In our channel you can watch videos recorded inside our Clean Room facilities, where our engineers perform recoveries of hard drives. You can also watches several recovery techniques.
This Toshiba/Hitachi HDD came in to our labs with damaged heads.
Our data recovery engineer opened the hard drive inside the Clean Room and replaced the hard drive's heads using a compatible donor.
The result was successful, 100% data recovered.
Watch this video to see how we perform data recovery on a hard drive with infected heads inside our Clean Room facilities.
This Seagate hard drive (5400.6) with 4 heads (0,1,2,3) came in for data recovery in very bad condition: The drive would produce clicking sounds (see examples here: https://data-recovery.gr/damaged-hard-drive-sounds/ ), so a head replacement was in order. ΗΧΟΙ ΧΤΥΠΗΜΕΝΩΝ ΔΙΣΚΩΝ) και ήταν αναγκαία η αντικατάσταση των κεφαλών του.
We examined the drive inside our Clean Room and we saw a small scratch on surface 3. We removed the heads and inspected them under the microscope, to find out that heads were infected as well.
Heads' infection means serious damage to the media (drive surface) to which the head belongs to (in our case, surface 3), something that we had earlier confirmed visually.
In these cases, it is necessary to cut the infected head.
We were able to read the remaining heads (0,1,2) with an average speed of ~60MB/sec, which is exceptional considering hard drive's condition.
Result: ~73% of data recovered, client was satisfied.
Watch this video to see how we perform data recovery on a WD (Western Digital) hard drive with destroyed heads inside our Clean Room facilities.
This WD (Western Digital) hard drive (Family Tahoe LT, WD Blue 500GB) came in for data recovery in very bad condition: Our client reported that the drive would produce clicking sounds (see examples here: https://data-recovery.gr/damaged-hard-drive-sounds/ ), so a head replacement was in order. ΗΧΟΙ ΧΤΥΠΗΜΕΝΩΝ ΔΙΣΚΩΝ ) και ήταν αναγκαία η αντικατάσταση των κεφαλών του.
At this stage, it is very important to point out that since our client has reported symptoms that indicate damaged heads, no more power must be supplied to the drive. Powering up the drive any longer could lead to severe damage to its platters caused by the damaged heads. Instead, we must examine the drive inside our Clean Room facilities.
During our examination, we removed the heads and inspected them under the microscope, to find out they are heavily deformed! This is never a good sign...
After replacing the heads and ... "brushing it up" a little, we started imaging data. These types of failures often get accompanied by media damage too, and we could confirm that during data recovery by looking at the data map.
However, we were able to recover about 96.5% of our client's data (including databases with their business data), adding them to our long list of very happy clients.
Watch this video to see how we evaluate and perform data recovery inside our Clean Room facilities.
This Toshiba 2.5" internal HDD was inside a laptop in a car that was involved in a car crash (luckily no-one was hurt).
Due to the impact, the laptop that was laying in the back seat flew and hit hard against the windshield and was completely wrecked.
The data of this drive was extremely important. The client gave us the green light to do what we had to, in order to get the data back.
WE DIDN'T SUPPLY any power to the drive. Instead, we opened it inside our clean room for visual inspection at first and evaluation under the microscope afterwards.
We were right; as you can see the heads were deformed to a level that a power up event would most likely cause damage to the platters.
We were able to recover 99.7% of the client's data, making him extremely happy! :)
This is how data recovery is being done inside the Clean Room.
We recovered this 4TB Seagate drive which has previously been tampered by other "DR lab" without success.
Watch the procedure of how data recovery was performed and how we imaged the drive.
We have to deal everyday with drives that suffer from media damage (bad sectors).
Sometimes we need to be more persuasive to recover that last, stubborn piece of data :)
This was one of the most complicated RAID cases we've ever had to solve.
It was a 10-drive array from a local hospital. This array has suffered multiple rebuild attempts with absent drives at first and spare drives afterwards!
We had to re-create the array and make manual combinations (and assumptions).
Result: Success! 🙂
We had to blur parts of the videos where folders with patients' names were visible, due to privacy.
This is a real-life example of data recovery of a drive with damaged platter.
We were able to make a first pass, reading as much as we could and then we went back, modified the firmware accordingly and ran a 2nd, a 3rd and a 4th pass, reading as much data as we could.
You can see the yellow (skipped) and the black (bad) sectors turn to green, which means they are being read now. That means, more data for our client! :)
Watch the data recovery procedure of a USB flash pendrive, using the micro-needles Spider Board technique.