Results of the D.I.Y. in pictures

We just got in a new case of DIY, client first denied that the drive was opened but after I had a look ... I really dislike those friends of a friend that know something about IT and hard drives. This drive would have had a good chance for recovery, no scratches but now we had to reject the case.

Might be a good idea to open a thread with real world pictures to show what happens when you open a drive or let a friend open it.

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: Scratches ... abrasion from top cover was found on the magnets ...; IMG_20150508_195943563_HDR.jpg (30.69 KiB) Viewed 20463 times

: Platters are loose, so what? Alignment doesn't matter either. Might be clients friend changed platter order :-)

: Even more particles ...

: Dust, no there is not dust on the platter ... But find the fingerprints ...

Here's an ST2000DM001 that was "opened by a friend in government who does forensics and data recovery," according to my customer. Hopefully, forensics and data recovery have nothing to do with his job in government, i.e., are a hobby.

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Why do they trust in youtube, it's so sad when the so called admin tries to help a young lady :evil:

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Two heads ripped from HSA, fingerprints everywhere, dust & platter damage. R.I.P.

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: Badly damaged HSA after drive was repowered

: Stuck heads released by finger

its because people like to do D.I.Y job

thinking they know how to recover from damaged drives.
with only using software and nothing else.

End user DAY damage is less annoying for me, as they are doing it to their own drive in ignorance of knowing better.

What kills me is getting the opened drive after the local computer technician has done the damage, usually for a fee.

This is how the 'friend' IT guy 'fixed' this drive.

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Yeah it's true. But sometimes you can do the job for $100 instead for $3200 as i was offered

It all depends how important is your information and do you have the time and balls to play.

sanitariu wrote:Yeah it's true. But sometimes you can do the job for $100 instead for $3200 as i was offered
It all depends how important is your information and do you have the time and balls to play.

If a lab quoted you $3200 for a recovery that you were able to do for $100, I'd say that the lab you sent it into for the quote was not very trustworthy.

Lab is perfectly ok and it will do the job for these money. But I am from the eastern world.
We have no resources and good economy and we are thought from kids to repair things.
So when your washing machine broke you will throw it and get new one but here
we will repair it and use it another 10 years or even more. My grandmother still uses her old
washing machine and it is over 50 years old !!! Still working and still do her job.
If you have extra resources and money you will never do that but pay $3200 for the disk repair.
The same is with the bulbs. We have tech to produce bulbs working all life but we does not do it.
Old eastern world produces bulbs still works from over 40 years

I urge everyone who is not scared and can risk his information to learn, be patient, experiment
and when someone says that this is impossible ... just to get more energy from these words and
make it happen.

sanitariu wrote:Lab is perfectly ok and it will do the job for these money. But I am from the eastern world.
We have no resources and good economy and we are thought from kids to repair things.
So when your washing machine broke you will throw it and get new one but here
we will repair it and use it another 10 years or even more. My grandmother still uses her old
washing machine and it is over 50 years old !!! Still working and still do her job.
If you have extra resources and money you will never do that but pay $3200 for the disk repair.
The same is with the bulbs. We have tech to produce bulbs working all life but we does not do it.
Old eastern world produces bulbs still works from over 40 years
I urge everyone who is not scared and can risk his information to learn, be patient, experiment
and when someone says that this is impossible ... just to get more energy from these words and
make it happen.

I am from Romania. And I know what you mean about resources and how more or less have to make it work one way or another with basically little to nothing. Overall, I agree with your comment, however it all depends on how someone values their time. If you have all the time in the world, then sure, a little bit here and there, in weeks, months, may be able to achieve something concerning data recovery. Otherwise, there is a whole different story.

Forgot something: in that part of the world, like many other ones throughout the world, one may not pay for something with money. Rather, they pay with work, merchandise exchange, favors, etc. All in all, still more value than $100. It does not seem like a $100 worth of value, because the people have basically commoditized the "work" out of necessity quite heavily just to be able to resolve whatever situation they may be dealing with.

For example, in that part of the world, for a tough data recovery job, I would ask for at least a live pig and hen.

Some years ago some local people attempted to set up a barter system for labour. Unfortunately there was the threat that the bureaurats would get involved, so it didn't take off.

Just to put the value of work into perspective, a colonoscopy for an uninsured patient at a private hospital costs around AU$2K after rebates. Cataract surgery is a similar cost, as is an ear grommet. If a doctor of medicine (plus anaesthetist and nurse) can restore sight in a blind eye, or hearing in a deaf ear, for $2K, then how much should I pay a data recovery "professional" for restoring the bytes on my hard drive?

fzabkar wrote:Some years ago some local people attempted to set up a barter system for labour. Unfortunately there was the threat that the bureaurats would get involved, so it didn't take off.

Just to put the value of work into perspective, a colonoscopy for an uninsured patient at a private hospital costs around AU$2K after rebates. Cataract surgery is a similar cost, as is an ear grommet. If a doctor of medicine (plus anaesthetist and nurse) can restore sight in a blind eye, or hearing in a deaf ear, for $2K, then how much should I pay a data recovery "professional" for restoring the bytes on my hard drive?

Well,
Ask Yourself The Same Question When You Were Just starting To Work .Money Might Have Ment a Great Deal To You .Now You Are a Retired Man On a Mission .The Mission is Simple " To Flaunt Your Collected Knowledge From All Over The Forums " Including The So Called DR Professionals " And Throw it On The Face Of The DR Guys .According To You Because You Can DIY And Because You Have Nothing Else To Do Other Then Sitting And Writing Long Lectures Trying To Explain a Newbie What Does It Take To Make It Work .To Put Your Brain In Prospective Listen To This " Two Days Before i get a customer ,While Handing Over a Seagate 7200.12 HDD To Me He Says That He Had Collected So Much Knowledge From You Tube That He Was Wanting To Transfer The Round Plate From One HDD To Other Lol.You Know What The Issue Was Head 1 Of This 2 Head Drive system Had Few Zones Bad In The Start And We Just Had To Solve The Issue Using SMP Settings .While He Was Discussing I Explain Him I Told Him He Needs a Room Thats Cleaner Then All Other Rooms "Might Be A Small Room Inside a Big Room" ,Then a Needs a Laminar Flow Bench ,Then Lots of Tools Inside That And He Needs To Practice For 3 Months Atleast To even start Thinking Of Doing This .So That 2K Nonesense You Are Talking Is Only Cost of Equiptment Not The Expertise Of The Nurse And Doctor.For You And Few Others Here The Nurse And Doctor Should Not Get Any Extra Money But The Irony Is That They Should Preform The Procedure .Lol Talking About Prospective I Wonder How All These Seasoned Pro's Take This Crap From You 24 Hours Seven " .

And Lol again :lol:

Shame on you, Amarbir.

@Amarbir, this comment in unfair.

One thing is what you can do @home and another is what you can't. As long as you know the limits that is ok.

It's ok to send a drive to someone with a clean room and that is going to invest $$$ in donnor drives and time in a head swap and be charged $600. It's NOT ok to send the drive to that same person and get charged $600 to remove a diode on a PCB or to replace a fuse or even to change the PCB.

The price that a private doctor charges for a surgery should't be the same that you will be charged for a simple consultation.

Also if you have a little cut on a finger you put a band aid on it and you don't go to the doctor. Same if you have a small seasonal flue or a head ache. Unless the symptoms are presistent you don't go to the doctor, right ?

There is a big diference from someone swaping platters because they saw it on youtube and someone asking for advice here and get a reasonable reply that doesn't involve to spend hundreds of $$$ for simple stuff fixes that can be safely done at home.

Also who is pro and who is not ?

Even some days ago we have someone here asking questions over and over again regarding crypto virus and WD drives with 0 capacity, etc .... Turned out that he was working (and possible in charge) for a data recovery firm.

If you go to a clinic you expect that the doctor is professional and certified but if you go to a data recovery firm how to know if the person there knows what he is doing or if he is just opening your drive on the bathroom ?

Not to mention so called professionals using PC-3000 for years without a a clue about what they are doing.

There was a recent case here of someone with PC-3000 grabbing some CPs on a Toshiba. A BUG on PC-3000 retrieves those modules with WRONG SIZE. So because the checksum was wrong (BECAUSE OF THE TOOL) the person attempted to correct the checksum with PC3K and write it back to the drive .... The fault to start with was from PC3K itself, not the CP.

People have blind fait on those tools and can't even tell if something doesn't look right. They just use the tools and period.

Then if it doesn't work or if you damage a drive from a client chances are you will get away with it. At least here on the forum people might jump up on you and tell - DON'T DO THAT !!!

How many times was @fzabkar wrong or how many times did he put the data of someone here at risk or cause more damage that it was already done ?

How many times that the so called pros have done actions to drives that could cause permanent data loss ?

Relax and go easy on him... :agree:

LarrySabo wrote:Shame on you, Amarbir.

Well,
2 Weeks Or ODD Ago i inspected 150 HDD's in My Laminaar ,Almost 90% of the Drive That Were Tempered Were Tempered To Their Death bed .So The Nurse And The Doctor Does Matter As My Initial Statement Also .Talking About You Comment " Its Too General ,Kindly Elaborate Why You thing I Should Be Shamed Of Myself " .Today i am teaching a student who has 8 offices in one very famous city and into data recovery field since salvation data years ,He has salvation data , dfl and also pc3k ,Deepspar Too .But He has no practise and tools to work with at physical level with hdds almost 100% of his head unstuck cases are NOW dead .More Then 75 HDD's He Has Got To Me to Recover ,Would Love To Show You All The Result of a few

Amarbir[CDR-Labs] wrote:Now You Are a Retired Man On a Mission .The Mission is Simple " To Flaunt Your Collected Knowledge From All Over The Forums " Including The So Called DR Professionals " And Throw it On The Face Of The DR Guys .According To You Because You Can DIY And Because You Have Nothing Else To Do Other Then Sitting And Writing Long Lectures Trying To Explain a Newbie What Does It Take To Make It Work .

I Wonder How All These Seasoned Pro's Take This Crap From You 24 Hours Seven " .

@Amrabir, the above are the comments I find shameful. I was taught that, if you can't say something helpful (including constructive criticism), don't say anything at all. If you were as helpful as fzabkar tries to be, I'd be proud of you. It seems to me that fzabkar is on a mission--it's to help as many people as he can. I think he deserves more respect that you showed. That's the last I have to say on the matter.

One of my main beefs with the data recovery profession is in regard to the lack of accreditation standards. The secretive nature of the technology makes it impossible to teach the subject, let alone assess the competence of those who practice it. It's not like regular professions which require a bachelor degree or diploma or trade certificate. That's why I refer to data recovery professionals in inverted commas.

The way I see it, the tree of competence is as follows:

Within each category there are those who do little more than regurgitate the canned solutions provided by their expensive tools, but there are also real experts who are capable of developing solutions of their own.

One thing which I find annoying is the almost total disregard for electronic knowledge. For example, there are people who will torture an entire NAND flash array ("chip-off" recovery) when a simple electronic repair would have sufficed, or people who can't differentiate between a NAND flash IC and a flash controller on a circuit diagram, or people who can't tell the difference between a TVS diode and a "TVS resistor", whatever that is.

Whilst it may not appear that way, I have genuine respect for those who are experts in this business. I particularly admire the tool developers and those people who are able to recover data from an unknown monolith.

by the talks, i sense, very few people here are B.E or Bsc...Most of them have learnt by DIY and experience has got them to a level.....technology being the passion.......that's it.

I have seen and observe this in general...people who fix stuff have higher ego issues than the designers..I bet, the blabber mouths could even solve a simple beta gamma function problem, leave alone designing anything productive!

rgds
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Results of the D.I.Y. in pictures

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