Search results

Thanks!

I'm still unable to determine how new users are bypassing the moderation of the first 5 posts. The only possibility I can think of is that one of the moderator accounts was compromised, possibly due to a recycled password. To be sure, I've removed all moderator permissions 100% from the forum...

I've removed your spam link. If you want to promote your products here you can, but you must do it openly and honestly by declaring yourself as a representative of the company that sells the products. Not just posting spammy junk posts with anchor text urls. Tell us why your station is good...

Just make a backup of the drive. If it's got bad sectors in existing files, the drive will find them when it tries to read them. Other bad sectors will eventually be detected when the drive background scans itself or when it tries to write data to a sector and it fails.

Not too likely. Within only a few milliseconds of the USB cable coming out, the drive already parked the heads. Likely it already happened before your hand hit it. But, check the S.M.A.R.T. either way and see.

The OS eject just makes certain there's no cached data that hasn't been yet written to the disk and that the file system is fully updated and ready for disconnect. It has nothing to do with the hard drive's operations like parking the heads. It's highly unlikely then that the heads were...

It's certainly possible, but I wouldn't immediately assume the HDD is bad just because you bumped it. Once the power (or USB cable) is disconnected, the heads park very quickly into their parking zone. Once the heads are parked, they're pretty resilient to being bumped around. It's when...

You can try throwing in the -R trigger in your ddrescue command to make it image backward from the highest LBA to the lowest. If it's just one area of bad sectors, you can perhaps image both ways up to the bad area. Even better, try using hddsuperclone to image it. It's better at skipping...

Sorry for all the spam. Somehow these suckers found a way to bypass the moderation of their first 5 posts and get them to directly post. I'm still now sure how they're doing it, perhaps a flaw in the forum software (I haven't updated it in a couple versions). They were posting faster than I...

another: https://besthdd.com/another-url https://besthdd.com/data/recovery/services/seagate

Testing another url (just working on a plugin I'm developing and need to see if referrer url is properly captured). Nothing related to this site. https://besthdd.com/seagate-drives-are-junk/

Testing a URL: https://besthdd.com/linkfromdm

Maybe share the old link, perhaps someone can help look if we know what specifically you're after.

Maybe, maybe not. I've seen cases where a second or even third donor got significantly more data after killing the first/second set of replacements. But, often yes, it's just killing more heads without results. I usually left it up to my clients to decide if they wanted to keep paying for...

771692 is the correct board. If memory serves me correctly, I think the -002 Rev A is the revision with the greatest compatibility. If the patient ROM size is smaller, you can just pad it with zeros at the end to match the donor board's larger ROM size. Also, have to be careful of embedded vs...

Has nothing to do with the hardware level encryption. Long after they implemented encryption into most of their drives IIRC. Getting way ahead of yourself here. First off, how do the two drives sound when just powered on with nothing but a power cable? Do they sound like they spin up...

WD externals very often encrypt/decrypt the data via that SATA-USB bridge adapter board. So it's not surprising that a generic USB/SATA adapter won't recognize the drive. There's a number on the board that you need to match, and you can usually get one on eBay for a reasonable price. Can you...

So how does that work if you buy a plugin, and then the year expires? If you renew, do you keep the plugin, or do you have to renew that annually as well? Seems a complex billing structure.

If you have PC-3000 you can try reading the RAP + CAP + SAP parameters, and then infusing those into a same FW version ROM. Might result in a working ROM code for your drive. I've never seen this either. Not sure if it's sabotage, or just some random code.

So basically it's a SAN version that is limited to a single-year license? (obviously, other features, but those SAN units are the big ones that stand out to me).

And there's the idiot spamming their junk software. Banned, and spam blocked.

The hardware of the device has failed. Probably will require a chip-off recovery solution. Nothing that you can do in software my friend.

There's one company out there advertising their use of a glide burnish machine to improve odds of data recovery. But, it's generally believed by most data recovery professionals that it's nothing more than some hyped up marketing that's unlikely to make any real world difference. If you can...

For what? Cleaning platters? I'd be pretty scared to try that.

Probably is just damage, such as a scratch in the service area, that keeps killing the heads. Unfortunately, some cases are just head killers. I've had plenty that killed 4 or 5 sets of heads while each time getting me just far enough to keep providing false hope. It's hard to get customers...

This is totally true. I have a couple sites I've been putting quite a bit of SEO effort into the last six months to try to boost them (while neglecting this site almost entirely, just keeping it running basically). Those sites have tanked while this one has climbed 50% in search rankings...

Not supported by any tools at this point I'm afraid (at least as far as my somewhat out-of-date-knowledge). I never managed to find a readable preamp version in the ROM. Maybe it's not stored there, or at least not in plain text that can be seen. The best bet is usually just to match the...

It's the bitlocker recovery key. If it was saved to your Microsoft account when you created the key, you should be able to get it from Microsoft on this page: https://account.microsoft.com/devices/recoverykey Otherwise you are at the mercy of hoping the key was saved somewhere else at the time...

I took it down for you. I suspect it won't let you edit a post days later. Don't want you getting in trouble with Ace.

Right. It's not just about needing the connection. SAS requires the software to be speaking SCSI not ATA, so it's a moot point if you didn't pay for the SCSI/SAS version.

Interesting. I'll have to play around with it later and see if it's any good. What commission do you keep for selling/buying through the app?

It's funny you talk about quality links while simultaneously spamming a link in a chat forum.

Looks like you found it. FYI, I'd be careful about publically posting screenshots of pinouts from inside your pc3000 flash account. I don't think Ace wants those public and you probably don't want to burn your bridge with them.

No, I don't think I ever found a reliable way to get the specs. I think someone pointed me to a tool where you could check the serial number and at least get model number, but it asked what country, and I never figured out which country it was manufactured in either. In any event, I think the...

I've ordered from these guys a lot: https://www.soscleanroom.com/categories/swabs/

Hey guys, I just finished migrating the forum to a new virtual server. Trying to cut some hosting costs, so combining up several of my sites into a single VPS. Please let me know here if you are experiencing any sort of new issues with the forum. I've got some new things running, like...

So I've just finished developing a tool that allows to input a hex value from the same location on each disk of a RAID 50 set, and it'll figure out the two RAID 5 sets by analyzing the XOR. It can work for any size, no matter how many drives. Here's a screenshot: Shown with 80 input boxes...

Sounds like it's struggling to initialize and read all of the firmware. Depending on the model, maybe stuck in a pending bad sector reallocation cycle that's failing repeatedly. As PCLab said, need TTL from the com port to see better what's happening.

DoD standards exist because data containing government secrets must be protected against hypothetical future threats of being breached (even if said hypothesis are defunkt). Gutmann's standard exists because Peter Gutmann didn't understand HDD technology and based his theory on a massively...

Only by people who don't know what they are talking about. No, it doesn't. That's just a story some paranoid people keep throwing around on the internet.

I deleted the post. Funny how completely unrelated the linked spam article was to this thread. They can't possibly expect any SEO benefit from that sort of troll posting.

Have you tried scanning with data recovery software?

As mentioned in the original post, revision probably doesn't matter, but we're keeping track of the confirmed successes just in case it does matter sometimes. Try it, find out, and report back here. ;)

The problem never had anything to do with the PCB in the first place. These drives have issues with the media cache and bad sector reallocation functions. It can be fixed by modifying some settings in the firmware, but you'll probably need a PC-3000 tool to even unlock the TTL port.

Sounds like you don't really want advice. Have fun destroying all hope of recovery.

How much of the drive was overwritten by the image file? Did you scan the whole drive? Were there any RAW results found at least? Any encryption being used on the drive?

This HDD have a model number? Garbage I highly doubt that, but if it's true it's a bigger problem than you are going to solve with software. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO. Under no circumstance is it ever the right decision to format a drive with lost data. Not only will this not help, it runs a very...

I would love to see that. I'm no programmer, but would love to take a look under the hood of your awesome work. Still happy I purchased a license, even if you are now going open source. Your work is a valid contribution to society.

It's pricey because it's for a specific sub-set of users who do professional data recovery. End users should be fine doing their one-off case with just the free version. Those who want the advanced features are mostly data recovery pros who don't have any issue dropping $200. Newer kernels...

No, but if the drive is otherwise functional, it would allow reading decrypted sectors. Fortunately, PC-3000 now supports creating an unlocked ROM for these, I do believe. You'll need an unlocked PCB to actually to work with the SA, but I believe without the original main controller chip, the...

Awesome work as always. I hope you are staying safe over there in Ukraine my friend.

Why do I get the feeling this thread is about to get spam dumped on again.

I usually just have them write down every password they can remember ever using to log onto the computer/etc. and start trying variations of them. Most often it's a password they've used before elsewhere. Short of guessing/remembering the password, there isn't much to try. I know someone on...

You should try SPAMMING somewhere else.

Cool! Thanks

I'd start in those root folders and see if you can find your data in there somewhere. Somewhere you should find your NAS share folders.

Start with this one:

It depends on how badly damaged the folder structure is, sometimes getting full folder structure back isn't possible. After you complete the full scan, it should present you with a list of found file systems. You may have to browse through several of them before you find the right one.

Give DMDE a shot. The trial will let you recover some data, and if you need more it's only like $20 for a paid license. It's usually good for lost partition situations.

Try using actual good software like R-Studio, UFS Explorer, DMDE, etc. Not that garbage. No, formatting again will make the data less recoverable, not more recoverable. Anyone who says otherwise has no clue.

If it's the very outer edge, then it might not be catastrauphic. But, it's no sounding like a DIY case in any event.

I don't care if you want to talk about or discuss your business on here, but that post was just an outright advertisement. Spam somewhere else. This forum is for meaningful discussion.

Information is useless if you don't have the tools and expertise to handle a case. Do you own a cleanroom, head combs, PC-3000? If not, you are out of luck my friend. You can't even properly diagnose the issue without those things, let alone recover the data. It's not that we don't want to...

Test these with a multi-meter to see if there are any short circuits. Those are the TVS diodes. Also, did you try connecting just the PCB to the computer to see if it still trips the power supply? It seems odd that the same PCB would work on one HDA and trip the power supply when connected...

Did you check the TVS diodes on the PCB to see if one is short-circuited?

Translation: I also have a hard drive of the VeniceR series. same error situation as yours, i am thinking some module error, not head error

I just sent you a PM.

I was referring to the second picture with that plastic tab stuck to the platter. The busted parking ramp makes sense and I've seen cases like that before.

Uh oh! Seems you've made a "friend" already Fairuz.

If you want to save some money, you can also just buy replacements on AliExpress. I've used these and they work just fine: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001038455207.html

Looks like maybe that plastic thing is something the prior company used to remove and inspect the platters??? Never seen that before.

My money is on G4311A since that's what the SATA MQ04ABF100 uses.

Welcome to the forum Freddy, nice to have someone with your level of experience join in!

If you resume going the SAME direction it'll pick up where it left off. If you REVERSE the direction, it's starting at the opposite end of the LBA range and therefore will not resume. It's doing what it was programmed to do.

No, if you switch directions it will restart from the end and work backwards. The most common use of the reverse trigger is to image up to a bad area, then image backwards to the same area without stressing the drive trying to image through a really bad spot. It's working as intended, but you...

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding your original query then. Adding the -R trigger will make it restart from the end and work backward, regardless of where it had last attempted in prior runs. It's just still only going to actually re-read sectors that weren't previously read based on the logging.

It probably is, but the issue could be as simple as a lot of bad sectors in the file tables or something like that. So pclab's suggestion of using a Linux tool like HDDSuperClone to attempt imaging is a valid suggestion. If it's just bad sectors causing the I/O errors, it may succeed in...

Did you use the same log file as before? That log is how it keeps track of what is and isn't read.

I moved it to the Samsung section and left a permalink in place so it'll still resolve. No worries, there's no nazi moderators here, just normal people. I couldn't hear it either, even at max volume. Can you tell if the platters (disks) actually are spinning, or is it just a beep/hum and it...

NO! Under no circumstance should you ever initialize a drive you are trying to recover data from. To "initialize" means to create a new partition table and that can be data destructive. The drive is having hardware issues, at the very least it has bad sectors and could be much worse. How...

With ECC off, you will read a lot of garbage because there's no ECC (Error Correction Code). The slow reading is probably due to it reading the same sectors multiple times before enough accurate data is read for the ECC to actually correct the sector and return proper data. Likely the platter...

At the time I had posted this, UFS hadn't been updated in some time and it seemed like R-Explorer was the product he was actively developing and updating. It seemed for a time like UFS was being abandoned. Now, he's keeping both products updated and has branched them out to a pro line (UFS)...

0% chance. Exactly 0%. You've probably already destroyed any hope of recovery.

Sometimes terminal boards just go bad. I've had to replace a couple.

Try using an older version of the driver. I have an issue where Win 11 keeps updating the driver for the PC-3000 terminal, and then saying "it's not compatible with this version of Windows", but reinstalling the older version fixes it every time.

The drive either has a weak/failed read-write head, or it has a malfunction of the firmware related to the bad sector reallocation functions. DIY repair will be very difficult to nearly impossible without access to tools like PC-3000 to properly diagnose and correct the issue. Is the data of...

Cool, thanks!

The link still works when I click it.

If the ROM is in fact burned out, then recovery won't be possible. So it's important to be sure. What makes you assume this?

And posted in a thread that's supposed to have been locked. Guess the migration unlocked it.

I'm wondering if it might be a bad head and it's repowering when it gets to buffering from that head. Have you tried messing with the head map to disable heads?

What makes you assume the ROM is burned out? Where did this prognosis come from?

I'm afraid free tools don't provide any way to correlate what files the unread sectors belong to. That's getting into the realm of professional data recovery systems costing thousands.

No, you'd just need to re-open the project file and you can resume where you left off. But, if you are using a Linux live build without persistent storage, the file might not really exist anywhere but in RAM. Just be sure you actually have a copy of that project file you created. Seems that...

If you try pulling out the heads/ramp together at the same time, the ramp will almost always just fall out and the heads will snap together. Game over for the heads. You really need a proper tool for these.

Thanks for sharing.

1. The guide should still work. DDrescue is a raw copy tool that's able to work fairly well with drives that have bad sectors. You also might consider trying HDDSuperClone. It's a newer Linux tool, with a GUI that is also quite good. 2. Whether you image to a file or do a drive-to-drive clone...

I've never used DFL tools, so I don't know if it's even capable of pulling this information.

You clearly didn't read any of the initial post. This is an SSHD that isn't spinning up. F commands will do nothing to an SSHD that is stuck busy and never spins up. For an F command to even matter, you need to first have SA access which can't happen with a platter that doesn't spin. I'm...

That information is on this sticky thread: https://www.data-medics.com/forum/threads/wd-pcb-terminal-connections.962/

Did you try a 2060-771672-004 board? That's what most SATA version Mariner family drives seem to use. I know I've swapped a couple, but I don't have notes on exactly which board I used. You might find that it helps to actually buy a SATA drive from that family and try using the PCB from that...

Now it's time to use data recovery software on that clone. There's file system damage, so you can't just expect it to mount like it's perfectly healthy.

Welcome! Just start working on those bad drives, and when you get stuck, post what you've tried here and we'll try to help you through the next steps. MRT is a bit more challenging to work with compared to PC-3000, but you can still do a lot.

Are you able to fully read module 190 on both copies without any issues?

You've now cloned over 98% of the data, so that's good. But, you've still got close to 20Gb it needs to try to clean up. I'd let it keep running a bit longer if it were me. Keep an eye on the "time since last successful read:" time. 16s isn't bad, which means it's still reading some sectors...

Nice! That should make it much easier to find a good donor.

I'm not sure what you saw, but I don't see any need for soldering anything here.

I don't think it'll hurt to switch to backwards. It could be just one bad area it's stuck in.

Then step one is to make a sector by sector clone of the drive. There's a guide to using ddrescue in the tutorials section of this forum. don't do that under any circumstance A drive suddenly going RAW could be a sign of failing hardware, so cloning first will help to determine if that's a...

Problem in module 190?

Yes. IC602 is the one.

Do you own a unit? That should come with it.

NAS is file-level storage. PC-3000 requires block-level storage. The only way it'll play nice with a network device is probably to use it as an iSCSI target and allow for block-level access. I don't know if your NAS supports creating iSCSI targets. The more expensive ones usually do. This...

You obviously don't know what you are doing. Seek out a professional.

Do not even consider using chkdsk, that's one of the dumbest things on earth you could attempt. You sent screenshots of device manager. That's not what I'd said. Open up COMPUTER MANAGEMENT > STORAGE > DISK MANAGEMENT and grab a screenshot of that. It looks like this:

Adapting a replacement PCB if the original is blown... for instance.

First off, you don't need any drivers for those adapters. It's been a standard driver for mass storage for a couple of decades now, so Windows natively works with it. What OS was the original computer using? Was any encryption employed? Are you sure your current OS is configured to...

Check the ROM info in PC-3000 to find out which Rosewood family it is. I would guess _A5, but that's an important thing to match.

Date is not usually very important for these. If the model is the same and especially if the AAA AA00/ part is matching, they should work.

Cool! Thanks for the follow-up comment. So I guess they've adopted the diagonal parity too. I think it's supposed to be a lot faster for rebuilds than RS based RAID 6. How was it carving out the virtual disk? Was it all pretty continuous once you had the RAID configuration straight?

I'm sure there are some AIOs that were equipped with a 2.5" drive, but I've never bothered to keep track of them. That'd be something you'd have to ask on a PC repair forum. Here, we all do data recovery and would never bother to buy a whole computer to just read one drive. I've got three...

That's just a standard PATA 2.5" connection. It's the same in virtually every old laptop. Your cables for the desktop are just sized for the 3.5" size drives. You can buy a size adapter: https://www.amazon.com/SinLoon-Adapter-Laptop-Desktop-Converter/dp/B07ZGHZJMM/ Or you can just buy a USB...

I can't say I've personally ever worked on one of those HPE SAN units. Nothing in the documentation that I'm seeing seems to suggest anything beyond a regular RS RAID 6, but it's hard to be sure. I know some other brands like EMC like to use a sort of diagonal parity rather than a Reed-Solomon...

Found them: https://www.hddheadtools.com/product-category/data-unlock-sata-connectors/

I love it, and I want a set. If I wasn't semi-retired I'd have ordered them already. Do you have a link showing where they can be purchased?

The website looks nice, but the inventory is quite lacking. I'm sure that's something you plan to increase??? As a suggestion, perhaps sorting drives by their utility families would make it faster and easier for donor searching. I've always wished donor drives would do that.

Sounds like we have a quarrel here. Tell me more.

Say what?

I'll see if I can re-create it later on (maybe my memory will be good enough from the one time I watched it). Basically, he showed how you can pull system file 129 out of the newer WDs, even though they're not in the directory module, and then use that to build an unlocked ROM. I can't verify...

Type /CQ in the terminal and read up what it tells you about that.

I was using that to point to the above quote. It's also often used on forums as an arrow pointing up.

Again this ^^^

Yeah, I kind of sold my lab, and the NAS that was hosting this went to the new owners. I'll probably throw it up onto another NAS later, but I'm busy with other things right now.

I'd say it has a very good chance it'll match. Only one month difference in the manufacture and from the same site. I doubt they were using two different sets of heads for the model within a two-month period.

Very cool! Who did you squeeze the information for this technique from?

And that's all it takes to prevent recovery in most cases.

So, I've been clearing some old drives which had bad sectors to just sanitize them. A command I've often used to clear drives with bad sectors is: T>m0,4,2,,,0,0,22 Which I started using (with good results) after seeing it used in MRT's menu for drive refurbishing. Normally, when I've done...

Jamaica and Jamaica 4K families. Not surprising they are cross-compatible. I've been keeping a list of cross-compatible heads families here on this thread: https://www.data-medics.com/forum/threads/cross-compatible-wd-families.1535/

I mean, it's technically "possible" you'd just need to know all the vendor-specific ATA commands. Problem is, no one who's done all that reverse engineering is going to share that information. Which is why they lock it down in a hardware/software combo tool like PC-3000 and you have to pay...

Not to discourage you from posting here, but you may find that a forum like Forensic Focus is better geared toward this sort of thing. Most of us are in pro data recovery, not really forensics. We can certainly help explain what's going on with the RAID (if you actually post those pictures for...

If the drive is spinning up, you can usually assume the ROM is fine and has passed checksum. As PCLab said, now it's time to address what else is wrong with the drive. Could be a firmware issue, could be one failed head, could be something else. The drive getting ID but not spinning isn't...

Well, if you've been holding off getting the portable system to handle NVMe SSDs, looks like it'll be time to buy one in 2 years. Seagate is planning to start shipping this junk in 2024: Fun stuff. The connection looks pretty SAS to me, and it sounds like maybe it'll support SATA/SAS & NVMe...

I would just assume on the PCB of the drive being fine in your case. I've seen very few Toshiba native USB drives with bad PCBs. Maybe one or two in my entire career, not counting obviously damaged ones with something like a ripped-off USB header. Most likely the issue is bad sectors...

Translation: Hello, nice to meet you, could you give me the reference or the purchase link of those adapters on Amazon? This is what I use: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-M-2-2-5in-SATA-Adapter/dp/B00ITJ7U20/

I don't know if this is a planned spam dump spot, but at least it's on topic so I'll allow it for now.

The problem has nothing to do with the PCB, and almost never does on USB drives. It's probably a firmware malfunction which is very common on all WD drives. As to it not spinning with the donor PCB, that's probably due an incomplete or mis-flashed eePROM chip (the U12). No reason to even...

Okay, all old accounts with zero posts are now moved back into the New Users group and should require moderation of their first posts again. Hopefully, no more spam links to porno sites will slip through now.

I see. It seems that some users who'd registered on the old platform and never posted anything, got moved out of the "new users" group and into the regular 'users' group. I'll see what I can do to dump all the zero post accounts back into the new users category.

Yeah, I don't know how these are getting through the new platform. Right now, it's set to require moderation of their first 5 posts, but they keep just slipping though. I've made you a moderator Larry, so feel free to just permanently delete them and ban the user if you see any more pop up...

I've removed your spam link. Talking about and even linking to your software site isn't prohibited, but pretending to be an end-user and recommending your software is prohibited. If you want to promote your software here, start a new thread in the appropriate sub, identify yourself as...

Okay, been a few bugs to sort out, but I think we're now done with the migration from phpBB to the new and improved Xenforo. Please let me know if any resources seem to be missing. A few old URLs may not resolve, but we've done our best to get as much as possible ported from one platform to...

Wow! Nice work. Awesome!!! I know I was bugging you to add support for this. Would have saved me a ton of extra work on that last case I had of a corrupted sparsebundle.

A lot of us own this equipment, and pretty much anyone with the latest release of PC-3000 should be able to do this. However, you are assuming that your SSD has this same issue (it very well may not) and you're assuming that the software has a loader module for your SSD's firmware version...

I'm not very familiar with this BMR file type. I would try out a demo of UFSExplorer Professional recovery and see if it can open the backup images. Just browse to one of them in the software, right-click, and select "open as image". If it's any sort of standardized disk image, USF should be...

Welcome Chirag!

I don't have a sure way to read preamp from Rosewood ROMs directly. Most often, the issue of being able to read but not write SA is resolved by getting a donor with a closer manufacture date.

I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. Why not take a test drive, use a non-native PCB and try it out.

This had me scratching my head today. Plugged in a brand new 4Tb Toshiba Canvio HDD that I bought on Amazon as a destination for a case. I happened to open up WD Discovery software, to reset encryption on another drive that I had sold on eBay & previous owner hadn't sanitized. Was quite...

Seagate drives typically perform a sector size mutation via the USB - SATA bridge board. So Windows can't understand the partition table structure. But, data recovery software typically ignores the sector size and will detect it either way.

If you shrank the partition in Windows disk management, the free space would have been to the right of the existing partition, not to the left. My guess is that you shrank it, then imaged your other partition over the top of the partition that held the already copied files (overwriting them in...

So how did you create the 600Gb partition? Windows won't allow shrinking a partition from the front end, only from the back end. So you either had to have used some thrid party utility or deleted the existing partition before creating the new one.

So Disk 4 had both a partition (G:) and (I:) before you copied the 800Gb of data to it? Or did you create the 600Gb partition after you'd already copied the data?

I can probably solve it for you, but I'd need remote access to try things and see what's going on. Probably there are some damaged modules that can read by ABA but not by ID, or something like that.

I never use Disk Drill, because there are much better programs out there. Maybe the program is just slow. A few other things that might cause speed issues: 1. If you are USB 2.0 connected rather than USB 3.0 or direct SATA. Even if you are in a 3.0 port your Sata to USB adapter might be only...

\ NO!!!!!! Never, and anyone who ever suggests you should format a drive to try recovery is a COMPLETE IDIOT!!!

No need to panic, there hasn't been any data breach here just yet. In the coming weeks, I'll be migrating this forum away from phpBB to a new platform entirely. Switching it to Xenforo if you are curious. Due to the switch, I'll be employing the help of a third party that'll be migrating all...

Couldn't get the actual tips precise enough to fit under the heads with the printer??? Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

Nice! Tool looks good. 3D printed? I ask because I was considering trying to make tools using a high-resolution SLA printer.

Glad to hear it worked. I just did something similar with a Hitachi yesterday. I used heads from a 2 platter drive in a 1 platter drive. Rather than cutting the ramp, I just kept a piece of rubber in there that held the unused head at the right height to pass harmlessly onto & off of the...

As this question has nothing to do with the original post, don't expect any answers here. Start a new thread for a new subject.

1. Stop using a SATA to USB adapter. You should only work with it directly SATA connected (or better yet, with a tool like PC-3000, DDI, MRT, etc.) You are completely handicapped over a USB bridge. 2. It's probably asking to initialize because the original USB adapter was doing a sector size...

Cool! I was expecting it'd just get you terminal access, but if it actually fixed the problem, even better :D

What is the exact model of the HDD? Your "guy" may have just nuked your data for good if it's one of the newer drives that's SMR and supports T.R.I.M. There is never a good reason to format or otherwise write new data to a drive you've lost data on. Anyone telling you to do that is 100%...

Have you tried quickly sending the spin-down command after you get terminal for that second?

If you want to talk about your software, even promote it on here, that's fine. But you must disclose that you represent the software and not just go around randomly recommending it as if you were an end user.

I feel like the newer the drives get, the less DCM even matters. Half the time, all I'm matching now with newer WDs is a close date. Impressive that one 16 months off like that was compatible.

I don't know if the heads will physically work in such a case... Do heads 0 & 1 even properly line up with the platter height? :?

Wow! :o Tickle me impressed. Someone finally broke the stone-cold silence on this just last month. I can't wait to try it out.

Try cutting the orange wire in one of those power cables and see if the drive spins up then. :D

There's a couple guys who claim they can rebuild a lost F3 ROM, but I've never been able to actually verify this. They definitely won't share their technique with you and will only do it if you agree to send the case physically to them.

If heads were stuck near the ramp, it's usually best to not use a tool and simply spin the platters while putting gentle pressure on the back of the actuator to gently guide it back onto the ramp. It takes some practice to get the technique right, but once you get good at it is quite effective.

Nope, most of them are NVME which is not SATA but actually PCIe. Thus, not supported well in much of any data recovery systems. There are USB adapters for them, but if the original computer can't access the SSD it's unlikely that the adapter will either.

R-Studio, UFSExplorer, Reclaime Pro, DMDE, etc. Pretty much any good recovery software will support scanning either the physical drive or the logical.

The little it was earning wasn't worth the annoyance. This forum creates content which leads to people finding my company who are researching data recovery. It serves its purpose that way. I was just curious how much ads are worth. $0.50/day is hardly worth annoying the users of this forum...

Is there an orange wire in your power supply wires going to the drives?

I hope this doesn't mean you ran the drive with the top cover removed. :shock:

You've pretty much done it all. Honestly, depending on what SSD model it is, there might not even be much a professional can do.

If you used Eraser to clean one partition, then no data from the wiped partition can ever be recovered.

Yeah, there seems to be some randomness with it. Usually, if it comes from a 4Tb, it's fine to use, but if it's from a 3Tb it can only be used for other 3Tb drives. I had one recently where we had to try like four different boards (most from 4Tb drives) and only the last one finally worked for...

If you are trying to image to a file your command would be more like sudo ddrescue /dev/sda /mnt/mountpoint/folder/image.bin [log path]... You can't use /dev/sdb if you are imaging to a file, that would be if you wanted to image a whole disk to another disk entirely. /dev is only used for...

That's what everyone is saying. If it's reading all zeros, all a dd image would be is a bunch of zeros. Not very helpful for recovery. Yes, they would need the hardware to deal with the hardware issue at hand.

If you have three 1Tb WD black drives that are all acting up in roughly the same way, recovery might not be that expensive. We usually offer a bulk rate discount if you get all three recovered at the same time. If you are not in a rush, and none of the heads have failed, it may be around $945...

This is commonly referred to as the WD slow responding bug. It happens when a drive develops more bad sectors than it's firmware can handle remapping (in most cases). Early on when the bug starts, the drive will sometimes just be really slow to respond, but as the problem worsens it'll reach a...

1. You can use ddrescue just like any other data storage device to clone it. There's a guide here: how-to-clone-a-hard-drive-with-bad-sectors-using-ddrescue-t133.html 2. Sure, a lot is possible if you have the right professional tools and expertise to use them.

It's definitely not an issue with the PCB. It sounds to me like the read/write heads became stuck to the platters and seized the motor spindle. It's fairly common on these models because they have 5 platters and 10 read/write heads. It should be an easy enough recovery for a lab with a clean...

That server is for active users of this forum. The password isn't given to first-time posters.

Yes, there is a backup copy of the GPT at the end of the drive. It's fairly easy to restore that using a program like TestDisk to put the partition back. However, most data recovery software (such as UFS which you mention) will automatically read the backup table and find the partition bounds...

Regardless of having a utility, you can do a lot over terminal. But you first need to investigate whether the ROM unlock is supported to get terminal access. I've recovered plenty of Seagate drives that PC-3000 didn't have utilities for by just using terminal commands.

I'm not sure i have any with that specific firmware. Can you post a copy of the ROM? In my experience, usually, they don't spin if the ROM is corrupt.

Nice work! I had started into this but never had the time to finish. Glad you took up the project. :D

Have you tried unlocking the ROM with the latest PC-3000? I know they have a newer, second unlocking method which I've never yet needed. If you can unlock the ROM and get terminal access, then things might be possible.

It would also help to see what's coming out on the terminal during start-up.

You need a data recovery program that knows how to work with a Linux file system. Try using UFS Explorer or Recovery Explorer to scan it. Those programs actually support the file system. However, just know that files which have been encrypted by the ransomware are unlikely to be recoverable...

I've never tried it, but I understand there is a very time consuming process of manually rebuilding it by adding defects to the translator at the first untranslatable sector until you find then next chain of sectors that properly translate and continue repeating that until you have translated...

Can you hear if the platters are actually spinning up? Maybe the motor spindle is seized...

The bad sectors themselves are a problem with spots on the platters. The drive getting stuck busy (causing Explorer to hang) and the drive dropping offline, is due to the drive's firmware malfunctioning when it's trying to re-allocate those bad sectors. This is probably a 100% road to failure...

Sure, I just added it to the custom search. :D

How is that even a thing? :lol: Not saying I don't believe you. Why on earth would you want a RAID 6 of three drives? At that point, you may as well just do a triple mirror RAID 1.

Maybe, I don't know. Unfortunately, I am hitting a lot of bad sectors. But, getting enough data to get paid it seems.

So here's a case that had me baffled for a good hour or so before I finally figured out what was going on. Hope you'll get a good laugh out of it too. Case is a WD2500BEVT-22ZCT0 drive described as clicking. Drive has head map of 0 2 3 (physically missing head 1). When I open it up in the...

So more money than PC-3000 with far less value. Seems right :lol: That's why now they are focusing on calling it a "forensics" tool. They're hoping people in law enforcement won't know there are better tools available and be willing to pay government tax money on the tools.

If the ROM code is in the main IC then there should be a backup of the ROM in SA. Just use any Giant family ROM along with its matching LDR to get SA access. Then you can rebuild ROM from SA. You might have to try a few different ones, but it should work.

It's for active members of this forum only. You have only this one post, so that's not you. :D

So I just confirmed that Tornado 2D and Tornado 2PMR are cross-compatible for heads.

Nothing a regular computer will read from the drive is of any relavance in its condition. All the log files in the world mean exactly nothing if the drive is clicking like that. There is virtually no communication happening between your computer and the HDD until the HDD finally gives up and...

Rather than the model, try posting the family and consolidated ROM version you are trying to match. That'll get you more meaningful responses.

If you are not finding an MBR on either drive, then perhaps it wasn't a RAID5, maybe a RAID 0??? A typical RAID 5 will have what appears to be an MBR on two disks, one being the actual MBR and the other being a parity copy of the MBR against the first sector of the other disks (which is often...

Possibly, by a lab. Definitely not DIY. Then you probably can't afford to get the data back. This isn't a head stuck issue where any tinkering inside alone is going to fix it. From the sound, the platters are clearly spinning up and the actuator is moving. Most likely it's failed heads...

There are better programs for the same price range though. DMDE for example is cheaper than Easeus, and will get much better results. R-Studio or Recovery Explorer are a bit more money, but often get great results. Sadly many of the bigger names people have heard of are completely mediocre...

No. Your issue is beyond anything software can do. Software can only ever request a block of data from the card and get what the card returns. If the card is returning only 00 in the sector, that's all any software can ever get.

Normally, all zeros would seem to indicate something like T.R.I.M. had been run, but I have yet to hear of a microSD card that supports T.R.I.M. Perhaps the phone actually did a wipe of the card as part of the format process.... I don't know. I'm really not much of a phone data recovery...

I would scan the drive with either R-Studio Demo or UFS Explorer Demo and see how much of the file system it is able to rebuild. The old drive you did the drag and drop will be of no use as that type of copy doesn't put files back in their same sector locations.

I don't know that I've personally come across any 800066 boards that were locked, but perhaps in some regions, they are. I do see some advertised as specifically being "unlocked" so I'd assume that some are locked and some aren't.

Thanks! Added it to the list.

Perhaps the SSD is only partly encrypted with Bitlocker. Try scanning in R-Studio or another program without putting in the Bitlocker password and see if it starts finding raw files at a certain point. Maybe they had recently turned BitLocker on and it was in the process of encrypting and got...

Probably not. SSDs use a command set called T.R.I.M. which will zero-fill sectors after data is deleted or a drive is formatted. Assuming the format was done in Windows 10, the data is almost certainly gone forever.

Hi Fairuz, welcome to the forum! Nice to have you here. Getting started out in this business is expensive, we all struggled to get started I think. For me, it wiped out my retirement savings, and only after like 7-8 years am I finally in better financial condition than before I started the...

Usually, a 500Gb would have been missing a head or two. I keep saying one of these days I need to go through my inventory and get head maps and PA numbers for all my donors. I'm sure there's been plenty of times I had a compatible donor but didn't check it because it was a smaller size and I...

It's a three-disk RAID 5 with a hot spare that was used for a rebuild. Take the two drive A disks, open in a hex editor, scroll to where it becomes all zeros and then do a reverse search for data. The one with more data on it is most likely the one that was most recently online (it's not a...

Don't panic. Is the drive making any odd sounds? Does it seem like the OS was accidentally installed onto the external drive?

Do you have other programmers there working with you, or do you just work 24 hours each day? Nice work!

Can you still read lower LBA sectors, or is it now doing this on all sectors?

Actually, that appears to be a new family called CARMELR which I have absolutely no loaders for. Your best bet is probably to buy another close-matched same model drive (maybe ask the customer where it came from). Even if you the donor you get is a different ROM version, you can probably use...

They should be compatible, but nothing is ever a sure thing. You will have reading issues with head 2 if the microjogs are more than 300 off, so I personally wouldn't have used that as a donor. Are you able to do ldr upload and read/write SA modules? Maybe you've got some firmware corruption.

The terminal works the same as any other Seagate. I don't think that model is terminal locked, but some newer ones are (whether or not they are apple firmware is really irrelevant). Heads are the same. I rarely ever use Apple-branded drives for donors. All OEM drives have a custom firmware...

R-Studio was a go-to program 5 years ago. But, UFS has passed them out and now has much more development for current needs of data recovery. Sadly R-Studio just hasn't been keeping up with all the new encryptions, file systems, etc. that we all need.

There's a good chance that the G-List is filling up and the drive is developing the WD slow responding bug. It'll likely just get slower and slower until it totally stops responding, to be honest. You can try imaging in reverse by adding in the -R flag to image sectors in reverse order...

What family is that? I've never seen that exact model.

Yep, I concur with PCLab. Almost certainly was a firmware glitch at the start. Now the data is probably gone forever. I certainly hope this is your own data. If you did this to a client's drive they've got a strong case for a lawsuit.

Given that it is a model ST2000DM001 which is Grenada family, it's a ticking time bomb for failure. If that sector isn't already bad, it's still only a matter of time before that drive fails. But, if you want to know for sure, try opening up sector 268435455 in a hex editor and see if it hangs...

I've seen plenty of times where folders disappeared after bad sectors in the MFT (which is the most common place for them to develop). So it wouldn't surprise me at all if the reallocated sectors and missing folders are correlated. Chkdisk could have even run and really nuked the folders...

Generally speaking, Linux won't automatically write anything to an attached non-Linux disk. But, there are a lot of custom builds out there so it could depend on what build you are using. Personally I use ParrotOS which is a forensics focused build which easily mounts Windows drives in read...

Try following this tutorial here: how-to-clone-a-hard-drive-with-bad-sectors-using-ddrescue-t133.html

Atola's focus is on forensics, not data recovery. For the price of an Atola, you really should consider something like PC-3000 which offers 10x the functionality for handling failed hard drives.

In case you didn't notice. PC-3000 has now automated this when you press this button: And you can see your preamp here: That's not your ROM, just an example from some random Grenada. Just reverse the two pairs, so you know this one is a CC 06 preamp.

Yeah, unplug the power cable from the HDD and plug it back in. I have a suspicion you could be reading just jibberish, but I could be wrong.

UFS Explorer Professional is what you want.

That's typically because the software isn't properly finding the partition start, or because it's only finding the indexing in the middle of the partition. With 40Gb overwritten, most likely all you'll get is a RAW recovery by file type. How do the RAW results look?

You can image to a file, rather than a physical device if you have one with enough free capacity. To answer your earlier question.

Sometimes I can fix them. Can you read both copies of module 190 with ignoring read errors turned on and post them both here?

Yeah, that error means your LDR isn't compatible with the ROM version.

That's a RAID 5, not a RAID 3 (which is obsolete and never used). My guess would be that one of the two "good" drives is out of sync. It's likely that one of the drives that's now online was previously marked as failed and only came back online when another drive failed and it couldn't read...

I see. Looks like corrupted FAT to me. Have you tried scanning the drive with some decent data recovery software like R-Studio or GetDataBack?

Were you ever able to see the files after a reboot of the computer? Most live USB's never actually save anything to the USB at all, they just use a RAM disk, so anything you download is only there until a reboot and then it's all back to original. There's a fair chance it was never saved to...

If ddrescue doesn't work, dd is guaranteed to fail. ddrescue is specifically designed to overcome the limitations of dd in cloning from unstable drives. I think you are at the point where it's time to either consider the data lost or opt for professional service.

FE is good, but has a major drawback that you have to pay the full price of the software every single year. VRN is a good system, but the company that sells it is HORRIBLE and will treat you like dirt: See my VNR Review Here So, I'd probabaly still start with the Ace solution for flash, then...

1. A large investment into tools and equipment, months & months of reading everything I could find online on forums, in manuals, etc. Building connections with people in the business willing to do consulting for me when I got stuck. 2. PC-3000 is your starting point. The others will just...

Sounds like a hardware failure to be honest. Probably is best to seek pro recovery.

Not likely a bad PCB with that behavior. More likely it's a weak or failed read/write head.

Welcome to the forum.

It will overwrite the destination media. That's what I was referring to. If you are writing to a file then you don't have to worry about it.

Sounds fishy to me, but for $1,300/mo I might consider it.

If you don't know what you are talking about, please just stop posting nonsense. I've deleted three of your posts already today. If this continues I'm going to have to ban.

It probably is issues with module 190.

That can only read the 1Mb ROM code. The other 99.9% of the firmware is stored on the platters, including the parts you almost certainly need to modify on this model. Not one I'm willing to share publically. But I can tell you that both the patient and donor ROMs use preamp B7. And since...

Thanks! I added all three to the list and the search tool.

Thanks! I added it to the list and the search tool.

Thanks! I added it to the list and the search tool.

Thanks! Added it to the list.

Ignore that last reply (which I deleted) which was probably just a planned spam dump. You are not finding anything because the installer deleted the data from an SSD (850 EVO) which supports a technology called T.R.I.M. I'm sorry to tell you that the data is permanently unrecoverable. Unlike...

You can attach pictures right here in the forum.

He said he "accidentally broke the USB connector off" so if that is the whole original issue, a proper PCB swap should work.

Can you PM me the price?

No. If there is an external ROM (U12 labeled 8-pin chip) then there is no adaptives in the main IC. I've never seen an embedded adaptive in the main IC on any 8xxxx series WD PCBs. It was the U12 you moved right? And, are you sure it's correctly soldered on, not upside down or something...

One is PATA the other is SATA. However, they make USB adapters that can work with both. Here's an example: https://www.newegg.com/vantec-cb-isatau ... -_-Product With the Samsung drive, just be sure it's jumpered to Master before you connect it.

With Samsung (and only Samsung) you might be able to get away without transferring the ROM IF you can find a SATA drive with the same exact firmware version as your USB one. Doesn't always work, as there could be minor revisions in the FW code, but it often does work.

There, I gave you that one sale :D

Thanks! I made that adjustment to better clarify it.

Keep in mind that 3Tb and 4Tb PCBs aren't always cross-compatible. For the 4Tb ones you need the -002 version SATA board. So you'll get that if you try using a PebbleB SATA PCB too.

Failed read/write heads. That's always the issue after a fall. Pretty much 100% of the time. Could be damaged platters causing the new heads issues too.

No. There is zero point to that. It's only if it's underpowered that it's an issue. If you are plugged into a 3.0 port and using a proper cable and are still having an issue, then power IS NOT your issue. There is no benefit to over powering a drive above spec. unless you want to be this...

No, just be sure you are plugged into a USB 3.0 port rather than 2.0 (which can underpower) and be sure that you aren't using a USB cable that is too long or too thin. Yes, but it'll probably require tools you don't have like PC-3000 which can manipulate the firmware code of the drive. It...

I give it 0.02% odds the PCB had anything to do with your issue. Most cases are firmware malfunctions due to bad sectors and/or weak read/write heads. You're spinning your wheels messing around with the PCB. In all likelihood, you'll just make things worse. But, as PCLab said, you only need...

Donor Drives will do this for you. Just know that if it's a Toshiba or Seagate, and the original ROM is lost in the mail, your data is gone FOREVER!!! So shipping that out carries inherent risks. Most of us who are in the business of data recovery only offer complete recoveries (imaging the...

Sounds like you need to either build a new ROM from SA, or maybe just fix the head map in your donor ROM???

Hopefully, there is a copy of the ROM modules in the service area. I can't recall ever needing to rebuild the ROM of a Tressels family WD drive (they're pretty uncommon) so I can't remember offhand if they have a backup of it. What was originally going on with the drive before you attempted...

Do you have access to the Ace blog and a PC-3000? If so, there is an article here that should help: https://blog.acelaboratory.com/how-to-f ... rives.html

Well, you'll ultimately need a clean hood if you plan on taking on head swap cases. You'll also likely need head separator tools, head combs, a good particle counter, etc. It's not a bad idea to get some ESD mats to work on as well. Don't forget the nitrile gloves, swabs, alcohol, and other...

So, I wrote a blog post here that is one of the biggest head-scratchers I've ever seen: https://www.data-medics.com/data-recove ... very-case/ The case is solved and all data recovered, but I still have no real clue what could have led to this situation.

Are you able to unlock the ROM to get terminal access?

You'll need to provide the consolidated ROM version to get a proper loader for the drive.

I don't know how the process works on MRT, but in PC-3000 there's no need to 'fix' a g-list issue. You just read by utility with setting the option of a damaged g-list in the config. It'll use a software translator and ignore the g-list entirely.

Get some old drives and practice. Take the heads out, re-install them, and see if it still works. If you have to ask a question like this, you've got no business trying this on a drive that actually needs recovery. Especially not if it belongs to someone else.

Are you able to get it into boot ROM code mode? I've found that these often seem like they go into boot ROM mode (platters don't spin as expected) but then PC-3000 still can't communicate as if it's the wrong baud rate or something.

Are you sure that's the correct controller number? I've never heard of that one, and neither has the internet apparently.

Yes, but since it was woken up by a comment I realized it should have been moved to an easier to find spot.

I don't think that's how it's done. You'll need a donor PCB (preferably one with the same FW version), then you need to clear the NAND of the donor board, write the patient ROM to it, and use that for the recovery.

I think you are in the wrong type of "data recovery" forum here. This forum isn't about restoring backups (that shouldn't even be called "data recovery"). This is a forum for data recovery professionals who deal with recovering failed HDDs, corrupt file systems, etc.

I've moved this topic to the "Data Recovery Tutorials" section. Nice resource! Thanks for sharing. :D

Yes, there is a lot of data recovery software like R-Studio, UFS Explorer, etc. that is designed exactly for this purpose. For the best chance of recovery though, you should immediately remove the HDD from the machine and clone it, then work from the copy. Every second the computer is still on...

Could be a failed card. They typically fail with no warning.

No, it was definitely a link spammed in your post which I manually deleted out. The image I may have accidentally deleted when I was deleting the SPAM link.

I already responded on the other thread you started here: unable-to-recover-formatted-hard-drive-seagate-2-tb-t3599.html

It is almost certainly a Grenada family ST2000DM001 hard drive inside of there. As soon as these develop any bad sectors, they tend to malfunction and get stuck in a busy state. At first, they get slow, then eventually stop responding entirely. The good news is that recovery might not cost...

Well, I'll be.... I guess Seagate is going back to this old catastrophe of design on some new drives. Haven't had one of those show up here yet. There are some DIY tricks if a tool doesn't exist, but I don't know how well it'll work on such a new drive. I'd bet just spinning the platters to...

Is there a reason you are trying spam links to a poems website here?

Here are the settings found for my recent Adaptec AIC-9410W RAID 6, for future reference: Turns out it was Q before P but gave me quite a runaround having 8 drives and needing to figure out which three were the current ones.

The only risk is you might burn out the PCB. I think I had that happen once to me. My picture might be wrong, I'm not 100% sure. I probably took an educated guess, shorted there, and it happened to work. Maybe it was the wrong one. It's been a long time since I've actually had to short a...

Running a HDD with the top cover removed is a sure-fire way to make it permanently unrecoverable. Especially since that is a Seagate Rosewood family drive which depends on the actuator pivot point screw to maintain parallel alignment with the platters. (This screw right here) It's not...

I don't have a picture of that exact PCB number, but here's a very similar one with the read channel circled:

I certain those heads don't park on the platters. There must be an orange parking ramp, that's where all modern Seagates part the heads. If the heads are resting on the platters it's because they became stuck. Once you unseize it and get the heads back to the parking ramp, it should be easy...

I never even look at SPT for Toshiba. If the model and drive revision before the "/" is the same, it works.

I'm suspecting it's just a planned spam dump with the generic introduction, but I approved it just in case.

Try https://apextoollab.com/ they make good quality affordable head swap tools. You'll need to know what family drive you are working on to get the right ones though. If you don't know what family the drive is, then you probably have no business even attempting a head swap.

Does the drive otherwise show ID? Besides the capacity. It could be a translator issue that can be solved over SCSI using SG3_Tools and some manual commands. Also, you probably want to open the cover and look inside before you do much more investigating. Even a SAS drive with shredded...

These two sentences are incompatible with each other. Database files are very often going to be fragmented because they tend to grow as they are used. It's pretty unlikely you'll rescue it by file carving if you can't get any file system structure found.

Want me to take a quick look at it remotely? I don't mind helping out if you can throw a couple bucks my way from what you are billing the client.

So this was interesting. I always thought Best Buy was sending their customer's drives out to Kroll or someone like that. But this week I get a client who had their drive sent to Arizona by the local Best Buy for recovery (allegedly under their own service). So he pays $500 and gets back only...

So it's some sort of file-level encryption then.

Good deal on brand new Toshiba NAS drives today: https://www.mojosavings.com/20-off-deal ... ve-163-99/

If you want a meaningful answer, you are going to need to provide one hundred times more information. Just saying "corrupted" could mean any one of ten thousand different things.

I don't know, I never use MRT. Check your manuals (just kidding, I know they have zero documentation)

Although I've been told that Firebird and FBLite are cross-compatible, that hasn't been my experience. I've also observed that FBLite has a different aerial density in their USB versions compared to the SATA ones. You should look for a very close matched USB donor and also check how far off...

Do you have a hardware tool that is capable of reading/writing the EEPROM chip directly?

It wouldn't destroy all data, but it would create a new partition table and further complicate recovery later.

The ROM code needs to be modified to unlock the terminal. PC-3000 can do it quite easily.

Removed... Didn't see that there was a page 2 of this thread. :?

Bad idea! That's because the lid is removed. Two of the screws that go through the cover also put pressure against the preamp connector. You are fortunate it didn't move because with the lid removed the aerodynamics are thrown off and can cause permanent platter damage instantly. No, it's...

I like Parrot Linux personally. But I think it'll function the same in pretty much any Debian build.

This is probably your problem here. Do you know if the build you are using supports T.R.I.M.?

Throw that junk away and get a real program. Wondershare is wonderful at SPAMMing their lies all over the internet, and that is about it. Get yourself a good program like R-Studio or even UFS Explorer You can build the span of disks right in the software and then probably just open it right...

Here every single day.

First off. are you working with this drive over USB or did you remove it from the enclosure? I ask because these use encryption which is handled by the USB bridge board.

If it finds references to the file in the file system metadata, it'll retain whatever name it originally had, so a jpg renamed to pdf will still be named pdf. However, if you also scan for files by signature, then they will be nameless files with the correct extension for what the file actually is.

There was a post, which I replied to. Then the OP went back and tried to completely change the original post making my response not make sense anymore. I rejected the edit in the moderation queue and it seems to have deleted the original unedited post too.

Because it is an SSD, T.R.I.M. probably already zero filed the files. Try some better software like R-Studio demo or UFS Explorer demo and see if it finds and can preview the jpgs. If either of those programs can't preview the files, they are gone.

Corrected it. Good catch

I've never had a problem. I have three or four different sets and have never had an issue. I think I mostly use my iFixit set on the desk where I'm normally fussing with PCBs. This is what I'm usually using: https://www.amazon.com/iFixit-IF145-299 ... 563&sr=8-4

Maybe, it depends on the phone model and version of Andriod that it runs. Most decent phones now have full disk encryption enabled, and a factory reset will generate a new random key. So in most cases, it's a dead end.

First off, does the laptop have a HDD or an SSD? This is a critically important question although even most computer/IT guys wouldn't think it to be.

The damage will not be to the circuit board, it will be to the internal components, namely the read/write heads which are extremely sensitive to damage from drops. I'm afraid it's beyond DIY now, you'll need a clean room and specialized equipment for the recovery. Is the data worth ~$700 to you?

You would have to be nominated and voted in by all current members. It's a very small group allowed in there.

Does anyone know if Tornado 3D and Tornado PATA heads are cross-compatible? (or according to module C5 in these drives Tornado and Tornado2_PMR)

That was my other thought. But I can't imagine there would be a mix of 512 and 520 in the same array.

What program are you using here? Looks like some cheap SPAM type of program. Start by getting yourself a better program (even just a demo for now) or something like R-Studio Demo or UFS Explorer

Try plugging the clone into a Windows computer. Linux won't mount a drive if there's pending changes to the NTFS that haven't been written.

We would need more information to speculate. It could be just an ATA lock, in which case a tool like PC-3000 can unlock it. Or it could be encrypted with any number of third party encryption setups. There's just no way for us to know what you've got without knowing what you've got.

It's probably the custom theme causing the issue. That or some plugin I'm using to optimize SEO. In your user profile settings, you can change to use the default theme and it'll probably function normally.

I've never used DE for an SAS drive, so I can't help there. I always just use ddrescue or hddsuperclone.