Aaron Hook

Sometimes a problem as seemingly simple as “bad sectors” or “bad blocks” can cause a drive to work at all for a customer. This was the case with this WD5000LPCX Western Digital drive. The client reported that the drive just stopped working, and the computer repair shop that took a look at it let him know it needed data recovery as their shop computers would not mount it and their data recovery software would not recognize it. Affordable WD5000LPCX Recovery The client was looking for a professional but affordable data recovery service for their Western Digital drive and we fit the bill! We offer recovery for all types of hard drives including these WD5000LPCX Western Digital drives. Our recovery services are available nationwide, so if you are outside our local area you can still ship your device in for our recovery service. I started with an inspection as usual, but everything looked great hardware wise. The heads all tested good on the PC-3000 so I continued to get the hard drive all set up for … Read more

Every once in a while we get a drive sent in that we are not able to recover. This drive came to us from a client who had let a relative take a look at the drive and try to recover it. It is hard to say how exactly the scratched platters occurred (it might have occurred the moment the drive failed, or it could have occurred while the relative attempted a recovery), but the result of the platter damage is that the data could not be recovered. The pictures below show the drive, as well as the drive opened up. You can see where the surface of the platters are scratched. They should be like a mirror with no imperfections at all. You can think of this situation as having a DVD or CD that is badly scratched. The DVD or CD player will not be able to start reading the disk at all and will just eject it after a few seconds of trying. If your drive stops working and is making any … Read more

I have quite a few blog posts about beeping hard drives needing recovery, and most of the time the beeping ends up being caused by the drive heads stuck on the platters. Sometimes the issue with a beeping drive is something else, but the majority of the time it does end up being heads that are stuck on the platter. Beeping Drive Recovery In a lot of these beeping hard drive cases, I am able to safely lift the stuck heads off the platters and move them over to the ramp, inspect them for damage under a microscope, then use the undamaged heads to recover the drive successfully. In some of the cases, I inspect the heads and find they are damaged, replace the head stack with a donor head stack, then recover the data successfully. DIY recovery for beeping drive If you go online to YouTube or other forums, you will see articles with people saying to just take apart your drive and move the heads off the platters, then turn it back on … Read more

A client from here in Hutchinson, Kansas called about a CompactFlash card from a camera that had captured a bunch of great family Christmas photos this year. When the CF card was attached to the computer to load the pictures from the holiday, they were not showing up. These Christmas shots were especially special as they included aging grandparents with the grandkids, and it was super important to get a CompactFlash recovery completed. Note that we have special pricing for these camera card recoveries. They are generally less work to recover than standard hard drives, so we offer recovery at a more affordable rate. CompactFlash Photo Recovery Photos are something we get asked to recover frequently, and as a dad, I understand just how important photos can be. I love going through photos of all my boys and reminiscing, and every single picture is important even though I have thousands! So when I get a call about recovering priceless family albums, I know how important that data can be. Whether you have a CompactFlash card … Read more

This 500GB HGST HTS545050A7E362 MacBook Pro laptop drive came to us from a shop nearby in Wichita. They had a customer that brought the MacBook in and said it had just stopped working without warning. The repair shop was able to quickly narrow the issue down to the HGST hard drive itself which has an Apple part number 655-1730G. Bad Blocks Data Recovery The repair shop tested the drive by plugging it into some of their own machines that they use to extract data from drives, but the machines would not mount the drive. The customer was informed the drive was the issue and quoted for a repair. The customer let the shop know that they needed the data from the old drive, as there were photos and work documents present that they didn’t want to leave behind. The Wichita computer repair shop recommended us for the recovery as we are close by Wichita and offer affordable recovery with a very high success rate. We usually find ourselves in Wichita once a week, so if … Read more