs that you dudes haven't heard yet.

I've tried recording music on my laptop. Ugh. It doesn't have a very good soundcard, so it kind of starts freaking out if it's recording to another audio track - as in ONE audio track!! Fucking useless. I don't know what I'm going to do, short of begging my brother to let me use his brand new iMac, but I know nothing of Garage Band, which is all he has on there presently. I'd love to learn how to use Reason, though. Is it very hard?

Anyway. My music is all at a bit of a stand-still at the moment, which is quite frustrating cause I thought I could get it going again. I'm thinking of recording "To Sir, With Love", but changing the lyrics so it refers to the Doctor. You know, To Ten, with love. Just as a goodbye to Ten cause... *sniff* Oh man.

Comments

[starfyre01.livejournal.com]

I really don't know what the hell is going on with my mind this morning, but when I read It's just that a drive from my old PC in my room has totally shat itself, I had this insane/weird/kooky image of a small pile o'poop sitting next to the hard drive and it has since set me off in this weird spate of inappropriate silent giggles ever since.

Maybe I've had too many cups of coffee at this point, or my mind is just freaking out on me from only having 2 hours of sleep. I'm not sure...

I do hope that you're able to find a drive recovery service in your area.

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

I hope so. You on chat tonight?

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

commercial data recovery is damn expensive. Ask a knowledgable geek friend first (probably not me, though -- Windows is my weak spot). Be prepared for heartbreak. Might be easily recoverable to a smart person, might be hideously expensive.

You can get external sound cards, which might be a solution to the problem. I have one, which I would lend you, only, it is firewire, which your laptop probably doesn't have. The inbuilt sound card for laptops are usually pretty useless for music recording. There is a whole industry of external soundcards that work via USB etc -- good ones aren't cheap, unfortunately.

Garage Band is very easy to learn.
Reason is a bit harder, but cool -- but probably not the right choice for the sort of music you want to make (for a start, no recording).

[starfyre01.livejournal.com]

I'm on right now if you want to chat :-)

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

Mum's got an external soundcard, I just have to plug the fucker in. I think my big bro has one too. That should be fine, that bit. I'm also humming and hawwing about a mic. I need a proper vocal mic for lead vocals. The mic my brother has is for radio talking vocals, not singing.

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'll be on soon!

[starfyre01.livejournal.com]

Great! I have a half-hour long meeting @ 11 a.m. my time, so don't be surprised if you don't see a reply until around 11:30ish or so. "See" you then!

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Well, if you have access to an external soundcard, espcially one with XLRs, that should be good. If you need something fancier, I could probably sort something out.

I have a few mics you can borrow. I have a plain old SM58, plus I have a ribbon mic that is a bit classier to try. Again, I could arrange to borrow something for a recording session as well -- I have a few friends who own decent mics. You should meet my friend Skot sometime.

It is definitely possible to get usable large condenser mics, that are good for recording (though not live) vocals for a not terribly outrageous amount of money these days. Still not cheap though, a couple of hundred at least.

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

A couple of hundred is much cheaper than the mics I've seen at Kosmic!! 800+!! I was thinking even 400, which I've saved up. Maybe we can go mic shopping one time? I'd love to have a mic I can have all to myself. I'd love to have you there and give me advice - you know about this stuff. Would you help me?

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

There are definitely things below $400 that would be worth trying out, such as the various AKG Perception mics. I hear there are some good cheap Audio-Technica ones as well. We could defnitely go mic shopping some time, could be fun, I would love to help. We could even try to get Mikey OB to come along, he is a fully qualified sound guy, so knows much more than me.

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

Oh oh, could we do that?! That'd be brilliant! Let's really do this! :D When are you free? We can have lunch while we're out too, make a fun day of it! :D :D :D

DiskInternals.

[flyingreptile.livejournal.com]

Windows is also my weak spot, but I've recovered data from a couple of windows disks before. The first one was using DiskInternals NTFS, in the other harddisk there was some kind of intermittent fault and I just power cycled it until it decided to work just long enough to get the data off.

I could try these if logansrogue wants.

Re: DiskInternals.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Certainly worth giving it a try if you have data recovery software for windows (I don't).

Of course there is always a chance of hardware failure on the controller, etc. If that is the case, commercial data recovery is the one hope (and a painful expensive one)

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

OK. I could manage every day next week except Tuesday, I think.

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

Then pick a day, cause I'm totally free! :D