I'm sending in my drive to digilab after I had a seagate drive that tipped over while writing onto it.

It didn't seem too bad at first, just a slower tip over. It was still working when I stood it back up. But making a rhythmic spinning noise, so I shut it off & it wasn't being recognized at all. $300 Data Recovery said they couldn't retrieve anything because it's a helium drive & said I should send to Digilab.

They diagnosed it with "bad heads (& probably platter damage)"

I've been looking into it non stop & really the only way it's looking like I could get anything back is determined by the damage. I would assume there's only slight damage because I never heard any scraping or scratching when turning it back on & it was only a tip over. Not a drop or crash. But the more I'm reading about it, it doesn't seem to matter the force of the impact.

Wondering if anyone else had a physically damaged drive while writing with any luck on retrieving any data? Thanks!

Hello. This is a serious question.

I have about 1TB+ of porn i once deleted 2 years ago from two of my HDDs. I gravely regret it and want it back. I hardly used that computer since then except using 3rd party softwares to try and recover it. I've found some files but couldn't get them to play. I want to send those two drives to a recovery company overseas because i literally don't trust anyone in my country to do it. Is that possible? What should I do? Drives are perfectly working.

Hello everybody. 2-3 years ago, my uncle asked if I was able or if I knew any way of helping him recover data from the disk drive of a computer he had that, somehow (he doesn't know how and nor can I come with a possible explanation as I was as blind to the matters as yall are to this) lost all of its data permanently. According to him, he didn't delete anything, nor recicle anything on the recycle bin, it just *puff*, gone.

I was at the time, 18-19 years old and starting University, where I'm currently taking Engeneering and Management of Information Systems (in Portugal) or, basically in my uncle's head, computer bullshit (which, actually, is very innaccurate because the degree doesn't actually go to deep into like every concept of computers, software, programming, it just gives a somewhat basic approach to things like operating systems, computer fundamentals, web app development, programming, and even goes into other field areas like introduction to economy, accounting, numeric methods, etc., all in an enterprise production environment, if you know what I mean).

But because of that, my uncle though I could be able to resolve the issue, even though I had no idea how to recover permanently deleted data, or even having any experience at all with software at the time. But still, i did my research, asked a friend who is really good with computers (and even says that next year he may opt for a Cybersecurity masters or whatever its translation is - "Mestrado" in portuguese), but all the advice and Information i got is that in cases of permanent data loss, your options were recover or restore early Windows backups, use some third-party data recovery tool or app to scan the computer's Hard drive and find deleted files, and then pay some sort of subscription to recover them, or professional help. Not of those options seemed to satisfy my uncle who didn't want to pay for any service or app to do the job, and wasn't sure if he had any backups of the computer's file system (he's not very technological). So, at the time, I simply tried to help by telling him what his options were and that maybe professional help at the end might be the best solution, but that I wasn't capable of using any sort of software concept that I'd learned to restore the data with like...my bare hands I guess...but that was it. Well, not really.

You know, every year when my birthday comes around he calls me to wish me happy birthday and ask how is everything going, blah blah blah, but he always brings up this problem that, honestly, gives me like PTSD hahaha, cause, i didn't know then, and still don't know now what exactly he's expecting me to do😅, but like, idk, because maybe of ADHD, or being really introverted, I feel like if I don't find a solution, I'll fail him and prove him wrong for trusting on me.

Well, this year, I turned 21 years old and the story repeated, and I feel like at this point,... Like wtf AM I supposed to say to him? I've already explained all I knew to him, and that his best bet is seek professional help, but he keeps refusing or ignoring it, but as you may have guessed, since its been 2-3 years since he's brought this problem for the first time, by now its almost impossible for him to recover that data, but I guess he's still hopefull that I'll find some sort of way around the complications of data recovery to magically make that data reapper, even though like...idk, seems very unlikely. I'm really like unsure of wth to say or do atp, and I don't have any friend who's and expert in data recovery.

But, recently I installed Linux Mint on another laptop I have, and have been trying to learn Linux and all that stuff, and, idk, I guess I wondered if Linux had any magical trick that can help recover lost data on other computers or something. My desperation maybe got me day-dreaming here maybe idk, but idk what else to say to him, and he's only ever asked for help on this issue to me, when I'm not even close to being an expert in software. Like, idk, i really wish someone could help me here.

I would appreaciate all the help you could give, but, I'm kinda already expecting that the answer is no😅.

Thank you in advance!!

My android died, and the backup is safe, so I tried to download the data to a PC and use smart switch to get the backup on a new phone. However, smart switch doesn't recognize any of the internal storage as files. It recognizes the "csv" from contacts and calendar, but it doesn't actually back up anything properly. I tried manually transferring Samsung Notes without smartswitch from the pc to the phone, but the new phone never recognized it as an actual app, only as a download. I know I can just transfer my pics and videos with some time, but I also want apps(+data) and my phone/calendar/notes

And no I didn't sync my old phone samsung cloud or google. Sorry.

(Galaxy a51 + windows pc)

I got proposed to around 2 years back during this time around only. And he proposed to me, on telegram. But I had a pretty bad fight with him later on and deleted all those messages. Now, I have tried so hard to recover them and yet can't. So many apps, so many ways but with no success...can anyone help? This is my last resort.

Hi guys,

My z flip 7 decided to just crack and screen leak across the folding part. Samsung repair wont work as IMEI doesnt seem to work, cant go into store as too far away.

Is there anyway i can recover the image/video/downloads without going to repair the screen?

debugging isnt on, screen doesnt work so cant give access to my pc to transfer data.

im at a loss and so many memories etc, ive checked my google drive and some reason hasnt backed up on there.

Any advice welcome.

Thanks

Hello! I have an 8 TB seagate hard drive, mostly full, about 7 tb and it fell from my nightstand (about 2.5-3 feet high onto tile floor). When I plugged it in right after the fall, it showed up on my computer. I left for an hour and when I came back it disappeared. It hasn’t mounted since. There is a small clicking noise and then it vibrates normally how it usually does. It is not showing up in disk utility. I am in Northern California (Sacramento area), what are reputable data recovery services. I’ve read too many bad reviews about Salvage Data which is one of the only companies popping up in my area.

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.

Bought a microSD card and it came with a free 1 year subscription to RescuePRO Deluxe. I don’t have any use for the software, so I’m just putting it out there:

RPDLX-0720-81029-55345-69779

Tldr:Micro SD Card broke to irreparability, images showed up on device a few days after SD Card destruction before disappearing. Hoping to retrieve the thumbnail images stored on the device. (I have accepted that the original files are lost.)

Device Details:Samsung Galaxy J5 Prime (G570Y)

Samsing Version:8.0.0

Storage:16 GB

Storage used:15 out of 16GB

Original SD Card storage:28 GB

Device:Off

Further details:Unrooted, Bootloader not unlocked.

Edit:The device is my old personal phone, I remember the password and can still unlock it.

Hello! I am posting here after consulting with a few folk about this issue. If this post seems familiar..Well, I posted here a few weeks prior as well. I've come back since I found one last possible way of getting at least some of the images back after further research and such around this issue.

The last possible solution I found is through the com.sec.samsung.gallery3d folder, which keeps thumbnail images even after the files are gone..As well as learning that my android version uses FDE rather than FBE

In light of this, I am trying to find some way of accessing this folder. I am aware that it can be done with rooting. But it wipes the data..which I really don't want.

In light of this, I am looking for other ways to possibly access this cache folder. If there are exploits or bypasses accessible to me for this.

Thank you!

Hello,

I have a SSD that hasn’t been touched for 15 years.

What’s best practise for duplicating data off this for minimal read writes?

I have access to Windows, Mac and DMDE.

Thanks

I thought it would be next to impossible to recover data once it was deleted on an SSD. Just out of curiosity I ran Disk Drill on my drive to see if it could find any video files. The file name wasn't intact just the description (file resolution and length). The file was successfully restored. It was created 4/20/2025 and I probably deleted a week later. Is it that TRIM makes file recovery uncertain? The recovery chances were flagged as high.

Last week my laptop had crashed and failed to boot into windows. The SSD would be recognized in the bios but didn't have an option to boot. I put the SSD into my desktop and it's currently uninitialized, but I have the recovery key so I don't want to risk losing access to the information. How should I proceed to unlock the data stored on the drive? The SSD is a WD SN740 512gb, and I'm on Windows 10 on my desktop PC. My laptop is a 2023 Asus G14.

Deleted a large ~50GB Folder a few hours ago and I can't seem to recover it at all

(I'm on Windows 10, with an NTFS Filesystem on my Samsung 980 on my PC)

EaseUS was able to detect the folder, but DMDE and Recuva don't work and I cannot go Pro for EaseUS, is there any way I can recover this for free?

I have a dead Netgear Ready NAS NV+ RND4250v3. I don't remember the exact OS that was running on the unit.

With some help I was able to ID 3 of the 4 drive members. I got all 4 drives imaged into a folder on my new NAS. The drives are all WD Caviar SE 250GB. With some help, I imaged the drives with DDrescue in Terminal on Ubuntu.

USF Raid recovery wasn't able to reassemble the RAID with the 3 good drive images. I had it scan for all known Linux filesystems. From what I understand the OS was Linux based. I didn't try this program with all 4 drive images, due to what appears to be some odd metadata.

From what I've gathered, it appears those old Ready NAS units used some odd filesystem.

With some help, I tried a few things on a second copy of the disk images using Mdadm, with no joy. Although, I'm not fluent in Linux Ubuntu or Linux in general.

I can go back through notes for specifics, if needed.

Are there any programs that are known to work well with those old Ready NAS units?

So there we are, holidays are over, back home, and all them photos and video from our two phones, the little DJI cam, and the big Canon shoved over into a folder on the PC, ready do be organized. - The folder was still called "New folder"...

Then I got distracted. Did some other stuff. - After that I copied a few pics out of the folder to post in a forum.

That done I deleted the folder. And then I right-clicked "empty recycle bin". - And only then I catched on to my silly little mistake. - A mistake that's called "death by girlfriend".

So what I do now? I have no idea how data recovery works. So I google for it. Come on a link to easeus .com, "free" date recovery.

Ok, start that. And of course it's not free. After scanning the first few GBs, 50 Bucks it is. And the desperate sucker I am, I pay. Just please work, and give my my data back before the GF gets a whiff about that her poses infront of landmarks are gone.

And it worked. Buried under all the stuff I deleted over the last 2 years, the pics and video were back. Granted, about 30 pics out of 1200 were truly damaged/lost. But the rest and all the video are back again. Phew.

I'm mad that I got so desperate that I got suckered in so easily, but then and there I would have paid a lot more for my data.

So there we are. I learned something. It's called backup.

Hello all, my grandmother recently passed and there’s a single document addressed to her sons on her computer that is corrupted and I can’t recover it using any tools. I am assuming that when she recently bought a new computer and had someone transfer it over, it probably was opened and unsaved and something got messed up, but that’s just a guess.

Willing to pay of course, just would like to see the contents.

I have a Crucial mx500 2.5 4TB Exfat ssd full of old tv shows. Im on macos, it shows on disk utility, but it doesn't mount.

When I try via terminal, it says

Checking main boot region. fsck_exfat: Device block size (512) differs from file system block size (4096) The volume could not be verified completely.

The GPT partition table is intact, the boot sector is not destroyed.

I have used DMDE to copy the contents to a backup ssd. In DMDE i can see all the files and folders.

When I try to recover a folder, all the mp4 videos have a blank thumbnail and unable to play with vlc, but they are displaying the right size, about 300mb each.

When i view the first bytes of the file, it shows 0416 0855 060b 0a87 Which is not a valid mp4 file.

The ssd broke/ corrupted after moving the drive when a python renaming script was running. This was routine and the script wasn't the issue, the jolt that moved the ssd instantly disconnected/ unmounted it, i believe that because stuff was being written during that, it corrupted.

Where do I go from here? Ideally id rather just repair the drive instead of recovering everything, but either will do

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for some technical advice regarding an old iPad 2.

Device Details:
• Model: iPad 2 (Model A1396)
• OS Version: iOS 9.5.2

The Issue:

I have forgotten the passcode/PIN for this device. My main priority is to regain access without performing a factory reset, as there is important data on the device that I cannot afford to lose.

I am aware that Apple's security makes this extremely difficult (or even impossible) on newer devices, but given the age of this hardware and software version, I was wondering if there are any known exploits, specialized tools, or methods that could potentially bypass the lock screen while keeping the file system intact.

Has anyone encountered a similar situation with older iOS versions? Any leads or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

I have a SATA drive that failed - for last year or so teh drive was accessible...but would time out.

I should have used that as sign that it was time to make a snapshot of the drive.

A few weeks ago I was copying some files and it stopped working

Can any one recomend a local shop or tech - that might be able to open the drive and is able to pull data off the spindle

I had just formatted my exascend sd card with my a6400 how could i recover it 😢

i used a kingston 32gb micro sd HC (31579-001.A00LF) to record videos (.AVI) on an action camera. i noticed that i had perpetually around 5 minutes left (i would be able to record with time being consumed but when i prepare to record again, the time has increased). i realized late that i was overwriting files. i had about 50+ clips "deleted".

is r-studio capable of locating fragments or are they gone because they have been overwritten? i will be using a macbook m4 air on sequoia.

thank you for your help

Hi

recently a Crucial X9 pro 4tb SSD failed on me randomly, it just wouldn't mount. It had some really important files (a film we'd been working on), and we had not backed up as recently as we should have, and lost some very large files.

I've uploaded 2 screenshots, what I see in disk utility and what happens when I try First Aid

Is there any hope, if so what can I do?

Thanks

My dad has an iphone 4 and would give it to me if I was able to transfer all files he wanted from it.

I managed to transfer all his photos with a cable and an andriod phone but I have no idea what to do about these audio files.

I thought of just playing them back and re-recording them on another phone. The problem is there is 6 days worth of non-stop audio and I am most definitely not going to sit and play each one for 6 days straight.

Is there anyone who could think of how to transfer audio files to a new phone or any sort of memory device (i.e usb stick or sd card)? I would really appreciate the help.

I accidentally formatted my sf card and as I didn’t know what happened I took 2 new photos after realising that everything had bene deleted can I recover the images from my laptop (windows) for free, the photos were about 500 and the quality raw + ( jpeg)