Technical advice for data recovery, tips for data preservation, and general wisdom from a team who has been recovering data and working on computers and other electronic hardware for decades.
DIY data recovery cases have always trickled in to our lab, but recently there has been an upward trend for opened hard disk drives. Most of the time the data owner has opened the device because a YouTuber told them they could get their data back. Unfortunately, there were no details in the video about […]
In this case we have a conventional Alcor AU6998SN based USB flash drive with a Toshiba monolith (THNU3EN00PL07) re-purposed as the NAND. With our PC-3000 Flash tool and the Spiderboard adapter from Ace Laboratories we can read the data directly from the NAND, bypassing the controller. You never know what you will find when you […]
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 (SSHD). Basically it is conventional device […]
Can a USB flash drive be repaired or recovered? In most cases, YES! How do we repair a broken USB thumb 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 […]
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 that 1 of the heads has failed. The simple, consistent, design makes working with […]
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 […]
Proper Hard Drive Packing 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 […]
This week we had a common case that was a typical result of a DIY recovery. The case was a Seagate 1TB external hard drive that stopped working. When disk drive media starts deteriorating bad sectors start accumulating until they reach a level that causes failure. At a certain point the drive’s firmware design can’t […]
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 USB […]