I'm mainly asking so I don't leave any stones unturned, but here goes.
My wife works at a local university as an english teacher (in Venezuela, native language is spanish), in the Languages Center they have some old compaq presario computers (don't have the exact model at hand but they're 10+ years old, never been upgraded). One of the computers, the one she uses for the actual administration of the center, just had its HD die. It seems to be stuck at the starting up, I hear an "wrrrrr" sound, then silence, then "wrrrrr" again, other HDs on the other computers do the "wrrrrr" then regular HD reading sounds. No clicks, though. I've plugged it on other computers with the same result, drive not recognized by the bios, and also plugged an HD from other computers in the administration one and they work perfectly, so I'd say it's safe to assume the problem is the HDD.
Big problem is that there were lots of non backed up data on that HDD that's important for the center (mostly financial stuff and copies of communications sent to and from other departments of the university). My first reaction was just to declare it a total loss and a lesson on why it's important to have a back up of sensitive data, but just wanted to know if anyone knows anything I haven't tried to get the data back.
I understand that the best course of action would be to send it to a professional data recovery service, but they're reeeeaaally expensive here in Venezuela and the university is VERY short on funding, to the point where any computer that gets broken stays broken (taking out this one means that there are now only 5 computers left of the initial 10 that were bought, 3 of them because of dead HDDs)... which is the reason why I'm the one doing their technical service mostly as a favor to my wife.
My wife works at a local university as an english teacher (in Venezuela, native language is spanish), in the Languages Center they have some old compaq presario computers (don't have the exact model at hand but they're 10+ years old, never been upgraded). One of the computers, the one she uses for the actual administration of the center, just had its HD die. It seems to be stuck at the starting up, I hear an "wrrrrr" sound, then silence, then "wrrrrr" again, other HDs on the other computers do the "wrrrrr" then regular HD reading sounds. No clicks, though. I've plugged it on other computers with the same result, drive not recognized by the bios, and also plugged an HD from other computers in the administration one and they work perfectly, so I'd say it's safe to assume the problem is the HDD.
Big problem is that there were lots of non backed up data on that HDD that's important for the center (mostly financial stuff and copies of communications sent to and from other departments of the university). My first reaction was just to declare it a total loss and a lesson on why it's important to have a back up of sensitive data, but just wanted to know if anyone knows anything I haven't tried to get the data back.
I understand that the best course of action would be to send it to a professional data recovery service, but they're reeeeaaally expensive here in Venezuela and the university is VERY short on funding, to the point where any computer that gets broken stays broken (taking out this one means that there are now only 5 computers left of the initial 10 that were bought, 3 of them because of dead HDDs)... which is the reason why I'm the one doing their technical service mostly as a favor to my wife.
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