I really don`t know really how to explain this or actually how Clients thinks...

few months back client called from IT (supposed to know what he is doing) asked about McAfee Disk Encryption issue with one of the PCs a which as he said "Bad Sector" issue prevents the OS from loading, i gave him all the info. he needs to handle it but "They never listens" he left the drive with one of the freeware cloning Apps and after weeks he Killed it (now its Heads)

He came back calling me asking what to do, we told him now Its Heads cost will be Higher (he promised to send the drive to us very soon)

After Months he came with an Open drive (by OnTrack), they told him its not recoverable (and he paid Shipping + Diagnose fees)

I do believe that something can be done with it here... but really don`t know how good/bad they are?

If someone knows anyone there?

Thnx

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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

Have you looked inside?

We a seen a few of these that have been “DIY’d to death” with platters you can see through!

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PC Image Data Recovery
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It was likely the customer that screwed around with it and O-Track just called it unrecoverable upon diagnosis.

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

I disagree !

I do have a PILE of those drives (exact same model) that i did buy from eBay as "broken" at a very cheap price to refurb.

From my experience those slime 500 GB HGST ARM drives to suffer from a patch of bad sectors that are consecutive or if not consecutive they are typical near the same LBA range.

In other words from more or less 100 drives of that type (slim 500 GB HGST ARM) 90 of them were refurbishable by adding defects to P-List and the ones that were not re-usable were because the amount of defects didn't fit the P-List ...

So in my experience those models don't fail often with heads problems and platter scratch that are un-recoverable.

I did have a huge amount of drives from media devices as well like HCC545050A7E380 - Also slim 500 GB HGST and i did manage to refurb the majority of those with defectoscope HRT test moving bad and slow sectors to P-List.

To note that on those models if you use FORMAT UNIT or SECURITY ERASE the sectors are written but when doing verify bad sectors will still apear.

Sollution is to use HRT defectoscope and move defects on "scan" test to P-List and then use format unit (or security erase) to create full access to sectors or to use victoria to scan the surface, jot down the LBAs that have problems, set Victoria to sect blocks of one sector only on the range of bad sectors, get the log, use SeDiv with HGST ARM tool to move to P-List defects on Victoria Log. Newer versions of SeDiv can import Victoria log direct to P-List.

HRT have the advantage to scan each sector when found defect instead of blocks like Victoria. So HRT is easy to use as Victoria + SeDiv do require to set Victoria to 1 sector as you do need for the log to have entries for all bad/slow sectors and not just the first sector on a block ...

But of course this doesn't apply to data recovery, just to refurb drives ....

At any rate i'm just writting to tell that on those models what i do see the most is patch of bad blocks sometimes even on the start of the drive - LBA 0 - but most times on the middle of the drive and NOT full damaged heads, pre-amp or full surface problem ...

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@ pcimage

I looked inside looks clean to me, client did not open it he just tried those cheap imaging free tools and ended up with heads
remember this is Mcafee Disk Encryption which means we should have a clone of the drive (as much as possible)

@ labtech

he did not open it (as he said) some clients or actually most are liars


@ Spildit
you are right, this Hitachi is really a headache

We have few donors for it but since its been opened by others and because of the clients behavior we will charge him for our 1st. donor (not refundable) if works fine if not i did not through my donor for nothing.

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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

You disagree that I have seen these drives with “see through” platters? How does that work?

On this occasion it’s not the case, but my eyes and memory do work!

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Ok !

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McAfee end point Disk Encryption if you don't have the encryption key to unlock it
forget about it and that also cloning the hard drive.


banking system use this type of encryption on all there hard drive and mobile laptops and there is no way around it
unless your decrypt the drive first when the machine is booted into windows.


if on track can not do it nobody else could do it

We did changed heads for this case again and found that 1 head is 100% gone (scratches) the other was done, so that no matter what it cannot be recovered
btw client has the Key no issues, my question was how good/bad they are? Ontrack i mean ( never had the chance to know someone)

and FYI, i know Big Names (companies) outsource their work to other Pro. companies coz too much investment in 5-10 cases/year.

thank you

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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

its makes you wonder how much kroll ontrack charged for checking the drive out in the first place for the client.
and they can turn away complex jobs and move onto a easy recovery.

there only so much you can do these days with hard drives.
does not matter if you have tools worth 1 million or $20,000
this does not mean your going to be able to recovery the data.


end of the day kroll ontrack still making money either way recovery or not

company's like best buy in Canada or the USA do not do there own data recovery its outsource direct to kroll ontrack


did you recovery all the clients information after they sent it to you ?

I've got to disagree with this statement. I've personally recovered several drives that we previously deemed unrecoverable by the larger companies (e.g. kroll, secure, drivesavers). Each time it was because there was something (such as a really unusual firmware issue) they had missed.

I'm not saying Kroll is bad or that they don't have all the capabilities and equipment of any other lab, just that big companies have a lot of techs and they're not all A+ level techs. Some cases probably were deemed unrecoverable by a mid/low-level tech before it was ever looked at by a real professional there. Bigger companies are in the business of making money, not wasting time on cases that are probably lost causes. So, sometimes they give up quicker than they should.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

+1

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!