Got a drive in the other day, it was inside a ziplock bag with a rubber band around the bag holding the drive
upon closer inspection first thing I notice the cover did not have any screws on it
took the drive out of the bag and the lid almost fell off. a closer look inside and the platter had a nasty scratch
that could not have been cause by heads but by some one not been careful "enduser".

The only thing holding this drive together is a rubber band

Sounds like an interesting start... getting some popcorn to see how the rest of the story unfolds.

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You have a backup...right? | Tech Repairs on YouTube

Lucky it is a hefty rubber band because you can use it to slingshot the drive out the door

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East Anglian Data Recovery Services
http://www.eadr.co.uk

"If it's your only copy - then it's not a backup!"

I thought world is big enough and rarely see kind of similar cases around here ...

but ....

now the 2nd time within a short period to learn from a place in our city:

A "potential" customer phoned and then came to show me an opened external
2,5" usb hdd with usb pcb.

A few 4-5cm wires where soldered to the pcb. Outside, when the plastic cover
was closed 5 thin wires where soldered to the pins of a usb cable. This was
how it was handed over to customer ( for € 80,- ) ... according to "customer".
The soldering of all wires to the usb cable was broken when is saw the hdd
yesterday.

I refused to do anything and told the customer to contact the previous specialist.

+++

Not too long ago, about a year maybe, a customer presented us a disk. Before we even got to working on it he had said he used his 2H drafting pencil and a micrometer and a jeweler's loupe to mark the platters so it would be easier to align them at re-assembly time.

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On a clear disk you can seek forever.

Funny that - we use a similar method, but instead of the micrometer and 2H pencil we use a junior ruler and jumbo marker....... seems to do the trick....

But seriously though... kudos to the guy for knowing that they need to stay aligned in the first place.... and it's better than getting an envelope full of bits and the platters wrapped in bubble wrap....

Yes.... been there, no kidding.

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East Anglian Data Recovery Services
http://www.eadr.co.uk

"If it's your only copy - then it's not a backup!"

Yet, when we suggest to the technicians who do these things that they should stop, they swear up and down that they do this all the time and always succeed. Meanwhile, we are left to clean up the pieces and are somehow considered the bad guys when we charge more for the extra work and extremely reduced odds.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Or: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=26262

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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