Recovery Log – Can Geek Squad Save the Data?

As previously posted, since I forgot to back up the Quicken files on Mary’s computer, they weren’t available at our online backup service to be restored after her hard drive crashed. Maybe, I thought, Geek Squad can save me from my stupidity so I hustled off to Best Buy with the drive-dead Dell.

Explained the problem to the young man behind the geek counter; he was pretty kempt for a geek.

“All we can do,” he said, “is send it out to a data recovery service. That’ll cost you between fifteen hundred and three thousand dollars.”

“Ugh,” I said. “Can you try booting with some other startup disk and then see if they data’s recoverable?”

“No,” he said. “That might infect our machines.”

“Huh?” I asked. “Don’t you have a boot disk you could put in the CD drive and then see if the hard drive is visible or do something to it?”

“All we can do is send it out.” Wrong geek, I thought.

“How do you know the problem is the boot drive?” he asked. Should’ve asked that first, I thought, but showed him the messages while I tried to boot up and hoped that actually looking at the computer would spark his interest.

“Yup, the drive is bad,” he said. “All we can do is send it out.”

I left. Almost certainly will key in the data I can’t extract from the banks and credit card companies. But, if I ever can find a boot CD around, will see for my own satisfaction if I’m a better geek than the young man. Will also try dismembering the Dell and putting it back together just on general principles since I can’t hear the hard drive running any more (it was loud just before and during failure). Reader suggestions welcome.