Samsung HD502HJ Recovery

[TheBladeRoden]

What could cause a lot of files to have the correct filename, folder, and even size, but instead of any actual data, the file is completely filled with zeros, and can anything be done about them at this point?

[rogfanther]

The file data is in the not readed part of the disk, so it is just showing the data that was already in the destination disk.

[maximus]

As rogfanther just pointed out, the data part of the files must be in an area that was not read, meaning the data is located in the bad head.

If you are correct about the total size of the desired data being only tens of megabytes, or even a few hundred megabytes, a good data recovery pro may have been able to get the data without a head swap, although there is no certainty in that. But that would have only been possible at the very beginning. Now it looks like the head is almost dead and reading very little data. You have thrashed on the drive by repeated ddrescue and hddsuperclone attempts, and the head has degraded. Now the only way to get that data is almost certainly a head swap, which is something that you cannot successfully do yourself. An intelligent recovery approach at the beginning would have likely worked much better.

So what I am trying to say is, if your data is important and worth paying for, then you need to seek professional data recovery now. You will almost certainly pay a fair amount considering the head swap. If you can’t afford it now, but the data is important enough, then put the drive in a safe place and save up the money.

If the data is not worth paying for, then you are out of luck. If you decide to try to watch some youtube videos on how to do a head swap yourself, you will probably lose the data for good, also having wasted money on a donor drive.

[pcimage]

As rogfanther just pointed out, the data part of the files must be in an area that was not read, meaning the data is located in the bad head.

If you are correct about the total size of the desired data being only tens of megabytes, or even a few hundred megabytes, a good data recovery pro may have been able to get the data without a head swap, although there is no certainty in that. But that would have only been possible at the very beginning. Now it looks like the head is almost dead and reading very little data. You have thrashed on the drive by repeated ddrescue and hddsuperclone attempts, and the head has degraded. Now the only way to get that data is almost certainly a head swap, which is something that you cannot successfully do yourself. An intelligent recovery approach at the beginning would have likely worked much better.

So what I am trying to say is, if your data is important and worth paying for, then you need to seek professional data recovery now. You will almost certainly pay a fair amount considering the head swap. If you can’t afford it now, but the data is important enough, then put the drive in a safe place and save up the money.

If the data is not worth paying for, then you are out of luck. If you decide to try to watch some youtube videos on how to do a head swap yourself, you will probably lose the data for good, also having wasted money on a donor drive.

+1

Couldn't have put it better myself!