New Guys

[BlackST]

Life is a natural equalizer. Manufacturers are making drives in order to make DR almost impossible to DIY'ers (larger, nastier, worse) . Natural selection. And with the new SSD and 1,8" drives, things should only get better for PROS !!! (and anyway the actual HDDs are going to last for about 15 years) Why bother ? Keep investing, keep learning, keep on moving, keep on our businesses, forget the rest.

I charge a small "diagnose fee", to be paid in advance and kept if you don't want to proceed with DR, subtracted from the total amount if you agree to proceed. If I see the drive has been tampered with or the surface has fingerprints on it, everything is calculated according to. You can earn more from this rather from DR. The initial analysis won't take long, if the tampering has done enough damage, resulting DR would be a pain in the ass, the charge will be higher (I don't know what I'm going to face later, so I must "be prepared" ) . Usually at this point the customers give up with the enough damage THEY have done, get their invoice (clearly stating "DR diagnose fee, tampered drive" and all the details), get some free color prints of microscope view of fingerprints or tampering or scratches or damaged heads or everything else, and go away. And in most case, they come back with untampered drives for DR ("this time I haven't touched it, trust me !!"). Do it every day.

[beto]

Im agree with u thatdellguy we receive a lot of cases here on mexico, wich was opened before, even where´s "tech people" or another who tried to did an "data recovery tried an platter swap where its doesnt need it", taking one platter by one with the hands , head swap´s, wich caused scratch to the platters, etc, thats horrible, difficult the data recovery and and some cases caused unrecoverable cases

Regards

[pcrecovery]

I feel that I can take a person who wants to learn, into our cleanroom, and show them how to do headswaps, platter exchanges, troubleshoot PCBs, use Oscilloscope and much more, but most cannot grasp it well enough to do it. You will know right away if you have what it takes. It is like this with almost anything. Just buying a guitar and mic doesn't make you a musician. Often, no matter how much you practice, you'll never be good at it. However, people have different goals and motivations. Some just want to learn, or are what you call hobbyists. For others, it is their livelihood. I began with Multics, and Unix systems back in 1982. I was desoldering and soldering components on PC's by 84-85. I went to college at age 12 to learn programming. I basically LOVED this stuff from the beginning. My heart was into it big time. Money was not even a motivation or thought really. Anyway, I think that what makes data recovery special, is that it takes so many different types of science and reasoning - well, the Application of it, along with a gift for troubleshooting and problem-solving, a steady hand, patience, and tons of reading and studying and keeping up. Things that I learned about some drives, are simply not even true for others. Each family has its own peculiarities, and unique features. For instance, many of the tests I used to do on the WD drives for preamp commutator don't work on newer WD 2.5" drives at all. Anyway, I think the whole field is very fascinating, but I strongly disagree that just anyone could do it. You can show highly skilled and intelligent people how, and most still cannot do it. Often they can do just one part of it well. My advice to anyone is to buy the products and read everything you can get your hands on.
If DR is for you, you will love it and enjoy reading it very much. You will be good at it if you have what it takes. You should know right away. Just my .02.

[rchadwick]

I've always believed that, while almost anyone can get lucky with a single drive, it takes a special person to do this for a living. Most techie types I've met either lean towards hardware, or software. Hard drives require software skills, electronics skills, and mechanical skills. Not many tech people have the right combination, but unfortunately not everyone knows that. Add to that the fact that most DR knowledge is self-taught and reverse-engineered, it narrows the field even more. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if, as a group, DR Techs had significantly higher IQ's. It's virtually a job requirement.

Perhaps secrets sometimes 'leak', but in general this forum does much more to prove to people that they usually should send their precious data to a pro. Like swimming in Sulfuric acid, it looks easy and painless until you jump in.

[BlackST]

Usually "precious" data becomes unimportant when they have to spend... I always wonder why!

[stts]

People are skeptical about throwing tons of money at people that talk in giberish, prophetize doom and gloom, and keep secrets. In plain language, they are simply not trusted. I dont fix hard drives for a living, but I am still especially special. And now I just bought a bunch of dead drives on Ebay. As soon as they arrive, I plan on making videos doing various things to them and posting them here. Then everybody can get an idea how easy it is to be special. Hopefully, when I am done, I will have a ton more special company. Dealing with drives doesnt take a God, just a person who want to spend the time to do it. If everybody really wanted to fix drives, then everybody could fix drives with sufficient training. So kid yourselfs all you want. I look forward to shinning a bright spotlight on the inner workings for everybody. After all, that is what this forum is suppost to be about.

[hddguy]

I think then all you would be doing is encouraging home users with lost data to attempt work themselves rather than consulting a professional, and you will be solely responsible for the mass loss of sentimental data.

Just because you are able to post a video, does not mean it will be interpreted correctly and instantly will make people capable.

I have been in the DR business a long time, and even with the experience and knowledge I have, there are still some aspects of the job that are very very difficult.

There is a reason DR is referred to as a 'Specialist' area, and the DR guys referred to as 'Professionals'.

Limited advice and DIY videos are no replacement for knowledge and experience.

Last edited by hddguy on August 19th, 2008, 8:53, edited 1 time in total.

[wiseleo]

*laugh*...

OK, go for it...I really look forward to your awesome videos, seriously. I wish you much success.

Ever wonder why they show head stack swaps only on Seagate drives in the videos? They don't have the nasty little T6 screw on the headstack unlike almost all other brands, that's why. Removing that on a multi-platter drive is indeed an exercise in masochism. Of course, once you get the platters out of the way, it's piece of cake. Oops, there goes $500 in equipment.

I would have bought live drives that are still working but are too old to be useful. It's more fun to kill them and revive them. You can also start growing your firmware collection.

By the way, start learning foreign languages. A lot of information on reverse engineering HDDs is available in Russian and Chinese. I know Russian and I am learning 3 other languages.

Once you realize how arcane this stuff really gets (get used to hex code) and start investing thousands of dollars into specialized equipment, you'll probably find yourself rethinking just how much of this you really want to share with your customers. After all, you'll probably want to earn a nice return on your investment.

We have a reason for doom and gloom. What do amateurs recommend? Chkdsk, testdisk, spinrite, hdd regenerator, "run a diagnostic". I say let the manufacturers run the diagnostic after you do a warranty exchange. It's obvious that the drive is dead, why torture it with diagnostics and tools not designed to work with dead drives?

All of the tools mentioned above have the uncanny ability to kill drives. No one ever bothers to warn the reader about the risks involved. No one checks if the user hears the symptoms of a head crash.

I posted a detailed procedure on how to get a nearly ideal sector-level copy of any drive on one amateur forum. It's pretty detailed and should handle most cases of mild drive corruption when the drive is still recognized by BIOS. I did it because I was astonished at the kind of bad advice was given to people.

I am pretty sure they are about to ban me because I disclosed all the risks of their favorite shortcuts and introduced the concept of doing it safely. "No one has two extra drives lying around, this is bad advice!". Well, if it saves someone a trip to my office, with the minimum fee exceeding the cost of even the fanciest external drives, I am sure they can splurge and get a couple of new drives. Apparently, suggesting to swap a controller board on a dead drive that shows no signs of life after a power surge is against the rules *laugh*. Their advice? "Give up, this is too hard". What's hard about removing 5 screws with a T8 driver, assuming I tell them which board they need and whether it needs any soldering. Oh yeah, knowing that it's possible.

Sure, it saves a drive when someone can simply run testdisk and rebuild the MFT, but to do _that_ on a live drive with no sector-level backup?! I wouldn't be comfortable doing that if someone actually explained to me what are the risks. Suppose the miracle cure does work, the drive is still failing. It'll die again in a week. Or, it doesn't, and we start hearing the all too familiar "click click click..."

Or... my all-time favorite great advice. Boot into recovery console and run CHKDSK /R. That is probably the fastest way to turn a drive that can be imaged into a jumbled mess of clusters. Yep, the drive will boot...maybe... but the data will be uhh... what's that expression... clusterf-----

That is why the doom and gloom. Try to explain to someone an imaging procedure of a failing drive when they are clueless what is the difference between HD and RAM. They'll be tempted to try a magic shortcut. That's one way to increase the fee they'll have to pay to someone like me. Someone was pretty fired up about doing a platter swap on a Samsung triple-platter 500GB drive even though his issue was obviously to me not going to be resolved by that. It's obviously a firmware problem. Those I prefer to fix professionally. Did I mention that he wanted to save on platter transfer tools? It took some convincing to talk him out of that nonsense.

It doesn't take a God, but it does take someone with enough computer expertise to understand how file systems and partition tables really work. Most people know Windows and how to click. If this is easy for you, it's really great.

Normal progression looks like this:
Student -> user -> hell desk -> admin -> consultant -> server expert -> server recovery expert -> hdd recovery expert.

Or... hacker -> consultant -> hdd recovery expert

Unless you know lots of hackers, you'll find the number of people truly qualified to be quite slim. You do know that Scott's videos were produced at a hackers' convention, right?

[hddguy]

Totally agree

[MANDR]

Normal progression looks like this:
Student -> user -> hell desk -> admin -> consultant -> server expert -> server recovery expert -> hdd recovery expert.

How true

Wonder where stts fits in

[stts]

Who me? I fit in everywhere. I am a jack of all trades and a master of most. I am just not very artsy. I love technology and inventing factory machinery. It all about tackling a chalenge and getting paid to do it. Im not going to go ape snit when making videos. Just stuff people can do if they put their mind to it. I'll decide when I see what drives Im getting, but Ill swap chips, point out how to spot trouble, hook a laptop drive to a pc, do a live board swap, point out how to deal with dust and static and a cold can of freon air. I'll do a headstack swap and tear the whole thing apart to really checkout the motor. Im not going to do a platter swap. That is just too over the top for most anybody without a machine shop, or a bunch of money. And obviously I am not going to do any pc3k stuff because I dont have one of those. Also, I am a busy dude, so Im going to hit it, post it and be done with it. But I suspect they will be a big hit on Youtube judging from the other ones I see there.

[hddguy]

Sounds to me like you just want a little fame.....

[stts]

Come on, you been reading my posts. You got to know I could care less if people like me or not. I am the way I am and I am proud of it. Now if people like me being me, then that is great and we can hang and have fun. But if nobody liked me, Im good company all by myself. But the reality is that Im a pretty decent dude and I make my share of friends.

I am just fired up about videos because I found a forum of learning with a bunch of guys bent on keeping too many secrets. The people that are going to do this stuff werent going to be spending thousands anyway, so Im only giving the hopeless a little more hope. I think it will come off plenty responsible.

[hddguy]

I see what your doing, and Im sure many many people will appreciate it, but there is a difference between somebody using R-Studio to recover a deleted folder, and replacing an entire Head Assembly, or correctly soldering chips, diodes and components.

If a non-compentant person tries to recover his data from a logical fault, with the patient disk slaved to another machine there is relatively little can go wrong within reason. You get the same non-competant person to attempt Rom Swap, or even Head replacement what do you think the chances of success are, even after watching a video.

There is a reason people keep secrets here Firstly, it is our bread and butter - its what many of us have been learning the hard way for a very long time. Secondly, we do not like to receive work that has been attempted by an amateur as this tends to be more difficult than its worth. Thirdly, there is a much increased chance that the customer in question will lose all their valuable data forever!

If you read through the forum, I am sure you will find that the only information generally kept is information relating to things that cannot be learned correctly from a forum, and is often kept secretive to prevent irrepairable damage to a persons media.

I am sure many people will agree with me here

[stts]

I'll play it by feel and evaluate things as I go. But you know, it might be possible to influence what I produce. If people here were to be nice to New members with thoughtfull and welcoming words, then maybe I could scale back some. If BlackST and Rchadwick and pals could be without a doubt polite, courtias and abandon their insulting manner and ego trips, then maybe I could stay out of the hermetic shell. They can be nice and helpfull while still keeping their secrets. They could very respectfully state the info is proprietary and they cant say those details, or just say they dont know. People will ask but thats a normal thing so let them ask. After a few polite declines, they will quit asking and move on to other subjects. If these forum members could all turn over a new leaf and treat each other as equals instead of Newbie punks and pros, then maybe I could forget about videos. Because dumping all the prejudice down the toilet is an even bigger improvement than expanding the knowledge, and I could be happy with that.

[BlackST]

After all that, the audience deserve at least the trailers... I remember you that popcorn and coke are not allowed in the clean room LOL

[stts]

I was going to eat popcorn and coke as the open drive was busy copying data. I may even sprikle the salt on it to see what happened

[jerkykid]

No matter what you do when you start experimenting in my eyes you will ruin drives. I have been reading and practicing for a few months now and still do not feel confident enough to say, "ya, I can recover your drive for you". I too have ordered many drives off ebay and just take drives from relatives and friends to gain some experience. I will keep saying like I said before. If you do attempt to recover data on your important drive even with videos you will more than likely destroy it. Even with the platter and head exchange tools there are still elements that you need to do yourself and a video will not show that.

For instance even with a platter exchange tool what about aligning the discs in other ways this has not been talked about anywhere I have seen. There are other adjustments that need to be made (I figured this out the hard way). If you dont need your data on the drive go for it. The salvation tools work great but if you screw one thing up, thats it, you have lost the data, probably to the point of not getting it back.

@stts, if you make videos, great. Be sure to include yourself having the drive running in the beginning and in the end. I think you will find this more difficult than you think, I know I have. No sense in making people feel like they can do something when they will more than likely fail. I am not personally against telling people to try software if that is indeed the problem, but firmware and head problems not to mention motor seizure are better left to those experienced.

[BlackST]

No... (serious) Maybe even vids where things go wrong are useful as they can warn users and show the consequencies... 20 sttsentury fox... Quiet on the set... ACTION!!

[jerkykid]

I know where this is going Again