Technical advice for data recovery, tips for data preservation, and general wisdom from someone who has been recovering data and working on computers and other electronic hardware for decades.
Toshiba laptop and portable hard drives in general seem to be very reliable. Most Toshiba 2.5″ cases we see are the result of the HDD or laptop being dropped. In this case the problem was quite different. This Toshiba is a hybrid known as a solid state hard drive. Basically it is conventional device with […]
How do we repair a broken USB flash drive? Take note, the data recovery method can be quite different if the flash media has just stopped working. In some cases the metal USB connector might come loose, or break off. Assuming no pads are torn, this could be an easy case for a do-it-yourself project. […]
This week I was reminded how nice it is to work with the Toshiba DT01ACA100 1TB Desktop SATA hard drives. Most data recovery pros hold Toshiba drives in high regard for reliability, but we do get quite a few desktop models in that 1 of the heads has failed. The simple, consistent, design makes working […]
This week we had a Seagate ST1000LM035 with numerous media defects. We suspected that the HDD had been dropped like many mobile drives from this Seagate family. We opened the device in one of our clean bench workstations and immediately noticed something different, three heads! In the past these 1TB drives were typically a single […]
This week I would like to talk about proper handling and shipping for hard drives. The unknown often works against people because they really need/want their data recovered but they compound the problem because they just don’t understand how delicate a conventional hard disk drive is. Once you realize the close tolerance the device works […]
This week we had a common case that is a result of a DIY recovery. This case was a Seagate 1TB external hard drive that stopped working. When the media starts deteriorating bad sectors start accumulating. Sometimes the drive design can’t manage the failure rate and the customer loses access to the data. In the […]
This week we had a non-typical 128GB USB flash drive. At first glance the case looks like a standard broken connector repair. Typically you remove the bent or broken connector and replace it with a new USB 3.0 connector. WAIT! Not so fast. Look closer, this Phison based 128GB USB device has a non-standard pinout […]
This week we had two cases that could have ended in no recovery but the customers were lucky. If you ship a flash drive it is very important that you do not send it in a regular envelope. A box is preferred but at least use a padded envelope and always use a service that […]
This week’s special cases were very close to the customer not getting any data. Data recovery should not be your backup plan! Case #1 Western Digital WD10JMVW 1TB laptop hard drive that had already been to another data recovery lab. The diagnoses was “too much media damage”. While there was considerable media damage as if […]