WD2500BEKT Western Digital Scorpio Black Drive Recovered

WD2500BEKT Data Recovery 1

This Scorpio Black Western Digital drive was not showing up for the customer when they tried to access the important photos and work documents that were stored on it. They had initially brought the drive into their local computer repair shop, but the shop told them the drive was not recoverable without advanced lab recovery. The shop they brought it into used to send people to one of the big data recovery companies. The big recovery company had an average quote of about $1500. When they decided to give us a try and start sending customers to us instead, they were pleased to find that their clients said yes to the recovery 10x more often, and our average recovery quote is closer to $400. Not only do they end up earning more commission over the year from sending their clients to us (smaller commissions per client, but more clients say yes, so they end up way ahead), but their customers are pleased that they got a referral that saved them a ton of money and … Read more

Hitachi Hard Drive Recovery With Bad Sectors

Hitachi hard drive recovery -HTS725050A7E630

Sometimes even the most basic sounding issues with a hard drive can cause the data to be unrecoverable without specialized equipment and experience. This Hitachi hard drive recovery was one of those recoveries that sounded like the issue may require internal parts replacement, while in reality, the issue was just bad sectors. Hitachi and Western Digital A lot of people don’t realize that the hard drive portion of Hitachi was purchased by Western Digital in 2012. This drive is from after that merger, so this Hitachi drive was created by the Western Digital company.  To talk about the merger, you have to go all the way back to 2012. For those of us old enough to still have the battle scars, this was a year after the floods that caused hard drive prices to skyrocket for a time. In 2012, Western Digital Corporation announced that it would be acquiring Hitachi Global Storage Technologies in a deal worth $3.9 billion. The move marked a shift in the storage landscape, as Western Digital became the world’s largest … Read more

2TB Seagate Expansion Stopped Showing Up – Expert Recovery Without Head Swap

Seagate Expansion Stopped Showing Up

This Seagate Expansion stopped showing up when connected to a computer. The client first brought the drive to a computer repair shop for diagnostics and was told that it would be best to go to a professional data recovery lab to get the data back from this drive. The repair shop said it sounded like the drive may have bad heads, and they recommended us for having an affordable clean room recovery rate. Seagate Expansion Stopped Showing Up This particular drive is one of the Rosewood model Seagate drives that are found inside the external USB drives called the Expansion Portable Hard Drive. These Rosewood drives are fairly common, and we do tend to see more data recoveries being needed on these drives than some other model drives. I cover the reasons behind the seemingly higher than usual failure rate in this Rosewood blog post, but basically, the issues with the drives are complex firmware and fragile parts likely due to the drive being designed to be as thin as possible. Recovery diagnosis Once the … Read more

Professional Toshiba HD Recovery MQ01ABD075

Toshiba MQ01ABD075 750GB Laptop Drive

This Toshiba HD Recovery would spin up, but would not be recognized by any computer. The customer had tried connecting it to a few different machines, but the drive would not be recognized by the computer at all. This client was looking for an affordable data recovery service to get back their important files. Toshiba HD Recovery When connected to the PC-3000 data recovery rig, the Toshiba hard drive would ID and I could launch the utility, but would not allow access to the data on the platters. This type of symptom is usually caused by a firmware issue on the drive. I read all the firmware modules I could to find what the issue could be. In this case, the G-List had a lot of data present and could be corrupt. Anytime I see a lot of info in the G-list I clear it out before starting the imaging process, but in this case, I was hoping that clearing that module would allow access to the data on the platters. After clearing that firmware … Read more

Hard Drive Recovery on Samsung ST1000LM024

Hard Drive Recovery on Samsung ST1000LM024

I get a lot of clients that contact me to ask about my affordable hard drive recovery service. Most have been told by another recovery professional that their drive requires a clean room in order to replace bad heads. In my experience, only about 15-20% of drives that come in require a clean room recovery. Most are recoverable under our Standard or Standard+ tiers. Samsung ST1000LM024 Hard Drive Recovery This drive belonged to a client who had been working with another recovery company for a while. They had been told that a drive with the symptoms this drive had would need a “head swap” to function again. Spin up, spin down drive symptom When plugged into power, the ST1000LM024 hard drive would spin up, seek for a while (sounds like light clicking), then spin back down. It would not be recognized by any computer at all. This Samsung drive came to me with 4 issues present: Bad sectors Weak heads Firmware corruption Partition corruption. The two main issues were the bad sectors present on the … Read more