We have been working with a client who has experienced several mishaps with their service company...one of which is that they provided her with another client's drive to ship to us for recovery. We have since received the correct original drive.

Client's original reported problem:
- could not access data on external hard drive, "Unable to find directory path"

Steps done when the drive arrived at RFI:
- 250GB Western Digital (Marvell Chipset) with the usual signs of blown electronics
- drive still detects and works, but it is likely that it intermittently fails
- reprogrammed a donor PCB and replaced, just to be sure that we get a clean mirror
- after getting a clean mirror, tested the drive with the original PCB with MHDD and passed
- mirror shows NTFS partition with a fresh install of Windows on it (dated two days prior to our receiving the drive and in the possession of the service company)
- after searching the drive, we were able to determine that the original file system was FAT32
- it seems that the technician not only overwrote data on the drive with more than 1GB of Windows data, but they managed to destroy the FAT tables

After talking to the technician, here is what I found out:
- they try several data recovery programs
- when they don't work, they reformat the drive (apparently, this is a recommended step for data recovery and has very high success rate for recovering the data)
- the reformat is done by an image restore, from what I understand
- they use the freezer with very high success rates
- they also can change PCBs without moving the ROM information to the donor PCB and it works every time

So, my questions to this community are:
- does anyone here, professional or a DIY tech, recommend reformatting the original hard drive and copy windows onto it to recover data?
- does anyone here, professional or a DIY tech, have 100% success changing PCBs without any modification to the donor PCB?

The tech feels that it is only my opinion that he didn't take the correct steps in order to gain access to the data. He informed me that there is lots of information online that condones his steps and that over the many years he has been doing this, this is the first time he has had any problem. He also feels that his waiver that the made the client sign which states that he isn't responsible if he loses their data will cover him in this scenario where he actually overwrote the data they wanted back.

I'm really curious to hear what you have to say and what you do when you encounter such scenarios.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Obviously this is ridiculous

I guess the waiver probably does protect him from lawsuits but not from being a moron/asshole

You should ask him if he would mind if you disclosed his name and company along with these "techniques"

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

I am pretty confident that they have no idea what they are doing, and are just shooting in the dark and getting lucky.


The reason they may have "good luck" reformatting is if they are using a Windows based PC for file recovery likely if the MBR is damaged the drive causes windows to "hang" and obviously will not detect, but once it has been formatted it will, because a new MBR has been written.

A much easier way to fix this problem is to actually just remove the MBR all together (since file recovery software can scan the drive and find all the data with no need for an MBR) The goal is to just make it so Windows doesn't "Freak out" when you plug the drive in.

Of course you need to image the drive first, and you are working with the copy only.

To delete MBR, you just need to write 00s to MBR sector.


The freezer is all bad, although i can say i have had success with specific drives (in my testing). I have only ever used the method once ever to recover customer data, and i was able to take a drive from imaging no data, to imaging ~96%.

Its just the question whether you / the customer gets that "standard procedure" confirmed on paper - or witnesses of this
conversation.

I am sure that even with the signature of customer on such an agreement - this "so called technician" is liable for the loss
of customers data because of a gross negligent act.

Would advise customer to go to police or court immediately

+++

I, too, do this procedure from time to time. But, never on the original drive. I think the big thing for technicians doing things like I described is that they never take any steps necessary to properly diagnose the problem nor any steps to avoid compounding the problem. Then, when things go bad and they have exhausted all their options, they then send their clients to data recovery professionals who don't have much chance at getting any data back...or at least not at the same price it would have been before things got messed up.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

imo, he violated his own waiver by overwriting the drive. he didn't lose the data, he helped destroy it. doesn't seem like he made any effort to preserve the data.

In the technician's defense, he did do what he thought was right, based on what he has read online. Unfortunately, it was not the right thing to do and only made things worse; reinforcing why the professionals on this forum try to avoid giving out too much information. A slight misinterpretation might result in a lot of unnecessary disasters.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Does is make some one correct if he bases his decisions on someones opinion? No!
You have to rely on scientific fact or generally accepted rules.

Internet has a lot of information, but you have to be able to figure out which info is correct and which is crap.

Just based on board switching, you can tell that person has no clue what he is talking about.

If someone will bring him to court, his "disclaimer", if there is any, will not stand a chance.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

IANADRP (I Am Not A Data Recovery Pro) but I don't understand the formatting at all

If you're going to tinker with someone else's drive, make a complete backup. DD, Acronis or otherwise. Mess with *that*

EDIT: I did notice you mirrored the drive, I was talking about the other PC Shop.