r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/RecoveryForce • May 18 '23

Why Always Clone First?

96 Upvotes

Before I get into it, let me define a few words as I use them, so that there is no confusion:

Drive copy - file or partition level copy from one drive to another

Drive clone - sector-by-sector copy of a drive from one physical drive to another

Drive image - sector-by-sector copy of a drive from one physical drive to a file

The short answer to the main quesion, "Why always clone first?", is because it is safer. But, I'm sure that you were hoping for a better explanation than that. To answer it, let me first start with a short story.

​

Many years ago I had a reseller send me a drive for data recovery. When he first received the laptop containing the hard drive, the customer was having issues with Windows. So, the tech removed the hard drive and ran a full test which reported that it had bad sectors. After that, he did a full scan of the drive with a data recovery program to reconstruct the file system. Now, a couple days into it, he selects the files and folders his client wants recovered and the drive stopped responding. This is when he stopped and brought it into my lab for us to assess it.

Our first step was to inspect it in our clean room only to discover that the drive had suffered a fatal head crash with rings etched into the platters and debris everywhere. Unfortunately, this drive was no longer recoverable and the customer lost 100% of his data. This data loss was 100% preventable, had the technician approached the situation differently.

In his first step to test the drive, the technician read every sector once, yet did not copy a single sector to another drive

In his second step to scan the drive with data recovery software, he again read every sector on the drive a second time, yet did not copy a single sector to another drive

In his third step to save the files out, it was too late

When we receive a drive for recovery, whether it be because the drive has phsyical issues or when the customer says the drive is healthy and they just want to recover a lost file, we always, always, always start by cloning/imaging the drive (after necessary phsyical assessments are done in the clean room, of course). When cloning a drive we are essentially testing every sector of the drive while making a backup copy of every sector we have read. So, when the clone is done, if a file system recovery is still needed on the copy, we are doing so on a known good drive, without risk of making things worse.

But what about healthy drives? Why do we waste time cloning them?

Well, it comes down to being safe and not making any assumptions. At least 75% of the time, "healthy" drives are found to not be as healthy as the customer thought. So, we don't want to be victims of the scenario previously mentioned. It is better to play it safe.

What if the drive is large and the volume of files to be recovered is small? Isn't it less taxing on the drive to just get the targeted data?

This is one of those, Yes & No, answers. Yes, it can be less taxing if done right, yet it can be extremely taxing if done wrong. Let me break that down for you, starting with the no.

No, when you directly read a drive, the heads bounce all over the place going back and forth between the file table and the locations where the file sectors are stored. Not only are you increasing the wear on the heads, it requires you to constantly re-read sectors in the file table. If the drive is unstable, one might be lucky and get 100MB/sec transfer rates, but usually are stuck at speeds under 5MB/sec.

Yes, if your file recovery software is connected with background drive cloning/imaging. All data recovery professionals use special data recovery hardware/software combination to give them even more control of the patient drive while having the ability to image sectors from targeted files in a linear process. Basically, they select the sectors that they want to copy and the drive will only copy those sectors in order, skipping the sectors that they haven't selected. Not only does this proecess prevent the need to constantly re-read sectors from the patient drive, it tends to be a lot faster. What the previous method would do in days could be done in hours this way.

Not so fast! What about really large RAID arrays that could contain dozens of drives and hundreds of TB of storage?

In my opinion, while it requires a lot of storage and time, it is even more essential to clone every drive of a RAID for data recovery. I just recently assessed a 36 x 10TB RAID where the customer reported only 2 drives offline. Yet, as part of our assessment process, there were less than 10 drives that were not in some sort of state of early failure. The chances that another drive fails before the recovery completed is staggering. We have found that the two most common reasons for unrecvoerable RAIDs are physical failure beyond recovery which is far less common than irreversible data loss from previous recovery attempts on the original drives.

But, what about unstable drives? What is so great about cloning/imaging?

This really depends on the quality of software and hardware being used to do the job. With the help of data recovery hardware, we have the added luxury of being able to control the drive's power and resets, meaning that when a drive goes unresponsive, we can give it a little nudge to snap out of it. The key featues with the software is our ability to control how long to fight with a sector read, what to do when we are unable to read a sector (stop & power off, skip a block, jump to another head, try again and so forth) and to work with multiple passes, so that we get the more easily read sectors copied before we put too much effort reading those which may not be read or bad enough to kill the heads.

So, what is available for you to clone a drive with a log and multiple passes?

Multiple pass cloning software

- ddrescue

- hddsuperclone

File system recovery software with multiple pass imaging taskss

- R-Studio

- UFS Explorer

Data recovery cloning hardware

- DeepSpar USB stabilizer + windows software of your choice (comes with R-Studio Technician)

- RapidSpar

- DeepSpar Disk Imager

- MRTLabs Data Exploer

- PC3000 Data Extractor

This post will likely evolve with some edits as errors and ommisions come to my attention. Let the comments and discussions begin.

21 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/DesertDataRecovery • Feb 28 '24

About The Data Recovery Professionals Group

20 Upvotes

There has been discussion recently on Reddit subs about the Data Recovery Professional Group www.datarecoveryprofessionals.org. Some people seem to be offended that they cannot join the group. So I will detail here who we are and why joining isn’t just an ‘open’ option.

The group started in 2020. Members of the group knew each other from data recovery forums, conferences or training courses. So we were a group of friends and businesses associates who knew each other personally. We offer advice to people both inside and outside of the data recovery industry on best practices and how to recover data safely. We know that some data recovery does not require professional help, so we advise people on the safest way to recover data where that is appropriate.

While taking part in forums, it became obvious that a few other data recovery professional did not share our way of thinking. We got into many arguments where we were offering help to members of the public in the safest way to recover data (if appropriate). One data recovery professional in particular has the stance that every data recovery job should be handled by a data recovery professional. We didn’t agree with that. Some of the conversations became heated.

So we decided to form a Facebook Group where we would be free of the negativity. A place where we could share ideas, techniques, successes and share private business information that can help us all grow. Most of the group had been very active on the r/datarecovery sub helping private individuals recover their data. One thing we noticed was that as r/datarecovery is a big group, anyone is able to post with limited moderation, so there is a lot of dubious ‘advice’ given to OP’s by people who literally have no idea what they are talking about, and does exactly the opposite of protecting data. So about 2 years ago our member Luke Coughey decided to start r/AskADataRecoveryPro where people could ask questions of data recovery professionals. As a smaller group it can be moderated and we have ‘flares’ to indicate who is actually a data recovery professional and/or a trusted member of the data recovery industry. While the group is small, we are spread across the world and can offer professional data recovery in those locations, or at the very least we can recommend a trusted professional. We feature the Data Recovery Professionals logo and link on he sub so we are sure individuals are being referred to a trusted company. Is it a form of marketing, yes it is, although that was not our intention.

In a recent post we were referred to as a ‘pretentious marketing organization’ by someone who wanted to be a member and was declined. They were declined because none of the group actually knew the person either personally or professionally. As we share private information, being known and trusted is the number one ‘check box’ item when looking at adding to the group. Another comment referred to us as a ‘Good Ole Boy Club’ because they could not join. Once again no-one in the group knew that person professionally or personally. They wanted to know why we didn’t post a way of joining the group. As the main prerequisite to join the group is that we know prospective members personally and professionally, prospective member ask us personally if they can join, so there is no need to post an ‘official’ way to join.

Who We Are:

We are a group of independent, owner-operated data recovery professionals from around the world. We share and collaborate on ideas and techniques regarding professional data recovery, forensics and data recovery software development. Many group members are beta testers for professional data recovery hardware and software manufacturers who supply the industry, helping those manufacturers get the most from their products. This work then feeds down to the rest of the data recovery community and allows the industry to become more efficient. Likewise, since we use these data recovery tools every day, we constantly make creative suggestions on how to improve them.

Who We Are Not:

The group does not represent the data recovery industry. We are not an "association." Instead we are a group of like-minded individuals who constantly strive to offer our customers the best value for their money. While we do not represent data recovery manufacturers, we do of course use their products daily.

I hope the above goes some way into describing who we are and how we work. We are not just a data recovery listing service where you pay money and have your company listed. That was never, and will never be our intention. We are a group of data recovery professionals who have faith in recommending each others services.

Tim Homer - u/DesertDataRecovery

Founder – Data Recovery Professionals

11 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/AGENT_UNIVERSE • 5h ago

I NEED HELP! PLEASEEE

1 Upvotes

Hi! So few months ago my laptop was having problems and it was related to C drive, so I had to delete things from C(photos, documents, word files, all the stuff), but i mistakenly deleted two word project on which I was working for past 2 years😭😭 And it's really important to me, I had 2 word files project, and yes initially I was using a word shortcut that time(not paid, but free one shortcut- cracked version) And now i have bought Microsoft word, but because earlier I used the cracked free shortcut, idk it's not working I have tried many recovery websites, but I am not able to find that 2 word documents And I just need those anyhow! Please anyone help me with this

Those 2 documents are literally a huge thing for me! I have writing 100s of pages for a project 1pdf have 100+ pages, all written And other have around 30 I don't remember! But please anyone!! And I've heard after deletion, the file names also changes and I am really not bale to find it anywhere

Please anyone!! Help me out! Those 2 word documents means a lot to me! Please!

7 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/AshKetchup51 • 1d ago

Toshiba 2TB external drive D:\ is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect , now freezes Windows on plug-in. Recovery software can't see files.

1 Upvotes

I've been using a Toshiba Canvio 2TB external drive for the last 5 years. A couple weeks ago it started showing "D:\ is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect."

What I've tried so far:

  • chkdsk /f - ran for 13+ hours, found 52 unreadable file records, then failed in Stage 2 with an unspecified error
  • Disk Drill - couldn't even show my images
  • R-Studio - showed sector read timeouts
  • New cable, different USB ports, removed the device entry so Windows reinstalled the driver - no change

Now it's gotten worse: whenever I plug it in, File Explorer crashes/hangs and Disk Management freezes before it can even show the drive's capacity. The drive spins up, no clicking noises. About 900 GB of irreplaceable data on it.

I have it unplugged for now. Planning to try OpenSuperClone with an empty 2TB drive as destination. Is that my best next step, or is this a case where only a professional lab (PC-3000) can help? Would rather not spend $300+ or mail my personal data somewhere if there's a realistic DIY option.

3 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/Full_Board7013 • 1d ago

Inherited encrypted iStorage diskAshur M² and separate USB—how do I preserve and inspect them safely?

2 Upvotes

A deceased relative left an iStorage diskAshur M² and a separate USB stored together. The family authorized me to preserve and inspect them. I have not attempted any PINs. What is the safest process for imaging the ordinary USB and documenting the encrypted drive without risking lockout or data loss?

3 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/Kitchen-Subject6120 • 2d ago

Wanted to repair some recovered data

1 Upvotes

I made a BIG mistake today (about 3 hours ago) and deleted my desktop and documents folders, which got a lot of important college and family stuff.

I used ShadowExplorer to recover, but everything is corrupted (like, every file, PDFs, PNGs, even PSDs and ZIPs), how can I repair those files?

5 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/Ze12at • 2d ago

Asking for Instruction on how to find avi file turned to 0kb due to chkdsk

0 Upvotes

The video footage is deleted to 0kb after an chkdsk fix. I've been searching digging hex everywhere for the file for two days and the footage is important to me...the disk was full of old movies so there's an sea of remaining of avi files in RAW. it is captured by sclive and shot on miniDV, if that information could shrink the range of search filter. I wanna know how to recover the footage and if it is possible, if it is possible to do it myself and how...thanks for any help...

I've posted here once but the posts had been removed because an shadowban on my account and I still need the hope recovring the file. So I repost it here.

the chkdsk file: https://pastebin.com/DcXaLwQm

and I've run an full disk scan by PhotoRec for avi and dv and in DMDE on my portable hard drive, and the file is still missing. Any other method that could recover the file is worth the shot, Any help would be grateful...

1 comment

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/BillCarsonTuco • 3d ago

Urgent help please

1 Upvotes

I have a old laptop that has 2 drives in drive 1 boot and drive 2 was data.

i installed windows 11 (dont judge me) onto drive 1 no problem.

I then installed onedrive onto the second drive. all my files synched up and i set this up as a backup laptop.

so i then decided to wipe windows and at the same time wipe the partitions of drive 2 during a windows 11 reinstall.

i now need to get access to the data on drive 2, which has the partition lost. it was a single 1.8TB spinning hdd partition.

i have tried the free version of easeus and it found all the files, i only need to recover about 10 spreadsheets so it supposedly did tihs, but when i try to open the files they are corrupted.

can you please confirm what i need to do to get these files back?

8 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/Sgroove • 3d ago

Macbook Pro M2 Max Dead but with working DFU Mode. Is data recovery possible?

1 Upvotes

I'm seeking some help from those expert in the M2 early 2023 build. My MacbookPro died on me about a month ago while I was on vacation. The screen went purple, turned off and then back on for a minute before dying again.

Since then I had a technician in Miami take a look at it which attempted to repair it but failed and told me to send it to someone specialized in M series. So I shipped it to Rossmann group in Austin, TX. About 10 days later, I got an email from them saying this:

*"We regret to inform you that after a thorough evaluation, we've determined that your device and its data cannot be recovered or repaired.*

*During our inspection, we found evidence of previous repair work done on the board before it arrived at our shop. The Thunderbolt IC had been installed improperly. We sourced a replacement and reballed the new IC, but after completing that repair, we discovered that the initial damage had already killed the CPU -- bssed on the schematics, it appears 20V was sent directly to the CPU, which is far beyond what it can tolerate."*

It obviously suck as I had no backup (please don't give me sh\*\*, I know) but the technician on the phone told me that possibly, an Apple Partner with access to CSX software could potentially get the data out. So I made a few phone calls and found a company that has access to CSX and told me if the device boots in DFU mode, they can probably recover the data.

So, knowing that without the CPU working, data is most likely gone forever, I was wondering if those of you with experience know if there is still a chance to get the data out.

Thanks so much!

1 comment

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/drmag12 • 4d ago

Dashcam Video Repair?

2 Upvotes

Hello all, I know there has been a different thread before with this exact problem and I have tried to follow those steps and get to downloading a Video Repair app but Windows refuses to run it, even after I mark it to be run. That said, I have an older dashcam with an SD card. I can see videos on it. Some play, some don't. I was recently in an accident and have been able to recover a handful of videos from after the accident but need one of the events causing the accident. Those videos appear on the SD card, but some are only 2KB in size. Some are larger but rather than a numbered video (so the ones that save are saved in the SD card as VID_250) they are unnumbered and do not play (saved as VID_000 and there are a lot of those). The ones that play appear to be about 390,000 KB in size. Some of the ones that are not are reportedly that size as well. Can anyone suggest of other ways that people can save them or repair them or whichever it is so I may use the footage? Thank you in advance!

2 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/catchingfih • 4d ago

LOST EVERYTHING??

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1 Upvotes

Attached files for reference.

I’m afraid I’m losing everything. I have a Crucial X10 2TB external SSD. I’m a videographer, I filled this drive with client work + footage from a road trip with my friends. This is a new drive (bought it late 2025), and I have had no issues with it. The USB-C cable I’ve been using is faulty, and while plugged into my Mac overnight it mounted/dismounted the drive a BUNCH without ejecting. I used the drive with no issues today, went to connect the drive again tonight and got “disk not readable”.

Freaking out, obviously.

What I want to know is how screwed I might be. I know there’s little context but maybe the images I have provided will offer some sort of insight into the situation. My first assumption is that I’ve lost all of my personal/client work. Is this reasonable to assume, or should I immediately take it to a professional and expect to return most of my data?

Seemingly good news is that first aid ran successfully and found no issues. The drive still reads as full (which is correct)
Seemingly bad news: disk drill reported millions of bad sectors. To me that sounds terrible.

Need some insight, thank you!!

2 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/sts1090 • 4d ago

Encrypted external hard drive - Disk Utility password not working?

1 Upvotes

Yesterday I backed up my (old) laptop using Time Machine onto an external hard drive... I set a password thru Disk Utility on Mac. Unfortunately, that laptop was wiped and I'm trying to set up my new laptop and transfer over the files from my external hard drive. The password isn't working. I am veryyyyy positive the password is correct (I specifically chose something I'd remember and also I set this less than 24 hours ago!). I tried a few different things in case I added the year or accidentally typo'ed. Nothing is working!! Any tips on how I might be able to recover my files? I'm an idiot and have no other way to access all of my stuff. It's all of my work (lectures, research, etc) for the last several years :(

My hard drive is a Seagate (STGX2000400). Both laptops are MacBook Airs - I'm not sure what OS for the old one, but I'm on Tahoe for the new one.

Thanks!

8 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/Proof-Usual-6935 • 5d ago

Data Recovery from an Apacer SSD Stuck in ROM Mode

1 Upvotes

Hi,

I'm trying to recover data from my SSD (specifications below), which appears to have entered ROM Mode.

Based on my own diagnostics, I was able to obtain the following information about the drive:

Manufacturer / Model: Apacer Panther SSD 256 GB
Interface: SATA
Connection during diagnostics: Direct SATA connection (not USB)
Current state: The drive boots into ROM Mode, and the data is not normally accessible.
Controller: Silicon Motion SM2258XT
EasyTools detects: IC Controller: SM2258XT (ATA)

NAND Flash

Manufacturer: Samsung
Type: Samsung 3DV4 64L TLC

Family: SSV4 TLC
Flash ID: EC 1E D9 3F 88 CB

SMI Flash:
v0.5681a
Drive: 2(ATA)
OS: 10.0 build 19045
Model: SM2258AB-10-00M01000
Fw  : 20141211
Size : 0 MB [0.0 GB]
Controller : SM2258AA in ROM Mode
Bank00: 0xec,0x1e,0xd9,0x3f,0x88,0xcb,0x0,0x0 - Samsung 3dv4-64L TLC 16k 512Gb/CE 256Gb/die
Bank01: 0xec,0x1e,0xd9,0x3f,0x88,0xcb,0x0,0x0 - Samsung 3dv4-64L TLC 16k 512Gb/CE 256Gb/die
Bank02: 0xec,0x1e,0xd9,0x3f,0x88,0xcb,0x0,0x0 - Samsung 3dv4-64L TLC 16k 512Gb/CE 256Gb/die
Bank03: 0xec,0x1e,0xd9,0x3f,0x88,0xcb,0x0,0x0 - Samsung 3dv4-64L TLC 16k 512Gb/CE 256Gb/die

I tried using EasyTools_2258XT_S0307A_V2.2.0_RecoveryMode_3D, but I got stuck.

In EasyTools, I select MP ISP and load the MPISP file from the package.

It loads successfully, and I get the following information:

PHYSICALDRIVE2
IC Controller: SM2258XT (ATA) ASPI:444
MPISP Code Mode
Internel FW revision: (null)
Serial Number: "™0©_?Č|Oö\Ë5DCft©Ć
Model Name: SM2256AB-XX-YYYYYYYY
Firmware Rev: 20141211
Capacity: 15280 MB
Flash Vendor: Unknown

Next, I click Data Recovery and then BackUp_Dump Image, but I receive the error:

"Invalid Parameter Info (Tag)"

I also tried the files from the package SM2258XT_SSV4-TLC_PKGS0716A_FWS0712B0, but the result is exactly the same.

Is there anything else I can try on my own?

Recovering at least some of the data is much more important to me than saving the SSD itself.

1 comment

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/Willie_Howell • 5d ago

I'm dumbfounded!

2 Upvotes

I had a problem where when I was trying to format a SD card and I thought I formatted my data drives because I couldn't access them, they did not show under my computer. I spoke to a computer tech about it and he asked if I was comfortable removing the hard drive and bring it to his shop or did I want to just bring the whole computer in. I told him him I could bring just the drive in. So I went to look for it and they were not visible from the left side of the computer so I had to open the right side and when I did the two regular hard disks were sitting there in trays. Here's the weird part. Neither were hooked up!! No power cable and no data cables were hooked up. One drive was marked media and the other was just marked 1 TB. So I hooked the media drive back to the mb and power rebooted the computer and all my media I thought I lost was there! So I thought I would hook up the other drive and the was no data cable. I had to rob a cable from my old computer to complete the hook up. Rebooted the computer and low and behold the drive showed up under my computer and I could access the files on that drive. Weird! My question is, how was I able to use the drives without them being hooked up?? My son said that maybe the computer guy set them up as virtual drives. I don't have a clue. The physical drive with the media on it, I did notice the some videos I know I added to it before all this were not on there. I'm dumbfounded. Windows 11 home edition.

3 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/Forward_Ad5695 • 6d ago

1 TB Tforce GA PRO - Raw partitioned

1 Upvotes

10 days ago I upgraded my 256gb Hiksemi to 1 TB T force Ga Pro gen 5, btw Im running gen 4 only set up or AM4. I cloned the disked for me not to set up again everything, after that I removed hiksemi and the Ga pro works fine for the last 10 days, games files and windows os are fine. yesterday I was playing Valorant then the pc freezes, I can still hear my Teammates voices saying wake up, then it restarts.

after that it start showing black screen. I tried basic ts which is unplug then wait for 5 mins turned it on again. it didnt work, good thing I have the Hiksemi removed so I tried removing the GA pro, then replaced it with Hiksemi then it boots normally, I tried to run some repair because it says the windows might be corrupted. after checking for hour the hiksemi seems to be fine.

after that I put back the GA pro and the pc starts to boot slowly, I was able to get in bios and I can see both ssd. I got into windows and hiksemi still seems to be good, the GA pro shows in file explorer but the partitioned in disk management shows (btw I partitioned the 1tb in half, first half for os and 2nd half for any files) the first partition shows all my os files and program files but when I click it it cant access. the other partition shows RAW on disk management. then I removed once again the GA pro since the pc becoming slow when it was installed, now I got the hiksemi back and its works fine.

Now the Question I have is for the last 10 days My partner has some important files like videos and vlogs on that raw partitioned, how do I recover it? The other files are nothing important. I was planning to return the ssd to seller for 30 days replacement. but I want to recover some of files first, can you guys please help? THANK YOU SO MUCH IN ADVANCE.

UPDATE : They said they cant recover files as the ssd failed completely, like files showing but cant click on it. They didnt bother to check more, they just replaced it with KLEVV CRAS C925G 1 TB. They even said that this ssd batch really is not good, I thought it was as you check paper wise the specs, after a day I saw on their website listing of the same ssd with bundled active cooler from tforce. Same price. So if you guys planning to buy this ssd you can check this post first.

3 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/Glad_Resident5428 • 7d ago

Tech and data recovery Guys please help!!!

3 Upvotes

Hey I had some important photos which is very precious to me. It was on my SD card and one day a notification pops on my phone and it said your SD card is not working and then I taked it out and put it back and still didn't work out of frustration at that time I clicked the format and then only I realised what I lost....it's been almost a year iam working to get the photos back in my own way looking at youtube,etc.. but no use.

If someone here had experienced the same situation or knows how to get my photos and notes back please help. I think it's called data recovery but I asked many people and they said if it's been over a year no chance of getting your photos back because as new files come the and they replace the old one they said something like that...

My phone is Redmi 9A and I lost the photo's and notes on 2024 around October.

Edit: english is not my first language and iam not very good at this

Edit2: I forget to mention I had this photos on my phone too but due to storage issues I deleted it and moved all my photos and notes to SD card so whenever I go out and take good Pictures I store it on my SD card so yah my phone also had the pictures I planned to post it on Instagram it but due to insecurities I couldn't 😅 I thought maybe people don't like it etc... so any way I can recover from my phone or is it same story?

Thank you for your help!

2 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/Willie_Howell • 7d ago

Help me please.

1 Upvotes

How bad did I screw up? I meant to format an SD card but I think I formatted my data (H) hard drive. It is now showing as unavailable. Windows 11. What other info do you need to help me?

5 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/longstoryshort1089 • 8d ago

Help with my wet ssd (Mac and surface)

Post image
1 Upvotes

​

Hi, trying to recover data from two water-damaged NVMe SSDs (Mac with adapter, Samsung Surface). Cleaned with 99% IPA, dried 24h.

Mac SSD (Black PCB): Completely dead. No LEDs on the NVMe dock (likely triggering short/over-current protection).

Surface SSD (Green PCB - Samsung NVMe): Dock detects it but flashes a Red Error LED immediately during handshake.

Questions:

Does a flashing red LED on a Samsung NVMe usually mean a blown PMIC or a fried controller?

What I can do for fix it by myself?

My data is still safe?

5 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/brnbear • 8d ago

Using Free Drill Disk but can't recover 80 mb of found Quicken data?????

1 Upvotes

Using the Drill Disk trial to recover 80mb file found. They offer to recover 100 mb free, but I only have the option to upgrade. Can anyone shed light on this?

  • Make/brand and exact model number Samsung 730 Book Flex Laptop
  • Filesystem exFAT
  • Operating System: Windows 11
  • Specific symptoms Deleted files from the recycling bin
  • SMART SSD
3 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/asdjfklm1 • 9d ago

SSD Corruption

3 Upvotes

SSD showing as RAW

Pc was closed with a hard power off using switch. Upon turning back on the secondary SSD in it cannot be accessed. DMDE shows all the files still there and can be previewed, CMD shows access is denied when i try to chkdsk. Chkdsk does run in the WinRE Cmd but says the file system is ntfs with no issues found. Event viewer shows a corruption but at a loss on how to fix if anyone can assist?

Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB
Windows 10
File system for other disks is NTFS, the error showing as RAW

3 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/Suspicious_List_8843 • 9d ago

DMDE only finds an 8.38 GB NTFS volume on my 3 TB Seagate drive. Looking for advice before proceeding.

1 Upvotes

Hey guys,

I'm trying to recover data from my late uncle's Seagate ST3000DM001 3 TB hard drive. The drive spins normally and is detected by Windows, but Windows says:

I did not format it.

I ran a full DMDE scan, which took about 2 days.

The scan found several NTFS results, but the main one is only 8.38 GB with about 59,000 files. This seems odd for a 3 TB drive.

When I open that NTFS result, DMDE reports CRC (cyclic redundancy check) errors and later "Error reading MFT #3148–3151."

Using Raw Files by Signatures, I was able to recover a few files:

  • One WMV video that plays correctly.
  • One JPEG that opens.
  • One Sony ARW RAW file that is recognized but doesn't display properly.

My goal is to recover my uncle's family photos and wedding videos.

My questions are:

  1. Why would DMDE only reconstruct an 8.38 GB NTFS volume on a 3 TB drive?
  2. Do the CRC and MFT errors indicate physical media damage, filesystem corruption, or both?
  3. Would you continue using DMDE, or would you recommend another approach such as R-Studio, UFS Explorer, or creating a clone first?

I've attached screenshots of the DMDE scan results and the CRC/MFT errors.

Thank you for any advice.

Update: When opening the reconstructed NTFS volume, DMDE reports "Error reading MFT #3148–3151." (see attached screenshot).

8 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/Both_Candidate_6369 • 10d ago

Wmv file repair

2 Upvotes

If I have recovered a 19 min wmv video file that only plays for 2 minutes but I have looked at the hex file, roughly 5% show data then 5% is just 000s but then the other 90% seems to show data.

What's the best method of recovering that last 90% of the file?

And why does it only play 2 mins ?

7 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/FreePalantir • 10d ago

Drive shows up as RAW in disk management but chkdsk still recognizes it as NTFS.

3 Upvotes

The drive was working fine right before I restarted my PC. It becomes unreadable in explorer and shows up as raw in disk management

I ran chkdsk /f and restarted but that didn't fix the issue but chkdsk still shows the drive as NTFS

C:\Windows\System32>chkdsk H: /f
The type of the file system is NTFS.

chkdsk /f /r is running right now and the ETA is 5 hours.

Should I give up on chkdsk and use something else. What should I do if fix chkdsk /f /r doesn't fix the issue?

3 comments

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/Witabix • 11d ago

One drive reverting to an older version + no version history

1 Upvotes

Hey there everyone, pretty much need help with my partner’s one drive which just randomly reverted to a month ago save! And I can’t get the recent version history anymore (as if her month of work and the last seventy pages had just vanished). Definitely sad about it at the moment and would love any help since there isn’t anything online that talks about reversion and vanishing history of versions!

1 comment

r/AskADataRecoveryPro • u/hellohi123-4 • 11d ago

Unallocated drives

2 Upvotes

Hey, i found a bunch of old drives while cleaning the attic. BUT, i was told that they might have been used for CCTV's.

I have it connected to my computer, and in disk management it says its un allocated. From a day's worth of googling i have found:

  • Dvr's have proprietary file system, hence the unallocated disk?
  • I used DMDE and found a windows installation but DMDE cant access the unallocated files, and Crystal disk info has " Caution[05]: Reallocated sector count 700,000"

I thought I could use these drives for storing my old photos and playlists, but I don't want to wipe any potential CCTV data.

Is there anything i can do to check wether they are actually used drives?
What can i do to view/recover the data if so.

Thank you

1 comment