One successfull rescue story (wd 2.5" 500 GB laptop drive)

[tuipveus]

Here is my rescue story and what did I learn:

My cousin got defect laptop drive, spinning and clicking. Valuable data, own documents and photos, no backups made. Still not valuable enough for pay for the rescue company.

I opened the drive since I was not able to rescue anything with ddrescue from it. I noticed that head was stuck. Released it (learned from youtube how to rotate disk and simultaneously move head to safe zone). Different kind of click, but still no luck.

I figured that head swap might help. Bought same model disk from ebay with 50 euros. Watched lots of youtube videos before starting.

Swapped heads and supported them during transfer with aluminum clip.

After head swap drive spinned ok. Data access was very very slow. At first I tried to rescue with ddrescue. I rescued some sectors but I didn't have any idea about partition layout. Then I found out ddrutility and learned that I can get only used sectors from NTFS MFT and rescue those. Still it was very very slow.

Finally I asked from my cousin that where are the most important files located, mounted NTFS in Linux with readonly option successfully and copied some directories with jpg files and latex documents. For copying I used rsync with --partial-dir= so that I could get partial files also rescued to other directory.
Lucky me, all latex- and document files were quite small and I was able to recover all of them. Hard drive also contained some videos which I was not able to rescue, but disk was able to read about 99% of the files, even it was very very slow. I rescued about 3 GB of the most important data successfully.

I left ddrescue to run for 2 weeks but it just got slower and slower and after 2 weeks disk died again.

What I learned:
1) replacing heads is possible also for beginner, even when you don't have clean room (despite all warnings). For very valuable data, of course you have to pay for the rescue.
2) Before starting, make sure that you know what do you need to rescue (most of the hard drive data is not important)
3) Don't use ddrescue for the slow head swapped drive. Instead mount with readonly flag and use rsync to rescue files.
4) After rsync, you can still use ddrescue for the rsync partial-dir files to rescue rest of the blocks one by one, file by file.
5) When buying new computer, don't buy encrypted drives. (Things that I knew already before: Buy ssd instead. Use cloud or backups. Take image of hdd)

What did my cousin learned:
1) Use cloud for your personal files.
2) Do backups (hopefully this also)

[labtech]

Say you will do this type of work on a daily basis, there are many things you will change your mind about how to approach a data recovery project.

Nevertheless, kudos for the perseverance.

[F_ARG]

Congratulation for that! It is a successfull rescue but as labtech said if you do that daily things are different. First of all you only rescued a small volume of data (of course that was what you needed this time ). Sometimes HDD is full and clients want all their info. You increase your data recovery succesfuly cases if you use a clean room, globes and other important tools. For example, after head replacement sometimes is needed to correct firmware issues (WD slow reponding problem for example) and sometimes not all the heads read properly so have to deal with that.

It was a happy ending case but you took some risks. I hope you don t take a my comment as a bad@ss comment it is not my intention.

Best!

F

[tuipveus]

I just wanted to describe "normal person" rescue with the mistakes, so that others might find it useful.

In the past I have restored one disk which had 4kB defect area with ddrescue to other new disk. The problem was back then that Windows didn't boot because one of the Windows system file was corrupted. In that case I had 100% rescue rate, but of course it was a lot easier case. I saved lots of time, because I didn't need to reinstall operating system and software after that.

My main point was that if options are that
1) throw the disk to trash and learn to back up or
2) buy same hdd from from ebay with only 50 euros and take a risk.
... it should be obvious that you take a risk.

Another important point was the obvious thing that usually normal Windows user does not have much "own data" on disk. Why should I care about restoring windows rescue partition or some pagefile, if "customer" just wants his/her couple of megabytes or gigabytes back.

I was lucky to find exactly same model from ebay, made in same factory only 2 days before my disk was made. I bet that if I would have made video of my head swap, 99 of 100 labtech would have said "this wont work".

I am sure that more experienced rescuers see things in very different way. Point was, that even with my limited skills, free rescue software and learn by doing, I have learned many new ways to approach the problem.

I can easily believe that when you are more familiar with mechanics, tools and software, have lab and experience, you see this from very different angle.

Another thing that I forgot to mention (but is obvious for the most people) is, that after you have opened the hdd in non-clean room, you should never even consider saving some new data for it. I was lucky to get it working for 2 weeks and rescue the most important data during the first couple of hours. If I would have used ddrescue to rescue whole thing from beginning, disk would have died before I would have managed to get anything useful rescued.

[tuipveus]

And yeah, your customers are of course very different too. There are raids and other reasons which make more complete backup more important. My conclusions were from end user perspective, not from the rescue specialist perspective. I bet my prices were cheaper too. I only charged the parts and worked for fun.

[drHDD]

You could get professional recovery for $100-$200 and get all data from drive instead of spend 50 euros and risk to loose everything - data, donor drive (50euros) and getting only most important files.

2 euro cents to everybody else - in first you should do head explant between 2 good drives to see if you can get those drives working. Then you can try to read something on those drives to see if you able to read drives with this condition and you are able to do something with read errors and with slow responding problem. And only after you can try to do heads explant on drive with data.

[F_ARG]

tuipveus, i can see your point

Best!

F

[colanco]

tuipveus

What is your intention with this post?
Tell users that they can change heads at home and retrieve their data?

[colanco]

Unfortunately, every day you see people, who, thanks to a post like this, decide to open their discs and try to recover their data ..... "It's easy, I've seen it on the Internet."

Result ....... your lost data.

[tuipveus]

tuipveus

What is your intention with this post?
Tell users that they can change heads at home and retrieve their data?

Nope. The most important point for myself also was to notice that I really only need to rescue 3 GB (user home directory and its contents).
The rest of the data has no value so restoring it is waste of time and space.

And about the price of restoring. It only depends of how much you value the data. If company has data that is worth of $2000 in hdd without backups, there is no point of paying $3000 for it. Different persons give different value for their personal photos, documents etc.

If I would be stupid enough to run without any backups (knock knock) and I would know some professional recovery for 100-300 euros, I would probably go for it. One problem (from consumer perspective) is that how can I know if that company is doing it all wrong or not (with that price). I also feel that there is risk sending drive with original data by mail.

"It's easy, I've seen it on the Internet."

Result ....... your lost data.

I disagree. If people are so stupid that they don't have backups and/or replication/cloud AND they are also so stupid that they wanna take a risk restoring very valuable data by them self, I think in that case they are not worth of owning the data in first place.

Finally we all die and most of the data dies with us. How many of you have photos of your grandgrandparents or their parents? How many of you know their names ? Even company and research data does not have usually value anymore after some time. Even if data is there, people tend to forget the pointers to data.

[northwind]

Unfortunately, every day you see people, who, thanks to a post like this, decide to open their discs and try to recover their data ..... "It's easy, I've seen it on the Internet."

Result ....... your lost data.

+1

[pcimage]

Unfortunately, every day you see people, who, thanks to a post like this, decide to open their discs and try to recover their data ..... "It's easy, I've seen it on the Internet."

Result ....... your lost data.

Sad, but true.

+2

[tuipveus]

Why my comments were blocked to this thread ?

[tuipveus]

I'll send it again...

tuipveus

What is your intention with this post?
Tell users that they can change heads at home and retrieve their data?

Nope. The most important point for myself also was to notice that I really only need to rescue 3 GB (user home directory and its contents).
The rest of the data has no value so restoring it is waste of time and space.

And about the price of restoring. It only depends of how much you value the data. If company has data that is worth of $2000 in hdd without backups, there is no point of paying $3000 for it. Different persons give different value for their personal photos, documents etc.

If I would be stupid enough to run without any backups (knock knock) and I would know some professional recovery for 100-300 euros, I would probably go for it. One problem (from consumer perspective) is that how can I know if that company is doing it all wrong or not (with that price). I also feel that there is risk sending drive with original data by mail.

"It's easy, I've seen it on the Internet."

Result ....... your lost data.

I disagree. If people are so stupid that they don't have backups and/or replication/cloud AND they are also so stupid that they wanna take a risk restoring very valuable data by them self, I think in that case they are not worth of owning the data in first place.

Finally we all die and most of the data dies with us. How many of you have photos of your grandgrandparents or their parents? How many of you know their names ? Even company and research data does not have usually value anymore after some time. Even if data is there, people tend to forget the pointers to data.

[tuipveus]

<<What is your intention with this post?
<<Tell users that they can change heads at home and retrieve their data?

Nope. The most important point for myself also was to notice that I really only need to rescue 3 GB (user home directory and its contents).
The rest of the data has no value so restoring it is waste of time and space.

And about the price of restoring. It only depends of how much you value the data. If company has data that is worth of $2000 in hdd without backups, there is no point of paying $3000 for it. Different persons give different value for their personal photos, documents etc.

If I would be stupid enough to run without any backups (knock knock) and I would know some professional recovery for 100-300 euros, I would probably go for it. One problem (from consumer perspective) is that how can I know if that company is doing it all wrong or not (with that price). I also feel that there is risk sending drive with original data by mail.

[tuipveus]

My intention ?

Nope. My intention was not that they can change heads at home and retrieve data.

The most important point for myself also was to notice that I really only need to rescue 3 GB (user home directory and its contents).
The rest of the data has no value so restoring it is waste of time and space.

[tuipveus]

And about the price of restoring. It only depends of how much you value the data. If company has data that is worth of $2000 in hdd without backups, there is no point of paying $3000 for it. Different persons give different value for their personal photos, documents etc.

If I would be stupid enough to run without any backups (knock knock) and I would know some professional recovery for 100-300 euros, I would probably go for it. One problem (from consumer perspective) is that how can I know if that company is doing it all wrong or not (with that price). I also feel that there is risk sending drive with original data by mail.

[tuipveus]

I would love to reply the rest of the questions, but for some unknown reason this forum blocks some of my messages. Don't know is it because the dollar sign or what is the reason, quoting is forbidden ?

[tuipveus]

Unfortunately, every day you see people, who, thanks to a post like this, decide to open their discs and try to recover their data ..... "It's easy, I've seen it on the Internet."

Result ....... your lost data.

I disagree. If people are so stupid that they don't have backups and/or replication/cloud AND they are also so stupid that they wanna take a risk restoring very valuable data by them self, I think in that case they are not worth of owning the data in first place.

Finally we all die and most of the data dies with us. How many of you have photos of your grandgrandparents or their parents? How many of you know their names ? Even company and research data does not have usually value anymore after some time. Even if data is there, people tend to forget the pointers to data.

[colanco]

My intention ?

Nope. My intention was not that they can change heads at home and retrieve data.

The most important point for myself also was to notice that I really only need to rescue 3 GB (user home directory and its contents).
The rest of the data has no value so restoring it is waste of time and space.

Ok. So if I just need to recover 3Gb I can change the heads and recover the 3GB ......

Do not be offended, but your cousin made a mistake ....... entrust your disk to you.