PIREP request: hard drive data recovery

iamtheari

iamtheari

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Ari
I have a friend whose external hard drive took a dump. It's not the USB circuitry as I pulled the disk out and tried it through another interface, so it's either the drive circuitry or the physical drive itself. The data at risk is worth more than anything I have lost (my friend has kids and a camera, so we're talking about family photos that would actually be missed), but the budget is lower than when I've worked with data forensics experts of the testifying sort. So I'm trying to get a referral to the best bang for the buck on data recovery in this situation.

All PIREPs appreciated. The drive is boxed up and ready to ship out. Thanks in advance!
 
I've used a local pro data recovery company in this situation once. Effing expensive and zero guarantees.

They got about 80% of it back for the person in a very messy file structure that took the person many many days to sort through one file at a time.

Couldn't tell ya how the national companies fare.

Just a reminder that none have guarantees and the resulting mess they'll provide often doesn't have the original directory structure or metadata.

Good luck. Teach him or her about the 3-2-1 backup strategy for critical data after it's over.
 
If it is a mechanical hard drive (spinning platters), try SpinRite. It can recover data from drives that seem completely dead. Much less expensive than a data recovery service.

https://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

SpinRite does not work on solid-state drives, SSD drives. Only on mechanical drives.
 
denverpilot said:
Good luck. Teach him or her about the 3-2-1 backup strategy for critical data after it's over.
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Much like a ground loop when you don’t keep your crosswind controls in after touchdown, this is a self-teaching lesson.
 
iamtheari said:
I have a friend whose external hard drive took a dump. It's not the USB circuitry as I pulled the disk out and tried it through another interface, so it's either the drive circuitry or the physical drive itself. The data at risk is worth more than anything I have lost (my friend has kids and a camera, so we're talking about family photos that would actually be missed), but the budget is lower than when I've worked with data forensics experts of the testifying sort. So I'm trying to get a referral to the best bang for the buck on data recovery in this situation.

All PIREPs appreciated. The drive is boxed up and ready to ship out. Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

Happened to me a while back. Kotar data recovery in San Jose https://www.kotar.us got it back for me. Very pricy, but very happy with the results. Very grateful that Kotar was able to get the data back. They provided a new drive which was essentially a clone of the dead drive. They had to go in to the old drive and replace readwrite heads, rebuild firmware, and other magic. Mr. Kotar was an engineer in the disk drive industry for years, so he knows his stuff. Cost about $1,200 or so to get the data back.

Getting a good backup strategy was always in the "I need to get started in that some day soon" category, but I procrastinated too long. The scare caused me to remedy that. Now, my data is on dual mirrored drives in the PC which back up to:

1. Another hard drive in the PC
2. A 4-drive, RAID 10 NAS on my LAN
3. The cloud

The PC system drive is an SSD which also backs up to the inboard hard drive, the NAS, and the cloud.

The 4 drive NAS contains other data and backs up to a 2-drive RAID 1 NAS locally and also to an offsite Backblaze cloud server.

I never want to deal with the terror of potentially losing pictures, tax records, etc. ever again.

I use Acronis for my PC backup and Synology's HyperBackup for the NAS. I've also got a cloud sync option to snchronize some of the NAS files to Dropbox.

I figure that with the various RAIDs, nightly backups, Dropbox Syncs, and multiple backup locations both local and cloud, my data is pretty safe from most conceivable losses. Multuple drives in multiple placea would have to fail to permanently lose data.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
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Larry in TN said:
If it is a mechanical hard drive (spinning platters), try SpinRite. It can recover data from drives that seem completely dead. Much less expensive than a data recovery service. If it’s mechanical and not a set of bad sectors or file allocation, then you send it off. That I haven’t had to do, thankfully.

https://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

SpinRite does not work on solid-state drives, SSD drives. Only on mechanical drives.
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SpinRite is excellent. Option is Kroll Ontrack as an app you purchase. I think there is a free version for recoveries up to a gigabyte, if I’m not mistaken. Failing those, you call in the big dogs.
 
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Been there done that and learned a big lesson.

now a days computers and 2 iPads are backup nightly to a large NAS, which once every 2 weeks is copied to portable Seagate drives, ( 2 copies) and one is kept in my physical work office miles away, the other copy goes in the fire safe. Worst case I lose 2 weeks of updates
 
I'm not that diligent about backups, but I do backup my data. At a previous employer, I had a backup for my backup drive. Out of the blue, my HDD failed, and while I was recovering my data, one of the backups died. If I'd only had one, I would have been in trouble.
 
Crashnburn said:
I'm not that diligent about backups, but I do backup my data. At a previous employer, I had a backup for my backup drive. Out of the blue, my HDD failed, and while I was recovering my data, one of the backups died. If I'd only had one, I would have been in trouble.
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Thankfully I am and it has paid off a few times, I have Terabytes of photos.
Was also told to mix brands of hard drives and try not to buy several from the same production batch , buy them 1 at a time , difference vendors, different manufacturers
 
I used this software https://www.cnwrecovery.com/ a few years ago and it worked very well. A 30 day license is $20. I had bumped the drive and the very start of the filesystem was damaged. As I recall all Windows could do was offer to format the disk. I was lucky, the damage was very local and the recovery software scanned the disk and found pretty much all of the files and directories. This of course won't help if there is a hardware problem.

They offer a free trial mode where it scans the disk and tells you what it thinks will be recovered. If you like that you can then pay.

As I recall it will make and then operate from a disk image which is safer than working directly with the disk. I don't think I did that.
 
I have been using Carbonite as a hands free and hassle free (after setup, of course) backup.

Haven’t needed it yet. Any comments yes or no on Carbonite?

-Skip
 
Skip Miller said:
I have been using Carbonite as a hands free and hassle free (after setup, of course) backup.

Haven’t needed it yet. Any comments yes or no on Carbonite?

-Skip
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I use a TrueNAS server for my backups. This incredible software is free and any old computer will work as the server although best to have high output Ethernet and WiFi capabilities. With multiple drives, you can set it up as a RAID server so harddrives can be replaced without loss of data.
 
So, um, asking for a friend. What route did you go, and how much did it cost?
 
I can't remember details now, but I was able to read one byte at a time using a Linux utility until it hit the bad sector, and then read the disc backwards from the end until I hit the same bad area. I recovered 99% of the data, which was good enough.
 
sarangan said:
I can't remember details now, but I was able to read one byte at a time using a Linux utility until it hit the bad sector, and then read the disc backwards from the end until I hit the same bad area. I recovered 99% of the data, which was good enough.
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I wish I could get this drive to power on. It's an SSD that seems to have fried. Everything was backed up except for one app that's since been pulled from the app store, and its local storage. Sigh.
 
I had Ontrak recover the data from a hard drive years ago (many years ago, I've been retired for 6 years and this was long before that) before my employer started backing up laptops. It was EXPENSIVE to do, but they recovered most, if not all, of the data on the drive. These days I back up to an external hard drive and Carbonite. The external drive is convenient, but Cabonite offers the added advantage of off-site storage. If the house burned down the external drives would go with it. Plus, the one time I got nailed by malware (still don't know how they got in) and my pictures (all of them) were encrypted, I just shut the laptop down, contacted Carbonite and had them restore all the pictures from the last good backup. No muss, no fuss and no money sent to the criminals.
 
Thank you for sharing! It helped me to recover the data. This forum thread is very informative
 
Carbonite - Ron and Fez approved.
 
The importance of backups. We have 3 windows computers on a schedule to backup to a NAS drive, once a month NAS is copied to a portable unit and that goes into my work office as an off-site backup.


All copying uses SyncBackFree software

PS use a $2 app to copy photos and videos from 4 iDevices to the NAS as well
 
Copied this post of mine from a year ago.

"I used this software https://www.cnwrecovery.com/ a few years ago and it worked very well. A 30 day license is $20. I had bumped the drive and the very start of the filesystem was damaged. As I recall all Windows could do was offer to format the disk. I was lucky, the damage was very local and the recovery software scanned the disk and found pretty much all of the files and directories. This of course won't help if there is a hardware problem.

They offer a free trial mode where it scans the disk and tells you what it thinks will be recovered. If you like that you can then pay.

As I recall it will make and then operate from a disk image which is safer than working directly with the disk. I don't think I did that."
 
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