Hello everybody, looking to find some advice as to what company I can use to recover a hard drive with. I have a WD 1500ADFD - 00NLR0 drive that has gone dead on me. This happened without warning and was being used as a backup drive for other drives I was cleaning up. While the BIOS recognized the drive, just trying to access it would lock up windows. Anyways, as you can probably guess everything was on that drive... EVERYTHING! All my mp3s, videos, docs, pictures, as well as a few downloads that are since irretrievable. Privacy is of importance to me so I ended up sending the drive to SalvageData.com. After 2 1/2 weeks however they told me the drive had corrupted firmware and was unrecoverable. They since have sent the drive back to me and it's in my possession now. My question is, who can I possibly send the drive to now that can recover my data? I had considered Drive Savers, and possibly Scott Moulton, however I'm writing on the forum here since there seems to be some experienced people here who may know what would be my best chance. SalvageData said they had my drive in a cleanroom for several days and came close a few times to recovery, but failed. Any help would be extremely appreciated! Thank you!

Sounds like a load of BS to me.

SO the firmware is at fault but they had it in the clean room? hmmmm, that makes a lot of sense. You don't need to open the drive to access the firmware. I suspect there is either a faulty head, lots of bad sectors (unlikely as they should be able to cope with this) or it is a firmware fault which they couldn't handle.

Theres a few people on this forum from the US who might be able to help.

Perhaps it's bs, I wouldn't know. All I received in reply about the drive was the following: Unfortunately due to the extent of physical/logical damage found on the media, this case has been deemed not recoverable. An email detailing specific findings to follow..... We have completed the diagnosis and recovery research for your hard drive. Your drive was evaluated in our lab room where we were unable to read the specified data from the drive surface due to media corruption. There is no physical damage to the media, but we’ve discovered that certain areas on the media critical to disk operation have been overwritten and damaged (corruption). Corrupted information cannot be recovered. At times the firmware of the drive can be recreated, sometimes not. Due to the extent of the damage the data is unrecoverable.

I would be nice to assume that all "pros" subscribe to the same best practices when working on drives, but that would be naive.

WD drives have alignment issues after you open them up. Maybe less so on the Raptor series, which is the drive you've got -- I've done successful head swaps on these but boy, are those magnets ever strong, and held in place with adhesive . . .

My point is that you don't want to open one up unless you absolutely have to. Granted, sometimes it's a judgement call.

Anyway, if a drive can read and write properly, in most cases firmware corruption can be overcome. There may be exceptions; the degree of success really depends upon knowledge and skill.

I'd want to write them back and ask them if their records show which specific modules were unrecoverable. And also ask if re-alignment was an issue. At which point they are sure to become a little paranoid . . . .

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

I find strange asking in THIS forum where to go. 3 company names in the original post etc. etc... Maybe I am a little bit suspicious.... but as we say here, "to be suspicious is a sin, but you're always right" , I have a precise opinion about this case/post.
Well, you know who the "big boys" aka "big players" in the market are, so take your own conclusion(s).

either way, it's hard to believe the reputable firm will give you that kind of answer... I would say if SalvageData say it's unrecoverable, it's unrecoverable .PERIOD!!! You may be able to get the second opinion but I'm sure it won't be cheap since the warranty seal is broken. (Some non-refundable diagnostic fee for sure...)

I'm sure in any large firm there are techs who are awesome and techs who are lazy. I'd say get a second opinion at least before you give up.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Their statement doesn't really talk about firmware. Basically I think they are trying to say that they found physical damage on the media. Aka rings or radial scratch. It may still be recoverable if this is the case depending on the location of the damage and if micro dust has spread all over the place. It will costs lots of heads which is probably why the company ruled it not worth their time.


Regards,

This makes me smile.

I think you have a great chance for recover the data, but please try one really skilled company....

Regards,
Janos

Agree.

Made a phone call back to them this morning in regards to this. I was told "There were lots of errors and bad sectors and that the firmware was corrupted" but that's it, they couldn't really say where the bad sectors were. I inquired what was found when they opened the drive and they told me they didn't find any damage on the platters and a platter swap wasn't done nor attempted. Basically they just opened it to find out if there was any damage to the drive itself. When inquired about re-alignment they stated again that they didn't remove the platters from the drive so that was a non-issue.





Not really sure why you find it strange, I'm asking in THIS forum because it's all posts regarding data recovery and repair. Don't know why you'd be suspicious, I don't work for SD, or anybody else... well, I do, but it's not computer related! I'm inquiring because one company has failed to retrieve my data and I want to try again, but want to know who would be best to go with as it may be my last chance.


PM me if possible your opinion.

Agree!

that's the point of my post, was to be open to suggestions. Anybody?

I would say send it to "jono-ats". You'll get an honest diagnostic. If it's recoverable but may cost a lot of time, he'll tell you about it!

I did busines with him before. You can trust him!!!