If you get your data back and it's worth the 1.2K to you then you have by definition made the right decision. As you can see from the thread there is debate about how best way to process these drives.

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Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

Ok, an update.

Just got a call from the recovery laboratory and they said my drive is 100% dead and nothing can be done.

I asked them what hapened, they would not give me a very specific anser, just something like 'these drives are very complex and the spare parts are very specific' and things like that, I dont no what to say... They have my drive alread packed and in the courier to be returned to me.

This is very sad.

I don't say bad words about this laboratories because it seems they tried their best for almost 3 weeks, but no data.

I'm hearing any suggestions guys.

Thank your for answer.
Yes, my data is worth the 1.2K but unfortunately the drive is dead and now it looks like game over

As I said originally - I would have sent it to Northwind, previous (successful) experience with a drive model is very important. That may still be an option depending on what's been done to the drive, but you have doubled the risk to your data by having 2 companies messing with it.

_________________
Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

The word "dead" does not make much sense in the data recovery world, as it does not quite represent the state of a hard drive accurately.
In the event the drive does not spin, some people refer to this condition as "dead".
Not spinning is caused by an underlying problem: electronics, firmware issues, ROM/Bios corruption etc.

Also, labs do not work 24/7 for 3 weeks. Various things happen through the process with interruptions through those 3 weeks, based on how the case evolves.

I think what would be more helpful here is to inform us of 2 things:
1) What do YOU recall may have happened with the drive that caused it to no longer work (was it dropped?, did you notice freezing, but still being recognized, etc)
2) What technical diagnosis explanation did the lab provide you for what was actually wrong with the drive?

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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

Thanks Lardman.

stelitsos, you're still welcome to send us your drive; however, if it's been opened or tempered with in any serious way, there will be a non-refundable fee applied.

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

I just need to understand one thing... Are you in Greece? Why not northwind? Ontrack must have been the worst choice you could have done.

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Thank you for replys.

@Lardman -- I understand. I did what I thought was best, now it seems you was right from the start.

@labtech -- My answers: 1) It wass working fine, then my laptop suddenly stopped, I see a BSOD, then I restarted laptop, it freeze on Bios screen. I took it nearest PC repair shop and they said it's the hdd to blame, they replaced hdd and laptop works again. I plugged drive and I can feel it work, I put my ear next to it and I can hear it spin with good sounds. No freightening sounds. 2) I just received my drive back and I called them. They said something like "the drive has hardware internal problem" but nothing more detailed. They were a little rude, too.

@northwind -- I will call you later today. I can't come to your lab because the center of Athens is closed today due to 17/11, but I can make an appointment maybe for later today or tomorrow? It is ok to pay the fee, I understand.

@DRUG -- I did what I thought was good and from what I read around. I read in some forum that this lab is 'the best in Greece'. I will send it to northwind today and pray for the best.

It may not have been an internal hardware problem, unless the laptop was dropped, which would have caused that.
Maybe Northwind could still help of the disks themselves aren't damaged.

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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

This drive is very difficult to solve. Even if it has no MD (media damages) after two failed attempts, and hardware part of job will be done successfully, last, most difficult part will be to solve issue with 2nd smr translator. And there are no commercials tool to deal with mq4 models yet, nor pc3k nor mrt no any other cheap BS. Only private internal software, and only limited amount of companies in all over the world own that.
So, sending drive to "anyone very close" without confidence they know their staff, pointless.

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Angel Data Recovery

On MQ0 Toshiba common problem is overloaded Glist, drive hang and not respond. As you mention drive spinning fine. so probably this is the issue.

Have you ever tried to read and fix glist on mq04 ?

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Angel Data Recovery

In MQ04 there's module 0x01 (AS, Additional sliplist). Glist data is in there. It has some CS

By the way,






If there weren't for some damaged areas, I'd say 100% of data will be recovered, now about less than 1% will be lost. Or maybe much less than that.
A lot of data inside this drive, actually. More than 900GB.

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

Nice to hear that, would you like to expose the real issue? As we want to know because many DR professional rejected first.

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Data Recovery, Remote support & Training https://disksolution.com.pk/

OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!

I just got a call from these guys that recovery is almost finished, about all documents was saved.!!!

I am SO HAPPY!

I will write back an update when I get the new drive with the data to say the experience overall!

THANK YOU!

:cool:

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

I just accepted a package with a new hard drive with all my data inside!!

I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! everything works!

I want to thank in public George and Dimitra for being very kind and gave a lot of help to my endless questions!

This is amazing!
thank you!!!!!! I will tell all my friends about this!

Thanks for the nice testimonials.

It was an interesting case and it was nice to meet you in person (even though you had to travel 500km to be close to your drive!). You're a nice, easy-going guy, even though you've been calling every two hours and pinged our head-engineer in his cell phone at 22:30 in the night. It was ok because you've made clear how crucial the data was, and we shared the same urge to recover them. It was important that you DID understand the details of every step of the procedure and respected boundaries (no, you're not allowed to be inside the clean room while we're working with your drive...) and you were kind and that's somehow rare in our days.

(For a week, this guy was standing outside our lab waiting for us to show up at 8.30 in the morning and was buying us breakfast...)
(He's something else, but in a good way.)
(We've sent him his data to Amsterdam, he called 5 times to make sure we have a copy, in case something happens during transit. 5 times...)

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

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