Hello guys,

First time poster and newbie, so forgive my lack of knowledge in the HDD repair field. I'm basically posting on here as a means to get some help and insight on a HDD of mine that crashed last month. I sent the HDD to three different places (Data Tech Labs, SalvageData and DataRescue) all three said I had severe platter damage and were unable to save any bit of information off the drive. I have a Western Digital 3TB drive and the data on it is extremely important. I know its a long shot but I was wondering if anyone out there had any advice for me on what to do...If I can't get this fixed I'm pretty my life is over. I'm willing to spend any amount of money to get this fixed.

I don't have any photos of the drive only because i don't feel comfortable opening up the drive in a contaminated space. They said they couldn't ready anything from the 5 platters and I don't think they tried a head replacement because of what they saw. When I get the report back from the company I can post it up here for you all to see.

Thanks.
Desperate.

I also sent a PCB board in with the drive that they wasn't utilized. They simply stated that the chip on the patient board was fried.. which makes me ask more questions..

Would a spinstand be helpful in this situation??

Need to see pictures to give any sort of opinion.

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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!

If the damage is severe enough visually, then likely a "read" attempt by replacing failed parts is not feasible.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

contact jono-ats , a pro , from this forum,
good luck

two-platters-truck-t24888.html

I would love to take pics of the drive but I don't wanna open the case and risk any further chaos.

I was looking at Flashback Data recovery. They seem to specialize in damaged drives and take on a lot cases that most other companies refuse to work on.

What do you guys think?

I'll also get in touch with Jono-ats. Thanks

I second jono-ats

He will give a professional analysis and sound opinion

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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!

I am with Flashback data, since you named us. As others have said there is no way to know without looking at the platters.

Was the drive dropped, knocked over?

You said that the PCB was fried, so that is not an issue to bypass.

Depending on where and how bad the scratches are on the platters it could prevent any set of parts from working correctly.

was this an external drive, or internal. if it is external we have the encryption also to deal with

You can definitely contact us or Jono.

also i think there is someone on these board from salvage data and datatech. not sure tho. if they are, maybe they can share some insight if they remember.

Hi thanks for all the replies- it was an external drive. But it wasn't dropped or knocked over. Atleast not to my knowledge...

I don't even need all of the data off the drive just a folder.

I just don't understand how data is able to be retrieved from drives that have been in all sorts of situations but this drive that I made sure to move only if I absolutely had to has THIS much damage that deems it unrecoverable...

meh what is difficult for one tech can be easy for another..

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On a clear disk you can seek forever.

These drives are difficult to deal with, often even minor scratches on this architecture can make a recovery very challenging. I don't know about the abilities of Data Rescue(not familiar), but at least the other two companies are reputable. While it is true that some companies have more expertise and that different companies will have various strengths and weaknesses because they have spent an excessive amount of time doing R&D on a specific hard drive architecture, SSD controller or RAID type, etc... I would say that if it is truly as bad as mentioned by the companies, chances for even a partial recovery will be very slim.



When you hear about spectacular recoveries from flood / water damage , fire ,etc... it usually sounds very impressive, but in most cases the platters are still intact. Platter damage is usually the worst type of failure, and a slight bump to the drive can sometimes be the initiator for severe media damage. To give you an example, we have recovered data from fire in multiple situations where things looked a lot worst then they are in the end. We have recovered data from laptops that have been smashed with baseball bats, run over by cars, etc... but we have also had cases where a simple bump to a hard drive while powered on (important factor) has caused the heads to make contact with the platters and damaging both primary and secondary service area, leaving the data unrecoverable.



Unfortunately it would not. This is a high density hard drive, nothing to be done here with a spinstand.


Not trying to be a pessimist here, just trying to help.



P.S. With that being said there are a few individuals who specialize in difficult recovery cases, where others have failed. If you don't mind sending the drive to Europe you can also contact Pepe.

Good luck and hope you can get some of your data recovered!

I don't mind sending my drive to europe. are there any companies you would recommend? I'm sending my drive to flashdata today.. hopefully they have some better news than the rest.

Good luck my friend, hope they can assist you with that. If not you can try Pepe in Hungary or Dommer in Chicago, they are both here on the forum and some of the brightest Data Recovery Guys around. Try just sending them a pm.

that is good to hear you are sending it to me. If you give me approval I will post pics of the inside of the drive when i get it.

I am hoping it is not as bad as the others have said and we are able to get the data for you.

Thanks Quasimodo and Cleanroom..

If I don't get at least some of this data back I don't know what I will do..the past few weeks have been absolute hell for me.

We just got this drive in and id went to the three companies in this order. Data Tech labs, then salvage data, then Drive Saver.

Now we have it.

My initial evaluation is not that great from what I see. Board is missing one screw, two of the 4 board screw holes on the base are stripped so the screws will not stay in. Client sent an extra board which one of the previous companies marked as original. The parts board that was on there had a visible blown TVS. weird... maybe they got it switched. not an issue

Now to the inside. All the surfaces have that light crash when the heads get stuck between the ramp and the platters. I cleaned up the residue it leaves.

4 Platter, 8 working surfaces. Pulled the sticker of the bottom to look at surface 0 and it looks fairly clean. Surface 1,3,6 have a pretty descent crash line about 10% in from the front. Surface 7 has a light micro scratch at the same location.

So... it is not a bad as I was expecting, but it is still not pretty. Luckily these drive are easy to do head swaps on.

I am hoping I can get a set of parts in it and can read the back end to get the encryption info, and then start working my way back till it hits the crash. Hopefully stop it before i kill the heads and start back at the front to get the small area between the crash's and the beginning.

Wish me luck

I wish you the best of British luck!!!

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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!

Hope it goes well. Dont forget pics if customer approves.

I love all the drama of a telenovela.
Good luck and keep us up to date.