Hello,

I dropped my external hard drive, a 1tb WD Passport. It was working until a couple of days later when it started clicking. I sent it to Kroll Ontrack. A week later passed with the drive in the clean room and now I am getting my hard drive shipped back with none of the files recovered. They tell me that they are usually the last place for a hard drive to go to before all hope is lost.

When I asked a representative if I can get a report for me to show in case I send it to another company, she told me this:

"The drive went into the clean room and we were unable to image it with our tools. Just let any company you contact know that it came here first."

I know I'm an idiot for not having a backup but I have some very important personal and work related files in there. If anyone can give me advice on what I can do, my family would appreciate it.

note: Sorry if I posted on the wrong area. I am new to the forum.

We've recovered from several drives after Ontrack called them unrecoverable, as I'm sure is the case for many other labs on this forum.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Yes, sometimes larger companies will deem a case "unrecoverable" simply because they aren't willing to invest the time into it or it won't be profitable to do so. Very possible that it is recoverable, unless there's a lot of scratching on the platters. I think I've only a few times seen a My Passport that we couldn't get at least some data from it.

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

Saddly sometimes people make an "educated guess" of calling it unrecoverable due to their lack of skills. I would never call a disk unrecoverable unless I've had 10 people looking at it first.

Just hope there isn't much platter damage and you will probably be fine after a few $$$.

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BTC Wallet - 3AoQPTBsz9PbfoanCx44Lw76Y2TwtKa1x5
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/datarecovery_morde.pt/

Thanks, that was a good laugh.

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http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

The first step is to send it to a DR pro nearby for a diagnosis, if possible ask for detailed pictures in case they say it's unrecoverable you will at least have an idea of the damage; there are a few pros nearby, maybe some people here will guide you to a recommended lab, most of the time diagnostics are free.

We just did a 99.99% recovery on a 2 TB WD Passport that allegedly was at that "last hope" place before we got it.

You needn't go overseas. We're WD Preferred Partners. Our diagnostics are free.

www.datasaversllc.com

Jon

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

Jon +1

Jon, +2

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http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

Not sure whats happening with the 'Big Boys' at the moment. Just had a 1TB WD in that had been to that very big DR company in CA. Drive was deemed unrecoverable due to scoring to the platters. We got it and it hadn't even been opened. It did have head failure and the swap worked fine and got the data back. Still, the more they do this, the more work we get

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group