From experience, if you hand over a partial completed job to a customer it ends up taking much more of your time. The reason because the customer is never off the phone asking questions afterwards on how to complete it. They feel because they've paid you for part of the job, you should help them with the rest.

Exactly so, a "half-ass" job is more hassle than it's worth.

We refuse to do them too.

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PC Image Data Recovery
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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

What you're clearly not understanding is the fact that you can not read any data from a drive in the condition of the one the OP has. There's no point in giving any advise, tips, tricks, or explanations because the repair is far beyond DIY and would cost tens of thousands in equipment investment to possibly perform.

There's no trade union mentality here, just no one wants to waste their time trying to explain algebra to a monkey (figuratively speaking). If we tried to explain what the repair entails you wouldn't even understand half the terminology.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

I would love to learn about it thou, data recovery seems super interesting, but it feels kind of like the knowledge is hidden behind closed doors.

is there any place you can read or learn about it?
and as DIY goes, how far can you get without proper setups, where are the limitations? i find theese things intrigues me!

Read this entire forum for starters. Research for free manuals and go from there.

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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

It's not a partially completed job it that's what the job was contacted for. That, by definition, is a completed job.

In my experience, attitudes like this stem from poor business practices, and failure to have statements of work. A contract for work is just that you can either deliver or you can't.

In my specific case you'd never be able to extract anything that would resemble a filesystem you could recognize. So again getting an image is all I want and there are no takers.

It's almost as if so many dr places overstate their success numbers they don't want to ever release a raw image where they've failed to recover files so people don't how much smoke and mirrors there is in the business.

If anyone wants to recover my data I'm willing to pay and have always been willing to pay. Go ahead and try to recover file, i dont really care cause it wont work. The only stipulation I would have is proved the raw image as well. If you're imaging the drive anyway this should be simple. Kind of like a mechanic providing you your old parts back when they work on your car. (Which they will all do)

That seems like a reasonable request to me. Whatever happened to the adage, "the customer is always right"?

In fact I can think of several reasons why a customer wouldn't want his file system recovered, not the least of which is privacy. For example, a client might have a physically damaged drive encoded with TrueCrypt.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

If you are dealing with somebody who knows what they are doing, it is absolutely standard procedure. A recovery of critical files will more than likely not be successful without this step.

Write out here answers to the following questions:
1) What is the full model of the device (ideally a picture of your very own device would be best)
2) what happened leading to failure
3) what exactly happened with the drive since then (e.g. what tests were run on it, who worked on it, what were the outcome, any reports, etc.)
4) What exactly would you like for the deliverable to be? (e.g. a physical drive of different model that would be clone of the failed drive, etc)
5) Is the data encrypted and if so, with what exactly (asking because depending on what encryption scheme it is, then it would make sense why somebody may have declined working on the case because failing to image key sections of the data will render the data inaccessible in a non-encrypted format)
6) Your best and final of what you want to spend without asking for discounts and all the non-sense that comes with pricing
7) Any other expectations (be very clear here)

Answering these questions in detail will clarify why nobody wants to take on your offer.

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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

Model: ST3000DM001
PN: 9YN166-570
FW: CC9F

Drive was in normal use. No power surges, physical shocks, or non-standard temperatures.

After failure was detected, drive was power cycled a few times to attempt to see if it would be recognized. It displayed the typical symptoms of internal failure, spin up, a few seoncds of seeking and spin down. No other work has been done. Drive has not been opened.

Any method that provides the data in a way that can be written out to an image with dd would be suitable. Since the size would prove unwieldy to download in total I would prefer it delivered on media of suitable size broken up in to chunks with sha/md5 signatures. Alternatively a multi-part rar with par2 repair files would work too. I doubt that even in the best case there will be a error free read of the disk, but even if there is, with this amount of data there is still a strong possibility of silent data corruption, not only in the imaging process, but also in reading the deliverable. I would prefer to minimize that possibility.

It is not encrypted, but I'd prefer not to go in to details on the forum.

In the $3000 range is where I'd be comfortable landing. Less is better but if more money increased the chances of success then I would be open to a higher amount, but probably not double that amount. I understand there would be an additional cost for return media.

I would expect a lab that has experience dealing with this model of drives and their repair, which i know is a pain, but someone knows these. I would expect an honest evaluation, which I'd be willing to pay a nominal fee for, an estimate of cost with the probability of successful read and estimate of percentage of sectors that can be read.

Model: ST3000DM001
PN: 9YN166-570
FW: CC9F

Drive was in normal use. No power surges, no physical shocks, no abnormal temperatures.

Drive was power cycled several times after the failure was known. Drives symptoms were power on, spin up, heads seek for a few seconds and drives power downs. Drive has never been opened, freezered or any thing else bizarre. Drive has never been examined by a DR lab.

Since this amount of would be unwieldy for most to upload/download, delivered on physical media would be desired in something I could use dd on as a sector level image. I'd prefer it broken up in to reasonable chunks with sha/md5 signatures or a multi-part rar with par2 files for repair. Even though it's likely there will not be a completely successful initial read, with this amount of data there is still a high probability of silent corruption on the delivered media. Having signatures to detect this or a repairable archive would prevent this.

No, the data is not encrypted. I'd prefer not to go in to details on the forum.

In the $3000 range would be where I'd want to spend. If more money increased the probability of success I would be open to that but probably not double the amount. I understand the return media would be an additional cost.

I'd expect to find someone experienced with the repair & recovery of these horrible drives. I'd want a initial examination, for which I'd be willing to pay a nominal fee, and from that a quote that would detail the probability of successful read and an estimate of the amount of recoverable sectors.


I'm very interested in this clarification as no one has ever remotely even asked for this level of detail.

Wow. Most labs these days are quoting below US$1K for a full recovery, assuming there is no media damage.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

are you saying no one wants to take it for this price ?

If you're looking to get the image, we should be able to make it for you, unless the drive bears severe media damage.
We're overseas, but since it you've been looking for some time already, job doesn't seem to be an emergency.
Please check your PM.

EDIT: Just read the second page of this topic and noticed further details, including the budget. We'll fit it for sure, without any increasing.

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• Remote RAID, NAS, SAN, VMware, DVR (CCTV), flash and tape recovery. Data recovery support.

Not necessarily. It may be under $1k, BUT the customer will likely pay for parts, which is an expense out of their pocket that if part is damaged in the process and data is unrecoverable, then it is an unrecoverable cost. So, people always forget this detail.
As always, it also depends on the location in the world we are talking about.
Understanding risk vs. cost matters to most customers.

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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

You seem to just not have come across knowledgeable data recovery folks.

Based on your explanation, unless there is severe media damage, a recovery, at least in theory at this point in time, seems feasible. A proper evaluation is necessary to determine the extent of damage and whether there are any chances to get something.

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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

To provide a sector-by-sector (drive to drive) clone for this drive we charge one of two prices in Canadian dollars:

$450 - minor recovery (no change of heads or motor)
$900 + parts - major recovery (usually head changes)

Most of the time, this model of drive reads all heads except head 1 at full speed. Head 1 either reads very slowly with a few read errors, or not at all. Basically, it usually is a major recovery. Just finished one up the other day and and am working on another right now.

The big question comes into play, "how does one measure success?" It is very rare that these drives can be mirrored without read errors. What happens if the lab is only able to read all heads but one...and even after a head change, get next to nothing more?

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery