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Sounds a bit like a woodpecker. ;)

Yes, you are right. I wasn't thinking too much about the SSD portion of it, which would explain why it still ID's. After a bit more playing in terminal, I was able to get it to return some servo errors when trying to manually access system files. So I'm pretty sure at this point that it is...

So I've got this 2.5" ST500LM000 Kahuna-5400 drive that spins up pretty normally. Makes one slight click (very slight) then goes ready. It correctly ID's but errors out if you try to read a sector or access SA. I notice that in terminal when I press Ctl + Z I get the following response: Rst...

A few have pointed out to me that on certain pages the images are scrambled. It seems to me that the only correlation with this is that it's only happening on pages that have mixed SSL and non-ssl content. So if one user links an image that's not SSL and then another post attaches an image...

Just to let everyone know I've pruned all the inactive accounts, so now we can tell how many actual active members there are. Looks like 109 at the moments. Some must be just lurkers, because they don't post but they still visit regularly. If your account was pruned and you want to reactivate...

It is better. Probably should work for me as it's the same FW, just different ROM version.

I think that's version 00040027, I need the 0004005M one.

I'm looking for complete resources for this drive: Family: Diablo3D Model: WD30EZRX-00DC0B0 Consolidated ROM: 0004005M Firmware Version: 00040050 Need to replace a number of damaged modules. I can probably get by if the ROM version is different as long as the model and FW version are the same...

Yeah, but they actually committed the time to make the plugin to Windows. So why not just push it out? Makes no sense to me, must be a way to get back at Cannon for something they did.

Yeah, it only took one Google search to find it once I thought to ask the right question. I guess I had just always assumed it wasn't possible. I would have thought they would have just included something like this as an automatic update.

Often it'll click and sometimes it'll spin down if the ROM code doesn't match. It mostly depends on headmap, micro jogs, and SA SPT. If those are all within tolerance, it'll likely just keep spinning silently. But, if one is off it'll act like it's bad heads. As long as the SPT is the same...

This is something I just discovered. Microsoft actually has a codec pack to be able to see thumbnails for RAW digital camera formats such as CR2. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... x?id=26829 It always annoyed me that Mac OS could preview them and Windows couldn't.

Some of you probably noticed that the forum was down for much of the day today. Sorry for the inconvenience. This was due to the utter incompetence of the tech support folks at my hosting company justhost.com. I had bought a new domain but the cpanel wasn't allowing me to assign it to a...

It's just like the smart hotswap method where you write all the tracks to the donor and use it to load the FW before hotswapping. Only it's just using certain key modules.

I fixed the pictures on this thread today. Seems that pictures which were uploaded before going SSL were being rendered encrypted. Colorful, but not much use.

And now in video form: q1fRW9pJDYw

I've now made it possible to embed youtube videos in posts, hopefully no one abuses it or I'll have to disable it. Just put the very end code after the = sign (E.G. rSZDvD7-cEs) then highlight it and click the "youtube" button. Or if you want to do it in code manually it should look like this...

I think my customers have tried this too: 3owqvmMf6No

It looks like Ace Labs figured out how to do a smart hotswap without writing all the tracks to the donor Looks like you just need the following resources to be able to get a drive ready to read data: Copy of ROM; Copy of adaptive settings from ROM module ID=47h; Copy of 1xh overlay...

Here's another one thanks to jol which he found on ace website: SIM ERROR 3005 (mean that “format corrupted flag” in on and Translator is not loaded in RAM) “No HOST FIS-ReadyStatusFlags” (reason message: why translator is not loaded). I'll add it to the list above too.

This is an odd case. Had this Seagate 7200.11 model ST3750630AS drive come in. The drive is a bit twitchy, and does have some bad sectors. Overall though it was able to image just fine. Looking at the data though I find an anomaly. The beginning of the drive is all filled with random data...

I just noticed these on WD's website: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1600 Anyone had a chance to open one up yet and see what's inside? I would guess it's just a regular My Passport, as nothing special is required to stream 4K video over USB 3.0. Maybe it just has a larger...

So today I had a customer ask me to recover the preview files from a Lightroom database. The originals camera pictures were lost when an external failed, but the preview images within Lightroom are actually pretty good quality (some over 2000px resolution). After a bit of research I found this...

Nevermind, found it in hddguru files and added it to my server. One of these days I'll have to just download all of them and combine it.

I need the following ldr: Model: WD10EADS-00M2B0 ROM Version: 0090001G Family: Dragonfly2 Thanks!

I've added the ability to this forum for you to embed google docs into a post. This might be nice if you have any excel sheets you regularly update and want to make available for others to see. You can see an example of this in this post which I updated...

I think you need to match more of the DCM code. I always make sure to match the CVJ part.

Hard resets are useful when the drives become unresponsive and won't even soft reset. As for soft resets not being useful on some drives, I think it's related to the timeout setting. Some drives will become unresponsive if the timeout is too long, and stay busy despite soft reset command.

I think you need to look again for the WWN. It's there at the bottom just under www.westerndigital.com. ;)

It's one of those really long numbers of the label marked WWN. It doesn't mean much in my opinion which is why I never paid much attention to it in ROM.

@jol I never realized the WWN was in the ROM code. I've tried finding other identifiers such as serial in the ROM before but never thought to look for that. Thanks!

That should be a match as long as the date isn't too far off. Probably SA damage as pclab is suggesting. Maybe with hot swap you could read SA tracks through composite and do a smart hot swap, but may not work anyway.

How about the DCM code? Does the middle of it match?

I'm looking for an LDR for this drive: WD10SPCS-24HWST1 ROM Version: 00020048 I don't know the family, it's one of the new ones and doesn't auto detect on my one version out of date PC-3000. It's close to Rembrandt as that can do most things on this drive from what I can tell. Thanks!

Haha, don't feel bad Larry. I've recovered my own data twice too. Even with all the horrors we hear about in this field, still don't learn to back everything up. I've only recently gotten better about it, last time my 24Tb RAID failed I only lost a couple files that weren't backed up.

Some great pictures on this page: http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/08/04/r ... es-storms/

Well, looks like it'll be a busy couple of weeks here. Had 70Mph winds here along with the most lightning I've ever seen in my life. Took out thousands of trees and power lines. About half the state of RI still doesn't have any power. Just came back at my house, but still out at the office...

I agree. Compatibility isn't so much the issue as much as heads actually surviving the swap / first power on. I've had a few where as many times as I replaced the heads it would ID one time, work for a couple minutes, then go right back to the click of death. Seems the heads are just uber...

Welcome! Normally you start a new thread to introduce yourself, but regardless nice to have you here. You're actually the second member from Nigeria, must be an emerging market in needing data recovery.

Don't forget they are incorporated so their net income doesn't include any of what was paid out to their employees, CEO, CFO, COO, or anyone else. Some of whom also had multi-million dollar income themselves. That $220 million is just the extra income left over after everything else was paid...

Looks like all our efforts to tell people about what an inferior product Seagate is compared to HGST are paying off. http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdail ... -says-rbc/ WD is seeing a surge in stock price. Up 10% compared to only a 4% increase in Seagate. I sure hope this trend continues...

Just had my first phone call related to Windows 10. Guy says his My Book isn't being recognized after the update. Things might be shaping up to get really busy soon.

I've heard about the nvidia driver issues that are going around. But this is a dead stock Dell Optiplex with no external video card, just the onboard Intel video. If they can't make that work right, gonna be a lot of problems. Don't get me wrong, I already like it more than Windows 8 just...

Update, no there was a second one later in the day. What's funny was that both happened during really random non hardware related things. First when playing a video file, second when browsing their app store. I expect B.S.O.D.s when plugging in and unplugging hardware. But that wasn't the case.

Well, it's been confirmed.... Windows 10 is definitely a Microsoft program. I just enjoyed my first blue screen of death within three hours of installing it. HAHA! I did notice this nice little feature: So I guess they give you a one month rollback option if it totally explodes on you.

I guess the one feature I'd really like to have the RAID edition for is to be able to image by bitmap from a RAID member. Doesn't seem there's any way to accomplish that using other software combined with PC-3000.

This is something I find a bit odd. Had a RAID 0 come in (no Idea what controller) for recovery. Was a simple case, but oddly the MBR wasn't located at sector 0, it was moved over to sector 2. All I had to do was copy the sector and paste it into sector 0 (which was all zeros) on my clone and...

No, I'm not gonna be the guinea pig to try that out. And, since I have the old UDMA board which only runs in 32bit I'm pretty sure I have to sick with Win 7. So far the Windows 10 upgrade seems pretty non obtrusive. All my apps appear to be working so far, even the ones I was sure would crash...

Hey, it's still better than the $6000 some of us threw away buying Salvation Data tools. At least with Ace you know that money went into R&D that later will benefit us.

Thanks. I kind of expected that, but had hoped being from Ace it would be more impressive. I'm quite happy with how I do it now, just was curious. How much extra did you pay for it?

Yeah, I actually only use the PC for internet browsing for the most part. It's my research station next to my PC-3000 since I don't like browsing around online with that system.

Download is finished, it's prompting to install now. Fingers crossed that I don't regret this....will report back soon, I hope.

Has anyone here ever tried the RAID edition of Data Extractor? I'd kind of forgotten that it even existed. Just curious how it compares with software like R-Studio for raid rebuilds, which is what I generally do now.

Well I see one of my stations is now downloading the update: Maybe I can do a test install later today on this system to start finding out which programs are going to implode on me. :roll: It says my hardware is all compatible, but this is an old Core 2 Duo that I suspect will struggle with...

Well, tonight's the night they start rolling out the automatic update. For those who run Win Home edition, the update will be forced out to them if they reserved. Pro users are allowed to wait to install. Might be busy next week. :)

Actually it seems to be just this computer, and not just my site. Hddguru and even Google are both constantly logging me out on this machine both in Firfox and in Chrome. But on my other workstations it's fine... stupid Windows updates are probably the cause. I usually keep them off but I...

Lol, already tried that. Is it doing this to everyone else now??? I'm wondering if it's the social login plugin.

Now I seem to be having this issue on the forum.

I've added a plugin to the forum that allows users to log in using social accounts such as Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, etc. Hopefully this will simplify the sign up process for new users, and not just attract spammers. We'll see I guess. Let me know if you experience any issues with it...

Yeah the owner had been sick and seemed to have shelved the business for a bit. I do like the tools for drives without ramps. I think I paid around $200 for the Seagate set. Wish I had bought the WD ones too.

Well it's been several months now, and despite the promises to Recovery Force and Data Medics we have yet to receive our beta test F.L.A.M.E. systems. Isn't building much confidence. If IRS says the tool is legit I have to believe him, but I certainly have my doubts about what kind of company...

From what we can tell they are just scammers who keep trying to get people to place a large order and become a "reseller". I don't think anyone actually has a tool made by them.

Hehe, try flipping the ribbon cable around so the red stripe is on the other side. ;) The terminal adapter is in right but the ribbon is flipped.

Yes I know you can type it in manually. I said that before. I'm just suggesting it should be a default option in the drop down.

Have you tried reading the ROM through boot ROM code and programming another PCB?

I don't know. I'm curious to hear what HDDGuy will come back with, he seems to know the in's and out's of these far better than I do. I would probably start with programming a replacement PCB just to be safe and rule it out. Then I suppose a head swap would be the next thing to try in case it...

Speaking of RAID. @R-TT - does the latest version of R-Studio have 1 sector stripe size as an option in the drop down box now? I know you can type it in manually, but it seems to be getting more common to see that size used so would probably be good to be listed as a standard option.

Head 0 resistance looks a bit high. Could be nothing, but it's hard to say. Have you checked the contacts to be sure it's got a good connection?

Just started another one, HTS545050A7E362. I don't know what's going on here, but I like it. Keep the Hitachi's coming.

OH YEAH! Pay, and pay and pay. Haha, got my butt handed to me this week by a Toshiba no less. Strangely the Samsung and Seagate DM's have been pretty cooperative the last few weeks.

Well, this last one to show up is actually an IDE one. HTS541080G9AT00. They've all had bad sectors, but not bad all in all.

More Hitachis showing up today. Not the same model, but close. And they all seem to be recoverable, I'm loving it. I think I need to market more toward just doing these and leave the Seagate nightmares to someone else.

The one with the damaged P-list wasn't so easy. Had a lot of damaged SA modules, and at first couldn't even read the P-list module through composite reading. Eventually with enough tries, I was able to get enough of the module that the only unread part was near the end where it's all zeros...

I haven't been in this business terribly long, so I haven't been able to notice the effect that a new version Windows release has on data recovery workload. Have those of you who've been around longer ever noticed a surge in data recovery work after a new version is released? I'm just thinking...

I've had two of these drives show up today, one with damaged P-List and another with just a lot of bad sectors. Both, are imaging now at good speed in DE. Funny how the same drives seem to fail all at the same time. :D

Yes, I think the "&sid=75d1ba133e04153........" part is referencing the cookie used to keep you logged in, which probably doesn't exist any longer. I'm guessing sid stands for Session ID.

Glad to hear it!

Try clearing your browser cookies. I had to change settings with that to send them over SSl, so maybe your browser is still trying to use an out of date one.

Unfortunately in this case no. I didn't have a very clear description of what they needed(not one that made sense anyway), so I just started it from the beginning. By the time I got a better answer, drive had shut down and didn't read the most critical data I don't think.

Yeah, don't get too excited... it got to the 70% mark and shut down after one bad sector. Now, I can't clear the G-List and get it to work again.... I'm sure that I'll be able to get the rest of the data whenever Ace gets around to updating to support this drive and I can build a software...

You're just jealous because people actually like my forum.. :D

Is it still doing that? Also, does your browser allow cookies? I don't think anyone else is having this issue. It doesn't happen on any of my 5 computers. Anyone else having an issue?

I wasn't able to build the software translator, without a proper utility there's just no way to do that. But I was able to clear the G-list using another utility that was "close enough". :D I was actually surprised that the clearing worked, but it's reading sectors now. Littered with bad...

Looks to me that IC10 is the one to transfer the CP to me. The other similar chips (IC9, IC11, IC12) all appear to be related to the motor from what I can see. What do you guys think?

I've got a new 3.5" Toshiba MD04ACA400 that came in for data recovery. Drive clicks like it either has bad heads or possibly G-List damage. So my question about this model for anyone who knows is: 1. Has anyone managed to build virtual translator for these in PC-3000? (I haven't updated to...

It's not doing that to me... I know recently I had to change the cookie settings due to a mod I installed which required the cookies to be transferred over SSL. When you log in, do you check the box that says remember me?

When you create new threads now, you'll notice a box labeled "URL:" just under where you enter the subject. If you leave it blank, it'll autofill it with the post title, or you can create a more SEO friendly version by typing in a search phrase related to the post. E.G. you can type in...

Might I offer a third suggestion... instead of releasing this as a software only product, build it into a custom linux image that can run either on something like a bannana pro, intel NUC, or another micro sized linux capable machine. That way you can sell it as a complete imaging tool, and you...

SUCCESS!!!!! I finally figured it out. Turns out it was a simple cookie that wasn't being transferred securely. Just had to look in the right place to fix it.

Test Test

test

Update: upgraded the version of phpBB, still doesn't help.

test

test

I temporarily disabled the mod. Seems it's a strange port issue in phpBB (not actually in the mod).

Please just ignore the message after you post, it's just a glitch in the code I'm trying to work out. Your threads/messages are still getting posted, it's just an annoying message. Hopefully will have it cleared up soon.

Right now it seems to all be working except for a stupid error whenever you post something (even though the post works fine). Trying to work it out now.

OK, looks like I finally worked it out. Hopefully that's the end of the downtime. I'm thinking this may give the forum the SEO boost it needs to start competing with the other bigger forums for new members.

I'm currently trying to set up a mod to rewrite the urls to something more SEO friendly. So instead of seeing a link like: /forum/viewtopic.php?=postXX It'll be more like: /forum/wd-data-recovery/(post title)/ However it's currently having some SSL issues. So if the site is down at any...

I believe this document has some information about it: ftp://ftp.t10.org/t10/document.04/04-262r8.pdf

No, there's a difference between a hard reset and a power cycle. Hard reset tells the drive to reinitialize and reload it's service area, while I don't know the specific command, it can be issued via ATA.

The only thing it can't do is soft/hard reset a drive when it becomes unstable. I'm hoping this new tool will have that capability.

I don't think like that chart. A timeout of 20 seconds on some drives will kill the heads long before you get a decent amount of data. 60 seconds is just excessive. My experience is that for most drives (WD & Seagate at least) if a single sector doesn't read in 850-1000ms, it's never going to...

I think method 2 would be better as it's less likely to kill the drive part way through the imaging. Even more than just block size a good imaging tool also needs to be able to manage the read timeouts. In the first pass these should be very low like 150ms, then increased in subsequent passes...

Haha, maybe. This sort of trick is becoming so popular that there's now multiple tools just to check for fakes: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-chec ... ash-drive/ Unfortunately no one thinks to do this until it loops over on its self and shuts down.

I see they have another HDDSurgery'ish tool for Seagate's w/o ramps. http://www.hddheadtools.com/product/sea ... d-7200-12/ Looks like they got smart and figured out how to make one tool that does more variety of drives.

Has anyone tried these? They look decent to me, and for the price might be worth it. http://www.hddheadtools.com/product/lev ... omb-suite/

hahah, wow! that's a creative way to spoof a My Passport. I'm surprised they didn't put a little fan in there to simulate the spinning disk... or did they sell it as an "SSD External".

Willing to share how you cleared the $Bitmap? I can't say I've ever dealt with this issue before. Was it just another matter of shorting the read channel at the right time?

Here's a consolidated version of all the Seagate terminal commands collected so far. It's not intended to be an exhaustive list, but rather a collection of commands useful in data recovery. If you have more info to share please post it and I'll add it to the list: The Very Basics: TTL...

Welcome! I recognize your handle from hddguru. Nice to have you here.

So my wife saw this picture and wants one: Anyone out there in Australia who can box one up and ship it here?

Here's an interesting patent document awarded to WD: Apparently WD writes some spiral servo tracks onto their drives (or at least is planning to). Must be a technique to speed up the seek times when jumping long distances across the platter. Pretty cool concept.

Yep, they are correct about that. Apparently each file is assigned an "Object #" then each object # is assigned storage blocks. And it's all tracked by a couple of filesystem aware tables. Here's their patent for anyone who want's to read it: http://www.file-medics.com:4000/fbsharing/iH3aTZmc...

I used to run FB ads, but I never actually got any jobs from it. I just don't think it's the place people search for something like data recovery. Gotta fight through the Google beast with everyone else.

I find the explanation about the "RAID" of Drobo being at a file level rather than a block level to be very interesting... by that logic then most files could theoretically be recovered off individual disks in RAW.... I've never actually had a Drobo come in, maybe I'll have to buy one just to...

Yes, I've been thinking about starting a sticky where we can organize and sort useful information like that, but its hard to organize in any kind of way that makes sense. It's actually why I started this forum largely. Hoping to organize parts of it to sort useful notes of my own in stickies.

True, nothing like a good Google search through the forums. Though I have to say, this information was already very helpful to me today. :D

My experience has been that people who want cheap prices and beat you up on price, tend to refer others just like them. I find it's better to just let those people walk and wait for new customers who are willing to pay more to get a quality service. Otherwise you just run around not making...

I have the cheaper tools, and I have to say they are mostly useless. I have far better success with my own homemade combs. I do however like the ones from http://en.er-tools.com for the drives that park their heads on the platters. HDDSurgery I suppose is worthwhile for larger labs who do a...

Wow! You're cheap. I charge $175 to clone a drive even if it's perfectly healthy. Otherwise it isn't worth the time spent tying up the equipment or explaining things to the customer.

I'd love to see it if you're willing to share. I usually just figure them out manually too, but sometimes something like that can really speed up a project when you're on a deadline.

+1 and if you want to add a fifth one - GetDataBack for FAT. Sometimes it's a little better at piecing together damaged FAT file systems. Or maybe Data Rescue 4 for handling HFS+ and timebackups. Oh, and don't forget ddrescue (not necessary if you have DE, but still handy for the occasional...

It's funny how you can tell spammers by their punctuation marks. Why do they always put the spaces before the period and not after? I'm guessing it's how Google translate handles languages which are written right to left.

Beautiful tools, and beautiful boxes as always. ;)

I always assumed that was the case, as I know they all have servo data on them. I've just never been brave enough to try on a client drive, and finding time to test on other drives is tight.

Cool, thanks bro! I'll have to hire you for a few minutes of remote support when this comes up here so I can see exactly how you do it. :D

I wouldn't say they are hard to do the head swap, they just rarely ever work afterward. The heads are super sensitive, so even the slightest woops moment is game over. And even when you think it all went perfectly, it often just doesn't work. That's been my experience. Fortunately you're...

Interesting.... I wonder if X-RAID2 is similar. I was thinking it was more of a RAID 5 setup, never though to try as if it were a JBOD. Even the guys over at NetGear seemed to think that was the case. I think the other guy did already try scanning a few of the disks independently to see what...

I think that only removes the virus, I don't think it's any use for decrypting the data though.

Preferably all of them. I know most basic features are actually handled by PC-3000 under the hood. But, at times there's just no substitute for seeing the readout in terminal to have an idea what's going on.

I just keep everything that's important in a special folder which is synchronized between all my computers and my Synology NAS. Very similar to dropbox in how it works overall, but I get as much space as I have hard drives in my unit (currently 12Tb in a RAID 6). The great thing about it is it...

No, was able to read 93 but never 28, and the heads kept falling within just a few minutes. The customer wasn't willing to keep investing in parts and took their drive back (probably to go get a second opinion).

It wasn't my project, I was just remotely helping another guy who couldn't figure it out. I ended up giving up that day, and I never heard back from him. I'm guessing the amount of time that it was going to require wasn't justifiable by what the customer was willing to pay.

I know some people like to use exFAT when they need Mac/Windows cross compatibility. But, just take a look at the capacity difference just moving a folder from a FAT32 formatted drive over to a exFAT. I realize that this is due to the default cluster size being too large, but most people will...

Yep. And since you can't write off buying bitcoin to pay criminals, I make the customer give me the cash equivalent of the bitcoin amount before I'll buy it for them. Fortunately the criminals do keep their word usually.

Anyone notice that Bing now has a rewards program where you can get gift cards and stuff for just using their search engine. Don't get me wrong, I wish more people used Bing as my site kicks butt on there. But, if you have to pay people to use it, just give up and move on M$.

Possibly, though that error usually means bad heads or wrong ROM code for the drive. So the donor drive was never working since you had it then... yeah, not a good start, too many variables to know what's happening.

What sounds are coming from the drive? Clicking and spinning down, or sounds normal?

His original PCB didn't have a U12, that's where the difficulty started.

You have to be sure the board you are writing to has the correct ROM size (256kb, 512kb) as they do vary. If the donor board has a larger size you can still often use it, but you'll have to enter boot ROM code mode to do it. If the donor is smaller, it won't work. If its the same size then you...

If it is able to clone well using a SATA board, just be sure to check if the data is encrypted. Most often it is, but sometimes it isn't. It's a shame when you spend two days imaging only to discover that you forgot to set the decryption on. :shock:

Yeah, I've been there myself quite a number of times. It takes some practice to get the timing of plugging in and pressing enter down, but usually does work. Hope the rest of the recovery goes well.

Good to know. I already outsourced this to Poland (Arvika), and waiting to hear back. I don't have the equipment here to even attempt it, and he's quite an expert in this field.

Took a bit to find the model number in this pile of destroyed plastic. haha. It's a H868C model phone.

And I assume you're using the boot ROM method? Can you upload a picture of your com connection? It's tricky with USB boards to get them into boot ROM mode, takes a bit of timing when you plug in the USB cable. But, it usually always works.

Hi all, just wanted to warn about a new type of email virus being spread around. It claims that you have a negative account on your E-Zpass from going through a toll and your debt card was declined. Attached to it is an "invoice" which appears as a doc file but is actually a javascript file...

Wow, not a single post today. I guess I need to start posting some interesting stuff on here again to get the conversation started.

Here's a new social media site which might have promise for business owners: minds.com It's got a system where the more you participate, post, and comment you get points which you can use to push your posts out to other people to see. I'm curious to see if the links built are of any value.

Looks like Apple is getting the shaft for having bought 3Tb Seagates to put in their iMacs. They are now offering free replacement even for machines that are out of warranty. Which is nice of Apple, and I'm sure is costing them a fortune. http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/19/88157 ... hard-drive

I've seen bad PCBs do all sorts of crazy things. These days I just replace it first thing to rule it out, before bothering to try too much else.

And I assume you've already ruled out bad PCB?

To be fair, this thing in its current condition is hopelessly gone. Here's what actually happened. A few months back (before the car fire) he brought it in for an evaluation. At the time it just had a massive cluster of bad sectors around the MFT. He was quoted our tier one price to recover...

The guy came in hoping for a miracle. And believe it or not he got one. :)

Look at this crispy critter that showed up:

Yeah, I just figure that it's extremely rare to have two cases go that well in the same day. I've got plenty more here that I've been working on for over two weeks to no avail (or profit). So that's all just part of offering fixed tier pricing, gotta take the good with the bad.

Plscsi allows you to send direct SCSI commands to the drive. Including the command to regenerate the translator. No need for a com connection at all. I've never done it with an SAS drive though.

Yes I see you are right about that. Their pod system counts the number of actual power cycles. I guess with less than 100 the SMART figure wouldn't have time to move. Given that the drives in my systems are almost never power cycled though, I'd imagine my drives are likely under 100 as...

Theoretically SAS is essentially SCSI, so plscsi should work for it. But I don't know if there are any SAS cards with a DOS driver which it would recognize.

Yeah, was just being lazy since I already had the forum page up. Didn't feel like opening up Filezilla, lol.

True but by using my own site, I'm also link building as a side benefit. Though it turns out that phpBB modifies files so you cant link to them anyway.

I would assume they reversed the figure to show the drop in RAW value so the chart would make more sense visually.

Are you referring to the SATA board or the USB one? On SATA it is the middle two, but for USB I'm pretty sure it's the corner ones. Unless Boot ROM code can also work on the middle two...

I'm just using this thread as a quick place to paste images I want to link to on another forum. So please just ignore it. Or use it to post your own images for that purpose. :D

That's not the number of power cycles, it's just the RAW figure pulled from the SMART data. So each number might be more like 1000 power cycles.

There has to be some way they secured the cover onto it, I'd guess that if you take the label off you'd be able to see some sort of mechanism to open it. I noticed this on a Newegg video: Looks like it's either a spot where a screw is, or possibly a valve to pump helium inside.

I would guess that the dip in the chart around the 52-65 raw value is about the time when all the Seagates had failed and only WD and HGST drives remained. Haha.

Here's another interesting stat from Backblaze regarding the correlation between the number of times a drive is power cycled and it's failure rate: Obviously there will be some correlation between age and number of power cycles. However the chart here is far more pronounced than the hours of...

I just can't wait to start hearing the YouTube videos of head swapping these with guys who sound like Mickey Mouse. :lol: :lol:

I'd try a REV P or P1 SATA board before anything else.

Possibly. That, or it could be bad heads, SA damage, etc.

Sometimes the revision of the board can make a difference. I usually aim for a later revision such as REV P verses a earlier one like REV A. I find they are compatible more often.

Wow, if I could afford to I'd love to load my NAS up with 8 of these: http://betanews.com/2015/06/09/hgst-ann ... ard-drive/ Thought the SMR part still scares me. Anyone here actually worked on any of the helium filled ones? I have yet to seen one show up, but I suppose that's because they're...

Update on the second job, imaged all used sectors by bitmap. Not one single bad one on it either. Crazy! If only these days happened more often I could afford to buy a car that isn't rusting out.

No I don't use any special combs in most cases. It's mostly just good technique at spinning the platters and guiding the heads back.

Wow, today has been a stellar day for data recovery. Had two unexpected jobs show up, both were head stuck WD drives. Freed them both up, and both immediately ID'd. First one was a 500Gb WD Blue drive which imaged 100% in about 5hrs, not a single bad sector. Second one is a 2Tb My Passport...

Some USB drives will just outright allow reading of the ROM via com connection just using the WD Marvell USB utility. Other's require that you use the Boot ROM Code method (keeping in mind that the USB cord acts as your power switch).

It should be fixed now. I had to move the uploads folder, so some older posts had broken links in them.

Confirmed, they are cross compatible. Recovering data now. :D :D :D Would still like to know about the possibility of swapping over to SATA though. I figure that some day I may have to build a virtual translator for one of these Canvios and will have to figure it out.

I notice that some of this same model use USB PCB with board number G003250A. Anyone know if these are cross compatible? I do have one of them in stock.

Has anyone had much success going from native USB to SATA boards with Toshiba yet? And if so, what do you try and match between the boards? I've got one here that's a board number: G003296A which I neither have, nor can find easily available. Since this is a bit of a rush job, I'm hoping to...

Original Message Removed Note from Admin: If you represent the company who makes that software you are required to identify yourself. Otherwise, you'll be banned for pushing it here. We allow data recovery software reps to promote here, but it has to be done in a transparent way. Not by...

Or, you can use the WD Calypso board and connect sort of like this, just on the two bottom right pins:

You have to use the Samsung adapter on the USB board and connect it like this:

+1 to what Larry said. The U14 isn't it. You'll have to use a COM connection to read the ROM code from the USB board.

Ah, yes looking at some recipes now. I think we call this barely soup and usually make it with beef here.

Here's a good reason. I just want to update the out of date address they have listed for my business. To do that you have to "verify your business". However when I try to do that it takes me to some pay updating service (which is annoying). So I decide to just cave and pay to update it...

I was referring to addseo1115 not ScotchBroth.

Just added a new one for iPhone 6 jpg images that I worked to put together with jol.

FYI your nickname just screams SPAMMER! We'll be watching you closely.

Scam Alert!!! The company Tenorshare makes their business out of constantly spamming forums like this with links to their software. They never present themselves as software representatives but always pretend to be users of the software and recommend it to everyone. DO NOT BUY THEIR SOFTWARE...

Wow, these idiots from Tenorshare just don't learn. I just deleted about four more links they tried spamming in the forum. Now they're getting a negative review from me.

It seems that this forum must be particularly appealing to Russians. Look at these stats from Google Analytics: More visits from Russia in the last month than from the USA (which includes all my activitiy) If only more of these guys would join and not just lurk. We'd love to know who you all...

Yeah, but that site in Indonesia even copied the colors I use which weren't part of the template. I had pulled those colors from an old Weebly template I used to use to keep a similar theme and make it easy to use my old graphics and still match the color scheme. I don't really care though...

I'm pretty sure that's the point of ranking systems in the first place. Get people posting more to get a higher rank, thus boosting forum activity. I know that's my plan.

Daniel 2:44 :D

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I've added a ranking system to the forum. The more you post, the higher your rank goes. 0 - 24 posts = data recovery noob 25 - 74 = data recovery novice 75+ = data recovery pro 150+ = data recovery master and, so on. I'll adjust the post requirements as...

True, but I completely redesigned my site just a month or so ago. I think it's actually a coincidence, just very similar look. I'm sure they're using the Divi theme too.

I actually already have that one, which I've used a few times just for cloning otherwise healthy drives in forensically sound way. But, it's USB 3.0 and I was really hoping to find a true SATA > SATA one to use just as a ddrescue "oops" preventer.

Is it just me, or does it look like these guys totally ripped off the design of my homepage: http://www.dokterharddisk.com/ The similarity is uncanny. Or perhaps I ripped off their design without realizing it...... though I've never been there before five minutes ago...

I think my local competitor keeps flagging all my legitimate reviews on my Google place page (very annoying). Meanwhile his are all fake, not one even has a real name attached to it. Anyway, I'm not going to take the low-road and start flagging his reviews (just in case it isn't him). However...

Anyone here ever heard of this project? http://digitalfire.ucd.ie/?page_id=1011 It seems to be a custom BIOS flashed linux build which makes the computer strictly a write blocking forensic imaging tool. Perhaps it could be tweaked to make a homebrew hardware imager similar to DDI :?: Might...

Personally I don't really care that Google or the government are spying. I'm not doing anything illegal or embarrassing so why should I care. If the government really has someone assigned to listen to my phone calls, they must be really bored. And Google just wants to shove advertising in my...

I like the idea behind this one even more: http://www.forensicpc.com/proddetail.as ... 5is&cat=38 Mounts right in the drive bay and had both eSATA and IDE attachments. Only drawback is that the internal connection to the workstation is Firewire 800. Anyone know if Firewire works well with...

Here's an eSATA one: http://www.digitalintelligence.com/prod ... e-sata_ro/ Crazy expensive, but I suppose it could be rigged up to work in this application.

Anyone know of a good SATA to SATA write blocker? I've got USB ones, and those seem pretty common but I'm hoping to find just an inline one that keeps it a SATA connection. I'd like to be able to use it for a ddrescue station I use for drives with just a few bad sectors, and I'm always nervous...

I find it funny how people here are all up in arms about the government "spying" on their phone calls, when we willingly let Google have far more information. Just follow this link and adjust the time frame to 30 days: https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0 Though I guess it could make a...

Can they smell rage? Because that's what this one has me feeling right now. I haven't been beat by a RAID yet, but this one is getting close :oops: .

Hey now, don't be quoting me to me. :lol: At this point I'm trying to figure this out, out of shear spite.

OK, so what I've gathered so far from my research. Parity Delay = never used with X-RAID2 Block Size = 64Kb (newer units default) 16Kb (some older units default) although neither seems correct in this case. Parity Rotation = Left Sync. This job is just taking forever because it was...

Update, I've identified and removed the NAND and it's a SD5DH26A-4G. Anyone have an adapter for this or want to work on one? Flash isn't really my thing, but the customer really wants the data back.

64Kb sounds like. Thanks! I was reading up on that forum before, but must have missed that.

So I'm currently working on a Netgear X-RAID2 that was re-configured and lost the data in the process. Anyone have any idea what stripe size these typically use? Will take forever having to scan each time for the lost filesystem. Thanks!

Judging by his nickname, I'd guess that hannanbd is a spammer. Seems that a first name followed by two random letters is the typical spammer format. He was probably just testing the waters to see if he had permissions to spam here.

Does anyone know if Huawei Android phones encrypt the memory? I've got one here that's totally smashed and will definitely need chip-off. Just don't want to waste time if it's encrypted anyway.

Yep, plenty of those. Sometimes I just wish they'd explode and destroy the platters so I wouldn't be stupid enough to attempt it. These ones that will start up and work for five minutes after each head swap kills me. At what point do you decide that you're never gonna get more than 5 minutes...

I did, I don't know about anyone else. Haven't had a chance to try it out yet, just been too busy with nightmare recovery jobs here.

I am intrigued by the handle: Scotch+Broth??? Is there a recipe to go with this, it sounds delicious. :D

Sure, it's always worth a try for that. I haven't had much of any times where the heads were a match for a second job, but I know Luke has a few that he's used two or three times. Once I used a set of heads that I bought from him that had already been used once, and they worked fine for me a...

Personally I don't trust any drive that's been opened. Even if it was me that opened it and all I did was look inside in a clean room. I've actually had drives where that was all I did, and it soon started getting tons of bad sectors. Even just removing the cover screws seems to put them on...

Looks like it's got bad sectors, so it started acting up. The guy reset it thinking that would help and lost all his music in the process. I can read some sectors through the iPod, but it keeps going unresponsive. The data on the drive doesn't appear to be in any special format, just regular...

I did the automatic resources backup. But, apparently some modules like 93 and 28 aren't a part of that. Or at least they didn't get read even though it seemed like it did.

Managed to get terminal access through shorting the read channel. Was able to manually read module 93, but it doesn't seem to allow it to write back after editing. Head test looks good as far as I can tell. Looks like it can't completely read module 28 from either head 0 or 1 though. So I'm...

Was actually just looking into trying that. Though, I'm not quite sure how that's gonna get me data access afterward....

Here's the full terminal log of what it's saying now... It's not counting nearly as long now. Rst 0x40M MC Internal LPC Process Spin Up TCC-001F RECOV Servo Op=0900 Resp=0005 RECOV Servo Op=0600 Resp=0005 RECOV Servo Op=005B Resp=0005 RECOV Servo Op=015B Resp=0005 RECOV Servo Op=005B...

Well, that didn't help any. Same response. IRS, you seem to be very knowledgeable of what these Seagate readouts mean. Any ideas? This is a new one to me, though I presume it means it's not fully reading some part of the SA.

Looks like we'll soon be recovering data from 3Tb My Passports: http://store.wdc.com/store/wdus/en_US/p ... al_Storage Hopefully they'll be easier than the other 3Tb+ sized externals we've been seeing. :D Might help to cut down the number of people being duped into buying Seagate externals...

Yes, think of it like an organ donor. Only not the organ donors in civilized nations who wait for the people to die first before harvesting their organs. We're more like the black market organ dealers who kill the subject because we suspect the part is a match for the patient we're trying to...

No. Some software like Spinrite makes claims like that, but it's been proven false. A few data recovery programs can image drives with bad sectors to some extent, but not as well as ddrescue. Though a hardware imager like DDI or PC-3000 can sometimes clean up a good amount of bad sectors with...

Possibly, this is the second head swap and both times I got one startup out of it. The first time I even got to backup the resources which went fine. I'm thinking there's damage elsewhere on the platters and it's just killing the heads. Which is why it only starts up once, but not again...

I've got this DM drive here that I'm now on my second head swap. First time it worked for a whole five minutes then shut down. This time it again ID'd when first powered on, was busy re-allocating sectors so I went in and disabled that in RAM which seemed to stabilize it. Then I stupidly went...

If you guys are going to branch out beyond optical media, perhaps a name change is in order for the software...might become a point of confusion. By the way, you mentioned a possibility of an early release beta? If you want I'll gladly take a look at it, even write up a quick review post of...

Yes it was a bit of work and customization to get it the way I liked it (especially to shrink down the gigantic blog post images). But, now that it's set up it's nice and easy to add new content.

That is one of the features that really makes R-Studio stand out above the others.

Yes, that's generally the technique I use. Mark off a few dozen digital camera pictures to find the pictures folder, some excel files to find the docs folder, etc.

What do you guys use to recover data from iPods? This is the first time I'm met someone willing to pay for recovery from one.

It's the Divi theme from elegantthemes.com. Very customizable on it's own, which I like so it doesn't look the same even as other sites using the same theme.

Thanks, that's interesting to hear about the implementation of Ext into your software. I managed to find the documents folder uswing R-Studio if I remember correctly. The main structure was a mess, but most of the primary folders were found in the "lost folders" area after a full scan. I just...

You can read up about alternate data streams here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/arch ... -ntfs.aspx It seems to be something mostly used by Microsoft to store extra information about specific files, though it is used by other programs as well. I suppose it could be handy to locate...

Looks like that one is also searching through some blogs. Get's more results that way, but less accurate results. This is a custom search I put together myself. I don't know where that other one came from.

Thanks Larry. Should be good now.

Just want to mention that I've added my google custom donor hard drive search engine to a sticky in the Market forum. Donor Drive Search Engine

Simply type in the Model, P/N, DCM, etc. to search various sources for the drive you need. Current list of sites searched: http://www.donordrives.com http://www.data-medics.com http://www.hddzone.com http://www.harddrivepcb.com http://www.hdd-parts.com http://www.accesscomputerparts.net...

Glad to hear it.

Good old drive like that, can probably recover even if it had a layer of dust on the platter. I had one like that with a clear fingerprint, and still recovered every last sector.

True, but at those recovery prices I'd bet they're keeping a weekly backup of the original files. Only need to have one customer pay for recovery to justify backing up all of them.

Wow, I want to know who this company is using for data recovery: https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTView ... =000003594 $10,000 just to get a pack of CSV's from a database backup file.... I'm in the wrong line of data recovery work.

By the way pclab, your frequent posting has pushed the keyword "pclab" to be my 9th most popular keyword according to webmaster tools. If only it were a popular search keyword. hehe.

Better quote high on this one. ;)

I should play around with DMDE more. I know I used it a couple time in the past, but generally these days I just use PC-3000 for that initial check.

I think most data recovery pros use the following software each of which has it's specific strengths: R-Studio (best all around, especially good for RAID) GetDataBack (good for certain things, especially FAT filesystems) Data Rescue 4 (best for Macs) UFSExplorer (handles some odd file systems...

Actually a bit of "SPAM" is totally allowed on this forum so long as it's data recovery related, and done in the proper way. If you represent a software company, you just need to identify yourself as such, but you're free to talk about your software, it's features, updates, you can even...

I'm thinking it broke during shipping, and the first power on was successful because it only needed to dismount the ramp. Problem happened when it tried to go back to the ramp.

Because I already have my 2015 brochures printed which has my price tiers. Though I suppose I can always just quote more as tier 3 which is a custom quote.

Here's a perfect example that illustrates why we need to charge a small fortune to make professional data recovery worthwhile to do. I get a job in that has bad heads, given it's history I tell them it has low odds of recovery but I'm I'm willing to try changing the heads if they approve my...

Bet you were hoping for a SATA to USB bridge chip weren't you?

Has anyone had much success disabling heads in ROM on these drives and perhaps reading just one or two heads at a time? Takes forever adjusting head map and writing it to ROM each time, so I'd rather not waste the time experimenting if someone else has already tried that angle.

Yes, it's in the custom families drop down box. Just have to find the right one. I know I've spent plenty of time in that box trying to find the right one and looking right over it a half dozen times before finding it.

Makes sense to me. I think what Luke is suggesting is a system similar to what the Deepspar operations server does which can generate a file tree that can be displayed to the customer with a color coded probability of recovery. I'm not sure how it generates this list as I don't use it, but I'd...

RAID 0 Default! Really, then we'll be seeing a lot of them in I imagine. And getting to charge RAID rates. :D Just out of curiosity, what was the default RAID config? Might be good to know in advance.

Just to let you all know, I'm trying to switch over my site to the new version so expect some downtime while I'm changing things. I'm really hoping to keep it to a minimum.

Here's another picture I had posted on Deepspar forum a while ago: Using Samsung adapter as mentioned.

And this article on Ace Website: http://ts.acelaboratory.com/index.php?/ ... connection

Yes, I've been hearing a lot of chatter about SSD's losing data when powered off for extended periods of time. Apparently it's not such an issue if it's used regularly, but leave your laptop in a hot car for a few months, and you might lose some data. I'm very curious to see if in time we...

Today I finally added the data recovery secrets section we've been talking about. The current members list is as follows: lcoughy jono larrysabo HaQue IRS pclab w.simon michael chiklis arvika jerovsec Elicia and myself Other forum members won't even be able to even see the data recovery...

True, but let's face it, it takes less raw material to build an SSD than a HDD. Right now prices are high due to all the R&D still going into the SSDs but in time manufacturers will push to make them the mainstream. That's my thinking on it.

Apparently in July they plan to start shipping a 6Tb model SSD. I'm sure it'll cost a fortune, but it shows where the technology can go. Once SSD's are bigger than hard drives, it's game over for the traditional spinners I think. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2921112/ ... while.html

No, only has two heads and they both have bad sectors like that seemingly from beginning to end. I should have known better than to take on a job where the customer tried their own head unstuck procedure following a youtube video. I think I'm going to start charging a non-refundable up front...

So this was a big build up to a huge let down. Spend two weeks working to piece together enough SA code from different drives to get a working SA for smart hot swap, and it finally worked. :D Unfortunately there's a steady repeating pattern of bad sectors across the entire data area...

Does anyone know approximately where Bitlocker stores it's encryption key? The password is known, but the drive is impossibly slow to image. Would take years to complete, so I'm hoping to target just the couple files needed by mounting the DE task. When I do mount it, it sees that it's using...

Update: I finally managed to get a working smart hot swap drive set up. Issue with this one seemed to be that module 01 was gone, and it seems to vary quite a bit between different drives. I started noticing that if I used different ones, different sets of modules would show as bad/good. I...

Yeah, I'm starting to agree. Sad because some of their software actually did show potential, but their advertisers are just destroying their reputation in the data recovery world.

So today, I get this popping up on my desktop: It's from their partition software which I've used for years and used to be pretty good. Pretty sad that this company now is not only spamming this forum, but is even even using their own software to created popups advertising their other...

Database saves size on your hard drive, and has some useful features for searching based on certain parameters. But, I've found it to be more of a pain than a help personally. So I just stick with using profile folders. It makes it a lot easier for looking at modules & tracks in hex, etc...

Very informative. When i decide to actually venture into doing SSDs I'll have to sit and read it.

I think you need more modules it's something like 106-109. I'd have to check again. But, I'm pretty sure it's possible. I did a test on one last week to see. Just be sure to follow the instructions carefully about writing the modules back to the ROM, etc. It's a bit of a pain this family.

I think we are all in that same boat. LoL. Problem is we are all the nice guys who got into this helping people, not exploiting them. Hard to turn it off, even when you really do need to make the money. I've personally found that the biggest bang for your buck is to make a nice looking...

I use coinbase.com they seem reputable, have good rates, and I've never had a problem with them.

Not really. If it's Windows Pro you can try the previous versions feature of the individual folders that contain the lost data (assuming they had it enabled). Or you can run RAW scan and see what you're able to get. But, as far as decrypting is concerned, you'll need to pay the criminals...

Ah Man! My favorite Wii game, love those Rabbids. :D Is this a new mini game where you have to plunge out all the DM models that are plugging up your toilet? I think this should be Seagates new logo.

And these were all WD Marvel drives?

It's Helios family, if it helps.

I think I had a few that hadn't been synced from my workstation back to the server. Snycing the folders now, so you might want to check again in a bit.

Hmmm.... I guess there was a lot of people on the forum around 10AM, I wasn't one of them. Strange how you get sudden random spikes like that.

There's plenty of resources for those and similar models on my firmware server.

This should be a pretty easy operation. Just throw any old 2060-771692 PCB on there, copy any ROM from the same model (-11ZSMS0), upload the LDR from that same resources you got the ROM from, and that should get you SA access. Then it's a simple ROM rebuild procedure. You might even be able...

I just checked one of these models, and it definitely has a ROM image. Have you tried just doing LDR upload to see if you can read modules?

If it has a backup image of the ROM in there, you should be able to. But not all models have a backup.

Yes, supposedly that rolled out a couple days ago. Should only affect results if searching from a mobile device thought. They say it won't affect computer based searches.

I had success before when I found a drive matching all the specs including the full DCM and date of manufacture. PCB just worked without any ROM transfer, but it's rare. Very rare.

Anyone had a chance to work on one of these dual drive passports yet? I think the concept of RAID 1 in there is sort of cool, but I assume that if you drop it good, it'll just have a synchronized head crash. But, the cool part will be that if some heads work in each drive, you might be able...

I found this interesting, so I thought I'd share. As some of you know I've been working to transition my website over to Wordpress (finally) and wanted to complete it before letting Google know the new site existed. You can see it here: www.data-medics.com/recovery/ I hadn't posted a single...

This chart looks a bit better.

OMG, I'm so retarded. :lol: :lol: :lol: I didn't realize webmaster tools treats the SSL version as a completely different site. That one's up 1000% from last month. :D I was starting to seriously panic.

SA writing is one thing, I though you were referring to writing to sectors. Gor a Seagate DM that just had a head crash, not much point in doing any SA modifications, it's either going to work or not.

I know Google announced that they will be giving a boost to sites using SSL, but so far I'm not seeing positive benefits: Maybe it just needs time to stabilize, but for now it seems to be killing my number of impressions in organic search.

Didn't try. In fact, I don't think I've ever tried to write data to a patient drive. Seems unethical to me I guess.

Haven't tried them back in the donor, but I'm pretty sure they are toast. There was a little bit of platter damage right at the edge of the platters (heads missed the ramp) but it didn't seem too bad. But then who knows if it got some particles of metal or platter surface that got stuck to...

Looks like he left some DNA on that one Larry. :lol:

Maybe the PCB is lost and he needs one close enough to do ROM rebuild from SA???

Agreed, the recovery is still a total loss at this point. We'll see how the next head swap goes. But I'll still take it working for ten minutes over not working at all and wondering if the heads weren't compatable, got damaged in the clean room, etc.

As we all seem to be having difficulties head swapping these, I though it'd be nice to have a thread to share our DM head swap experiences. Here's mine from today: Patient ST30000DM001 PN: 9YN166-570 FW CC9F Date: 13044 Site: TK Serial: Z1F0Y... Donor ST30000DM001 PN: 9YN166-570 FW: CC9E...

Thanks!

Never mind, I got it. Found one in a stack of old drives here, and got another from Luke.

Hello, I need resources for the following model: Maxtor 6Y080L0 FW: YAR41BW0 Family: Calypso If anyone has it, please help! Thanks.

LoL

lcoughy jono larrysabo HaQue IRS pclab w.simon michael chiklis arvika jerovsec (I added him) and myself If anyone thinks of someone else they want to nominate, now's the time. If there's someone on this list you don't trust, please PM me about it and I'll adjust the list. Needs to be a place...

Not sure if anyone is interested in this, but since it only took a minute to install I've added a chat room page to the forum. Might be fun for those of us who miss the good old days of IRC. :D

Guidelines: Keep in mind this discussion is public. Please do not use profanity here as our normal filters will not work and we strive to maintain a family-friendly website.

Given that you are located in Nigeria, I tend to doubt that you'll ever face a court case related to data confidentiality. Even here in the USA they don't hold up in court often. Here's the form I give all my customers when they drop off their drives. And if they request, I give them a...

Agreed, the first two digits and last digit after the dash don't matter as far as I can tell. I'd take a -60UST0 with a closer DCM over a -11UST0 with that further off. If the drive you have has CT2 in the DCM and a date within a few months, it should work.

The model is common but that "CT2" DCM code seems to be elusive. This one might work: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Western-Digital ... 1c4fa290b7 Only it's 4 months off on the date...

Update: I actually found a very similar drive (same family, different model) which is working and it too can't read those modules. So I'm guessing they are non-critical. Which I guess raises more questions now than it gives answers... perhaps it's a PCB issue. :?:

I don't know that we need to exclude everyone who doesn't have a lot of secrets to contribute. It's more that I'd just like to have a place were we can share information we don't want publicly posted. So who is allowed in is really just a matter of who we all trust enough to have access and...

Update: Ok, so I found a very similar model and confirmed that it doesn't by default back up those two modules unless you uncheck the box "skip non-critical modules". Does anyone have a drive of this model & fw or a really close one that I can get a copy of the modules?

I've tried reading the modules by composite too, but can't get them. Does anyone have these?

So I'm working on the following drive: Model : Hitachi HTS545025B9SA02 Serial : 100325PBL2003SHBJR9V Firmware : PB2AC60W Capacity : 232.89 GB (488 397 168) Drive IDs perfectly, shows correct capacity, etc. But I have no sector access. I ran a check of the modules in the modules table and a...

Might be able to put a piece of paper to block the preamp, upload module 11 as ldr, change head map in RAM, remove the paper, and then try it. It might work or it might just get stuck busy again, but it's worth a try if you don't have a same family drive with the right head map laying around.

Even if you change the headmap in RAM and soft reset it still won't ID?

Did you try setting the headmap to something like 4, 4, 5, 6, 7 and just disabling head 3 in DE?

Alright, well I'd say let's all nominate a few people who we think should have access to the top secret section. I'll start by nominating: lcoughey jono HaQue Other nominations?

Hi Martin, Welcome! Nice to have you here. I went ahead and lifted the restrictions on your account, so you can now add a signature and have full access to all posting privileges. I hope you enjoy the forum.

If it's a WD you can usually jumpstart it. Just disable the bad head in ram, soft reset, check if it ID's. Then set the head map back, soft reset again, and see if you can image it. Just beware of hard resets and power cycling it, or it'll likely crap back out.

The RAID job was done and returned to the customer by 6:30AM, but no sense trying to go to sleep at that point. So I just stayed at work and did a couple more projects. Yay! it's after 5, time to go to bed.

I am so tired right now... been here pretty much since 2AM, not counting a breakfast outing. I'm about to fall asleep. I don't know how I got talked into rebuilding this RAID overnight. But I guess it is nice to have a profit that's well over $2K for one days work. Counting down the minutes...

I notice that in four posts now you mention Jihosoft. I don't mind you mentioning and even talking up and promoting your products. But you need to identify yourself as a representative of the company.

What about thus idea... to gain entrance you have to share at least one little known data recovery trick or "secret" via a PM to another member of the group. If the information is worthy of being posted in there, you get access to the section. Thoughts?

I don't know. I've been quite surprised how much information guys are willing to share in a PM if you ask the right questions. They often just don't want to share some of the great techniques that give them an edge publically in a forum. But a forum with very limited access, might loosen some...

True, at least I sleep good at night knowing I'll never end up on one of those videos. And I get to keep a clean conscience. I do honestly believe that most people get into data recovery work by trying to help people. But, I think many just start falling into the temptation to grab quick...

Sheesh! Just got another one in like that. This time it's a laptop drive from an Apple and the customer was told by the "Genius" bar they couldn't recover the data. Yet, it's perfectly fine. Two in one day that don't have any issues. If I were one of the guys from this video I'd be rich by...

So the other day a customer brings in a older 250Gb Maxtor external hard drive which practically took a crowbar to open. Finally I get around to testing the internal IDE drive inside and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Just a bad USB bridge. I'd be willing to bet that more that 50%...

This is all stuff I wanted to get input on. I'd say the basic requirement would be that you have professional equipment such as PC-3000 and are a known contributor to the forum. My thinking is that I don't want the lurkers who just read but never contribute anything to get that type of...

Come on, there's hardly any spam posts on this forum. A lot of spam accounts that were created, but not many posts. Just a few from Wondershare and Tenorshare clowns.

I just wanted to be the person to make the 1000th post. :D

Last warning Joyce, if you represent a software company - Tenorshare you need to identify yourself as such. One more post like this from your company and I will delete all your posts and all links to your website. You can SPAM about your software in the appropriate section, but pretending to...

Compared to a lot of guys, I'm a bit of a noob myself. But I've managed to squeeze some secrets out of a fair number of guys. Some of which I can share and some I can't w/o getting permission first. I just think a section not publically accessable might allow for some better information to be...

I thought you said the drive spun down??? If it isn't spinning you're not reading data, that I'm sure of. Unless it's spinning back up after you do something...

I want to get your thoughts on this idea. I'm thinking it might be worth creating a locked section of the forum accessible only to certain select members where we can share "secrets" that we don't want to post publicly but are willing to share with other contributing forum members. Of course...

It still might be worth trying another PCB just to rule it out for sure, but generally that's a head failure.

Bad heads and/or possibly media damage. The reduced capacity is just the drive going into Kernel mode where you can access ROM etc.

Well it if helps answer your question, I just finished up that recovery and almost none of it matched. Even the date was over a year off. So it seems that the assumption of same model and country may be correct as suggested on hddguru forum. I don't have the drives in front of me but I'm...

Welcome. Nice to have another country represented on the forum. :D

You know to be honest, I don't think I've ever bothered to look at the metadata of a JBOD array before. So I wouldn't know the difference just looking in hex. Never took me longer than two minutes to determine drive order the old fashoned way. I do believe that the software saw a dynamic...

No, it's definitely JBOD with no striping. I can recover large files in RAW, but there's no filesystem to be found anywhere. Which makes sense given that the first drive is the failed one. It might not specifically be a "Windows" JBOD, but definitely just a basic JBOD.

Thomason, if you represent Tenorshare you are required to identify yourself as such. I don't mind software reps posting about their products, but deception will not be tolerated. Wondershare reps were already banned from this forum for this type of post.

I must have misunderstood. I thought you meant that the drive wasn't coming ready (DRD + DSC) anymore. You meant that it gets ABR when you try to access sectors. :D

While that concept isn't new, I don't think anyone will ever be able to invent such a machine. And even if they did, the cost would be prohibitive as it would take an absurd amount of R&D to even build one that could interpret the data from a few models, let alone all of them. There's just too...

Also I took the opportunity to update the version of phpBB running the forum.