Long time reader first time poster

I registered today because i finally understood what the pros / data recovery experts were saying all this time.
Then:
All this time i was on the newbies side thinking DR is sooo secretive industry. They must know but they don't wanna tell. Its 2 min fix if they tell me how to do it. Of course I am coming from IT background. I ll be able to quickly understand. They charge arm and a leg for nothing. That's why they are secretive. They are soooo rude. People just need their data back.
I think you get the picture

In Between
I work for an IT company as a senior IT consultant. 25 year in IT from security software database networking. Very confident too. Our moto "never been beaten" until the management decided to branch out to data recovery.

Now
After many many many many months research ,many many many many many $, many many many many hours paid training, many many many many hdds I can say, I am converted.
There is no quick fix, there is no easy recovery, very rarely you have two exact cases especially it is almost impossible to diagnose a fault using couple of lines of text without any information in them. NO, changing the PCB wont fix your hdd, putting it in the freezer definitely wont get your data back. And no one can explain step by step how to change a head.
Alignment wont happen with being careful too.
And begging and WRITING IN CAPITAL wont make anyone tell you the magic secret because IT DOESN'T EXIST.
It takes time to recover, every case is different, and you need equipment to do it. The only reason why some recoveries are quick is because pros have done it before.

Thank you
Misha

Agree !
I've been here since 2006 and only now i'm starting to understand D.R. on a "decent level".
And even if you study allot, you will need at least a basic set of tools, and it's not for free...

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Welcome to the club

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/artemrubtsov/

And Lo! there was light!!

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PC Image Data Recovery
www.pcimage.co.uk

Thanks doomer.
@pcimage - Lol the light came after couple of cases like this

Agree！！！！

Welcome to DR people think it is one button and all answers here can do wonders. At times it is not possible to explain how to do this becasue you know a person will destroy his only chance to get back his data. But anyhow it is nice that someone realizes that DR is not a one button 2 min fix.

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Iorana Haraharaini

This should be sticky

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Northwind Data Recovery - Greece
WD Trusted Partners
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery

+1
It is in my brain. OP's post made me feel better.

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Hard Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

The sad reality is, there will still be posters here who still believe that we should tell all for free or provide our services for less than the cost to provide the service.

+1, make it a sticky

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Luke
RAID Data Recovery

the other side of the coin is what have you guys REALLY got to lose by sometimes giving some info to someone halfway around the world, who is NEVER going to EVER impact your business or income?
that person may be like me, enthusiastic, not looking to scoop up all the DR cases in the world, has a real passion for it, and just MAY be an asset to YOUR industry in a few years. Wouldn't you be a little proud to have helped?

I am not saying BLOG everything and give away your nice secret methods or anything that is going to be stickied on every fixya forum... Just pick and choos the posters that you are comfortable with maybe a nugget or 2.

here is a rod and reel, now work out how to catch fish...

anyway, not a flame or critisism, everyone is entitled to their own views and actions and I will rarely judge anyone.... I am just provoking some thought. All I am saying is secrecy for the sake of it isnt productive.

cheers

DR business is relatively small area in the world and information in this business is expensive. Country borders are nothing. Most advanced DR tools are made in Russia (halfway around the world from Australia) and yet can be found in Australia.

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/artemrubtsov/

Voting for sticky i am too, because there are things that only a pro can do !

Thanks, I have made this a sticky. It would greatly help if next time we need to make something sticky someone would PM me

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Dmitry

Agree here, and would add also:

For some Newbies, they MIGHT be able to fix/solve problems in 10 steps
As for the Pros, might take 2-3 steps with few clicks since they know exactly what they are doing and where to look first.

This is all comes from EXPERIENCE which comes by Practice ( not with Clients drives )

I`ve & (sure most of the Pros also) seen Disasters been made by newbies trying to fix/solve but they do make things even worst and sometimes IMPOSSIBLE to work after.

and really, for some new registered users here when they go Off-Topic and :

Hi, blah blah...
the other responds, Wow, long time no see, and goes into CHAT more than problem/Advice
if you wanted to chat, you may use chatting Apps, but not filling the form with useless topics/posts.

Thank you Dmitr for Supporting the forum, it easy to gather all of everybody here in one place.

and thnx for your time reading here as well.

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Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

Haha, I have a funny story to share as well.

A while back a lady brought me a hard drive, that she said wasn't working (no clicking or anything obvious like that). Apparently she took it to another data recovery company (which claimed it was unrecoverable). The drive was in a box, nicely packaged I might add. So I took the hard drive out and examined it. To my surprise the hard drive was missing the platters. I do not know what the company before me did or what the initial problem with the hard drive was but the idiots took the platters out of the drive and put them in the envelope (4 platters in total) with no order, position or side how they where originally in the drive. Obviously it was really unrecoverable at that point.

My guess they tried to do a platter swap (the motor was intact though) to fix a head crash but who knows... Just surprising how many idiots there are out in the world.. I mean common sense should tell you not to do it but if your missing common sense then a simple google search will

It takes common sense to use google. And google returns so much conflicting information that sometimes you're better off without.

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On a clear disk you can seek forever.

Jumping to conclusions is not a sign of a professional
You have no proof that previous company did something to the drive at all and yet you accusing them
So you said it's unrecoverable and that drive might go to another company and another company might think the same about you as you think think about previous company: "what an idiot!" they might say

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/artemrubtsov/

It is not always so black and white.
What about my situation.
software and hardware have been my obsession for about 20 years. I am not a DR expert or Pro. I do know my way around a Hex editor, disassembler/debugger and I have been playing with uProcessors and electronics in some way or another for years.

So up to now I am not a DR pro.

I start getting interested in Flash memory and try a few ways of making a NAND reader, but really this is a failure, more lack of time these days than anything, but a failure none-the-less.

So up to now I am not a DR pro.

So I research as much as I can to spend around $1700 when I can and make the decision to buy a Flash Doctor, as according to the docs and sales people, I can, with limited experience, recover data from flash drives, this tool is supposed to be PURPOSELY MADE FOR people like me.

So now, according to everything I currently know, or think I know, I should be able to advertise myself as a Flash drive recovery person, maybe not a pro, but at least I am so called able to do it.

So I get in around 10 cases and cant recover any, well 1 a partial recovery.

So now what am I, one of the ones that you guys laugh at or mock?

As I know now, even just Flash Drives take a lot of work to get confident, but where is that said at the beginning? Just buy a SC or PC3K you might say.. well as I am not making any money from the current solution, and my day job as an IT guy at a smallish school doesn't allow me to go nuts with money, I cant do that.

So I still have the passion for it, I buy a few hundred flash drives to study when time permits and learn all the knowledge that is already known.., but everything I NEED to know, the Pros won't tell because I am not a Pro.

I guess all the Pros struggling with SSD and Flash issues that are just now starting to crop up are feeling his too.

So the person that takes his flash drive with the NAND removed from me to another DR company that owns a SC FE can have a fun time dissing me.

Anyway, I guess I am just frustrated that the tool I bought held me back, but yes I do agree totally with OP.
But I also agree with helping out some people, remember, these newbies after all are people, humans, some with passions for a topic the same as you, some with a huge amount of potential to lift your industry, maybe future developers of your next fantastic tool. maybe by giving some guy, someone been on the forums for a measly month, but seems to have a passion and not just a mouth but who seems to go and study.. maybe giving him a monolith pinout or the serial connections to a new drive wont suddenly topple your monopoly on your customer base. maybe you have contributed the first stone to the pathway of something great.

all moral and legal issues aside here: I remember, back in "the day" when no-one knew how to copy playstation 1 games. We wanted to do it and trolled the (measly) internet and could not get anything remotely useful. I stumbled on the name of it one day, IIRC it was called CDRWIN by Golden Hawk, a DOS program. It took another month to get the program, and I remember my mate coming over with his PC as he did not want me to have the program myself, but to help him figure it out.

It turned out that as prolific at games as he was, he had not a huge depth of understanding of computers. I was pretty green, being a bit older and working a lot, not in computers.

well, I convinced him to give me the software providing I not tell anyone or share it. I was VERY green, but I did know how to read readme.txt and help files, and the first issue was it used a multi-part .arj file, something new to us, and also the cue sheet and bin files took a bit to figure out.

well to make a long story end, I now regularly help this guy out with many PC and hardware/ electronic issues with his business. for free.

I am not saying help everyone, but just shutting the new guy out is so schoolyard behaviour too.

that said, a lot of you guys have really helped me out last few months and I appreciate it, and that's not forgotton.

I hope you can see what I trying to say, my wife says I couldn't explain my way out of a wet paper bag!

Thanks, HaQue for your nice post. I like it.

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