Today I was writing an article for publication, and I thought of a related topic. I'd like to explore a few ideas to see what folks think, although I plan to write it up eventually.

The "bottom line" is that we are seeing a considerable upswing in failed D.I.Y. recovery attempts lately. These are mostly drives that could have been recovered if they had handled properly and professionally. Stuff like Hitachi drives swapped with PCBs from other models; opened drives with contamination; damaged drives run to death, etc.

Many folks aren't going to pay for recovery and are going to try their hand at D.I.Y. anyway. That's their business, of course. My concern is for folks who actually want the data, but who send it to an unqualified third-party "service center" or try their own hand.

There has always been a tension between some D.I.Y. folks on HDD GURU with so-called "Pros." Most pros are well-meaning when they say that it's time to send a drive to a pro, and many readers think they are just trying to drum up business for themselves. The mantra of the hard drive recovery pro is — or should be — first, do no (additional) harm if possible.

Anyway, I'm thinking of writing a comprehensive white paper of ways to determine the extent of hard drive failure without opening a drive, and which scenarios lend themselves to D.I.Y. and which ones surely don't. The intended audience would be 3rd party service companies who do "data recovery" on the side, without the proper tools or equipment.

There's a lot you can tell from the circumstances of a drive's failure, i.e. it is almost never a good idea to run a drive that has been dropped. And there are other symptoms (such as no spin-up, repetitive clicking, etc.) that SHOULD be obvious caveats but that are still ignored. You can glean useful data from the S.M.A.R.T. attributes if you know what to look for.

There are also other "subtle" signs such as increasing difficulty with reading sectors, or problems with booting a drive, that may indicate a bad head and possible media damage.

The problem with bad heads and media damage is cascading failure, where the problem gets worse and worse until the drive is simply unrecoverable.

No treatment of this topic can be foolproof. Nonetheless, the more good info a well-intended DIYer has, the better for all concerned.

BTW, there was a great post today by a DIYer: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=26839&p=183689#p183689

Thoughts?

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

As a computer repair tech trying to increase my data recovery capabilities beyond logical recoveries, I would welcome such a white paper. Blaming computer repair techs for making a mess of things is unfair when information and training on how to do it right is so hard to come by, and the tools to do so are prohibitively expensive. A strategy and suggested resources for people like me on how to grow into this business in a responsible and affordable way would have a large and welcoming audience, I'm sure. We're not going to go out and buy a DDI, PC3000 and laminar bench to handle the little business we're likely to see, but a hardware imager and affordable tools/software to diagnose/fix firmware issues would be a good second step--the first step being educating oneself on the subject.

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Sabo Computer Repairs & Data Recovery

I have noticed that Youtube has plenty of videos for doing things like head swaps from DR companies, but few from DIY'ers. I first thought that the videos were being over populated by DR companies to make it difficult to find the DIY videos. Upon further searching I realized that there are actually very few DIY videos and couldnt find ONE video that showed a DIY'er recover data or even mount a drive after a head swap. As a DIY'er myself, I thought about documenting my attempts with video but all of my attempts have failed. I'm not saying its impossible but it sure isn't easy, even for the technically inclined. I wish DR companies doing videos of physical HDD recoveries like performing head swaps would explain in the video what they are doing and how you are surely to fail at attempting it 99% of the time. They make it look so easy that it encourages people like myself to give it a go. Ofcourse Im not against giving it a go if you cant afford a pro or dont have much to lose as far as critical data is concerned but more information should be available on what NOT to do without plenty of practice.

With a bit of practice I may be able to recover my drive myself, as of now I have little choice since noone will work on it since I've opened the lid and tinkered with the inside parts. I will let everyone know if I ever do recover my data and in the end, it looks like I will spend just as much if not more on donor drives for practice than if I would have just sent it to a pro to begin with. Not backuping up data in a timely manner is a lesson to be learned, for some of us..the hard way! I appreciate any white papers and I will contribute however possible with my experience so far at failing to recover data from a physically faulted drive.

Maybe a "first check" flow chart type would be easier with breakout points for "this requires hardware intervention" or "this requires an understanding of <requisite skill> "
Laptop / PC / External / Flash
|-> does laptop need complete disassemly to reach HD?


Y-------Does the drive power up?---N -> Check/Swap cables

Y--------- Has the drive been dropped -------->N
|.................................................................|
Possible physical damage <STOP> Y<---usb?--->N

Thought of this as a "Time Rich : Money Poor" guide for users or a

"Don't make matters worse" for the technically adept but limited gear or "general IT" qual'ed guys.

Kudos mate, wish you success.

Kern

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