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If anyone had issues connecting to the forum recently I just want to apologize. I had to make some edits to the .htaccess file to force SSL redirecting and for a little bit the site wasn't working. Should be all set now. Is it forcing SSL for you?

Just be careful too that the drive is fully spun down before you remove the PCB. Otherwise you'll get the heads stuck to the platters. This procedure is called a smart hotswap.

Yes, that usually is enough of the tracks. What you'll need to do it get another drive of the same family and same head map (model can be different). First backup all the resources of that drive so you can set it back later. Then write all the tracks from the one you're working on onto that...

Module 6F almost always gives a checksum error, so you can ignore that. Did you make a backup of the SA tracks too? If so you can use those to get the drive ready again.

I've got a job that I'm working on that's a 61GSY family drive. The original drive I believe needs new heads, but I wanted to rule out PCB first just to be safe. Was able to read CP fine from it, however now I get in two perfectly functional donors and can't seem to get any terminal access to...

It is possible that it could also kill the heads, but it is rare. Usually you can just move the NV-RAM chip over to a replacement PCB and it works.

I suppose it's possible that it killed them. Though I'd think its more likely that a bad motor killed both PCBs. On your donor, will it spin up if you isolate the head contacts?

The heads must both be at least semi functional if you read tracks from both. Have you tried composite read and write the composite tracks to a donor yet?

Pretty sad, I essentially gave you permission to spam on this forum if done in a appropriate way. But now you are getting banned and all links to Wondershare will be removed. Nice going.

Might be, but usually with a bit of fiddling around with the cover screw you can get it to work just fine. Did, you look at the tracks read from head 0 to see if it looks like any data? I know I've got one here now that acts like it reads tracks, but when I look at the data in hex it just says...

Oh and with only two heads in that drive, I highly doubt there's a chance the full 100Mb isn't striped. Should be cheap enough to find a heads donor. Also you can try writing the tracks to a donor of the same family and same headmap. If it ID's then you can just put it to sleep and hotswap over.

Have you checked the modules in the modules directory to see if they all pass checksum? Perhaps there's a few that aren't getting read properly.

So I realize that often with WD My Passport and Elements drives you can't always read the ROM code through the USB connection. Some models simply don't allow it even if the drive is fully functional. On many models you can gain access to read the ROM code through a terminal connection. Below...

This is your last warning, stop the fake questions to spam your software. We know you represent Wondershare. You can mention and post links to your page in the Software section, but no more fake threads. I will ban you and delete all posts.

Oh yeah forgot to mention, $55K was for a used setup too.

So I've got a Toshiba drive here which I'm quite certain needs new heads and it seems to be a rather rare model. I don't even have a PCB for it. Normally I'd try to match the model and the code underneath E.G. HDD2E82 D UL02 T (at least the part I underlined). But given the scarcity of this...

So, it looks like David Watson is just here to ask fake questions, which he then answers himself using another account. Very deceptive. I certainly don't mind software reps talking up their software on here, but creating fake accounts to ask questions and then answer them is a stretch. If he...

I find it interesting that the software on his site has all the same names as the software from Wondershare. I assume this is just a re-branding franchise and not actually software you've developed.

$55,000 USD give or take depending on the specifics. A bit rich for my blood, maybe Luke will want to buy a toy like that for his. :)

I've never found Facebook to do that much good for SEO. I think that we are in a business where people are unlikely to re-share what we post (which is where the real SEO benefit comes to play). Just a thought, I see that you've never taken advantage of your signature in this forum or HDDGURU...

Emailed and asked, still waiting to hear back. I'd expect it's a lot of money in relation to the 2% of cases it's likely to help with. But, if you work in volume like Kroll does, it's probably a worthwhile investment.

Nevermind, I see it in your avatar: www.WSDataRecovery.com :D

Yes, welcome. Nice to have another software rep on the forum. I don't think I've ever heard of your software, what's your website?

Hi David, Welcome. Are you the same David from Arizona that I spoke with on the phone the other day?

Going forward I do plan to add a question on sign up such as the "what does HDD stand for?" found in hddgruru forum. That should seriously limit the number of new spam accounts being generated. But for now, I think that seeing a higher number of members may actually encourage more legitimate...

I could delete all the banned members, however I think that would allow those user names to become available again. Which means that the same spam bot that created them may come back around and create the same account all over again.

Many boards will come ready (DRD + DSC) if you just wait for a minute after powering on. Others you have to attach to a hard drive with a piece of paper between the PCB and preamp so it can just spin up the motor. But as a last resort you can always use boot ROM code utility. You just have to...

Hello, Yes the ROM is all that you have to transfer to make the PCB compatible. On SATA boards this is all done through the SATA connection (for WD drives). I won't be back in the office until Monday to post a picture, but you can use the Samsung adapter on the USB models to read the ROM...

I suppose I could do that, but it is hard to know for sure who is just an auto generated spam account and who is just reading and not yet contributing. I've already deleted 150~200 accounts that I could tell were just spammers. But I don't want to unintentionally delete any real user accounts...

Just want to say welcome and thank you to everyone who has joined up and made this new forum such a success. :D

Please keep in mind he's just advertising his own software. If the drive appears in explorer and shows the correct capacity then data recovery software may actually be a good option. Personally I'd recommend you try a demo of R-Studio by R-TT and see if it can scan the drive and find the...

Can you PM me his phone number please? I may make a trip out there to buy it off him.

So recently this video (http://gillwaredatarecovery.wistia.com/ ... qfz8xr96jf) appeared on Gillware's website showing a burnishing system being used to clean / test a HDD platter. I'm sure some of you are wondering where you can get such a machine. So after a little research, I found the...

Update: So now that I've finished imaging the drives I went to see about rebuilding the array. Turns out it's just a Windows JBOD (which surprises me given that it's a Lacie rack storage NAS), and the failed disk is the first one in the series. So much for salvaging any file/folder structure...

So yesterday I get in a Lacie 6Tb Network RAID (sorry it has no model number that I can tell). The IT guy who brought it in has no idea of the original configuration, and it's already been looked at by Lacie's "data recovery service" who said it couldn't be recovered. So here's what I find...

I've added a new section for RAID data recovery to the forum. Didn't seems like it quite fit into any other category.

So I'm finally making the switch over to Wordpress (something I've been threatening forever). And I'm going full SSL since that's now becoming a ranking factor. Just working out the details of my template. Let me know what you think of it so far: www.data-medics.com/recovery I'm open to...

I happened to be looking at BVG Group's website and I noticed this tool (http://www.bvg-group.ru/eng/diagnostic/HIE_200.php) which advertises being able to clone drives with bad sectors. And given the current exchange rate from RUB to USD, it's pretty cheap now. Anyone ever used it and know if...

Anyone else been on Google maps today? They added a new view in addition to map and satellite view. Now you have Pac-Man view where you can play Pac-Man on your own streets. :D

This might sound like a dumb thought (and I realize it probably is), but you are sure that you had the LIF cable in the right way at the other end right? I've been surprised once or twice to discover that contacts needed to be facing up instead of down on certain LIF connectors. And you are...

Might be worth forwarding it to someone who does monolith recoveries and has a good wedge bonding machine.

Just to update the thread that adapter from Amazon worked like a charm.

For some reason G+ loves your face Larry. Every time I plus one a thread you've posted in it picks your picture. Maybe Google's algorithm favors human faces.

You know I just noticed that I have ..Z8A. and ..Z2A. down as Atlantis PL family. Possibly it's a mistake, can anyone verify for sure which family these belong to. I don't think I actually have these drives, just some collected resources.

Possibly, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I've had times where heads from the same model wouldn't work, but heads from another same family one did. But you could also end up getting a drive with a different headmap, preamp, etc. It's all a game of educated guesses.

I'm working on a nightmare of an Everest V family drive. The customer tried to free the heads themselves and ended up damaging the SA (amazingly the heads survived). I did composite read of the tracks and modules and was able to grab all the really critical modules and the CS checks out on all...

I actually was just helping him. Turns out the drive is from a DVR, which is why there doesn't appear to be any files.

Thanks Luca, I added those to my identified families list: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=636&p=1430#p1430

Inside of DE you can't see files or you can't see data? There's a big difference. The data could be encrypted, in which case you won't be able to see any files, or there could be other issues. How much of the drive have you imaged so far? It looks to me that you only just started it and then...

You can only work with those within DE. You just have to reopen the task in DE and then you can explore the files, or mount the task so you can use other software to analyze it. If you don't have the original drive anymore or it has died, you can check the box where it says "work with data...

Anyone else have this one? I got one from Simon which gets me SA access at least, so I was able to read most the original tracks and modules (and I got all the critical ones) but the original module 11 is damaged in the SA and I can't get a good read even through composite. Tried replacing...

To answer your question about the Cellebrite UME Touch, it's advertised as a cell phone backup and transfer device rather than for data recovery and forensics. So I don't think it has any of the password bypass features, or is likely to have any ability to directly read the memory for deleted...

So this one I find interesting. I've got a Hitachi HTS547550A9E384 here that when it's first powered on clicks away like crazy. My first thought was to just quote for a head swap and move on to the next job. But I noticed that after about 30 clicks it finally does come ready. So I backed up...

Yeah, I agree must be spam, but at least it's data recovery spam so we allow it here. I've never used either tool you mentioned though I've heard of both. Personally I've pretty much stopped doing phone recoveries. They are far too time consuming for what you are able to charge people. And...

I donno, first it was missing some werkernel.sys file (which I pulled from the recovery partition) then it was another file, after a while I just copied the entire system32 folder over from the recovery partition (skipping the files that existed). Now it tries to boot but just BSODs out with...

Is that teak wood that you used to make the boxes? Not to be critical, but perhaps if you used a nice cheap Styrofoam box instead Larry could afford the tools. Or maybe I could too. :)

Even if you can't unlock the phone??? I've found that no software works when you can't get past the lock screen.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm finding that trying to get Windows 8 to boot after a crash is a nightmare. Customer had a drive which had some slow reading sectors. Imaged 100% without one single unread sector (including the recovery partitions). But despite this I can't get it to boot...

Very true Luke. I have been exceptionally busy the last two weeks, but not beyond what I've seen in the past. However I figure that even if the traffic is just computer tech's finding and reading information on the forum it's still a good thing. Remember that if a user has been to your site...

I've noticed that lately Google seems to be loving my website. Just look at the chart in webmaster tools: I hope this isn't just a fluke.

I don't actually have it, but I've heard that it's pretty good at addressing some firmware bugs and allowing data access on some models without having to resort to a chip off recovery.

Yes, I have some similar ones (though they are PCI Express not SATA) and I have that exact one on order from Newegg. I just wonder if even PC-3000 for SSD can interface thorough the SATA adapter. Anyone here who's tried it?

Alright, I just got my first M.2 SSD in for recovery. It's an Intel PRO 1500 SSD SSDSCKHF240A4L PCI-E 240G and isn't being recognized on any equipment I have. Does anyone have a chip off solution for these? I assume there isn't any other option for M.2 SSD's yet. I don't think anything else...

For once I'm having a day where things are going my way. Head swapped a rampless 4 platter WD drive and it actually imaged quickly. Then got a native USB one in, replaced with a SATA board. It didn't ID at first but a quick upload of module 13 as overlay in RAM an it became completely...

Explanation. The WD family code is found in the part of the model after the dash, usually in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th characters. So for example in a model such as WD5000AAKS-40V6A0 the family code is V6A, and as you can see below belongs to Tahoe family. This can be helpful for finding other...

Edit: I meant to say anandtech(dot)com not technibble. They are alright there. It's anandtech that is owned by Tom's hardware. And I've been banned from both sites for "spamming" when I tried pointing people to useful information that would help them. They seem to think that you should...

I have in the past, but like you say it's rarely worth the shipping especially for the 3.5" ones. Instead what I do to collect lots of drives, is I offer free digital wiping service of old hard drives, just to keep the salvage of the hardware. From just a few good size companies I get hundreds...

I deleted Tom's Hardware from the list because I just got banned on there (again). I guess they really don't tolerate when you put actually helping people above following their "forum rules" which apparently prohibits even mentioning in a private message another forum where the answer can be...

Personally I don't think that much of anyone is actually looking at G+. But links shared on there do carry pagerank and when they are +1'ed by someone else its shared on their page and passes pagerank from theirs too. Its basically just a quick back linking strategy which has proven quite...

This post seems a little spammy to me, but at least it's in an appropriate section. So I'll allow it this time.

Congratulations! And welcome to the pro bowl. Trust me you won't regret it. Sadly I had bought other tools first (Salvation Data) and almost gave up data recovery. But determined, I bought PC-3000 and couldn't be happier with it. Its paid for itself at least 10X over already. It's...

Ok, looks like you'll need a 4061-705059-103 board. This one here should work for you: http://www.ebay.com/itm/WD-My-Book-Esse ... 2eda3f2d0b

Yep, that's the chip to match. When I get in the office this afternoon I'll look to see which board has the correct chip. Unless someone else beats me to it. Also be sure you image to the end of the drive. There's a sector near the very end that contains the encryption key which the My Book...

The one I have can also do DoD level secure wiping. I never bother to use that feature (unless a paranoid customer insists) as we all know it's just a waste of electricity. But it is there. I generally just use the zero-fill option.

Yes, but at only $75 more the one from Startech (sold cheaper on Newegg) can wipe two at a time and can also be used for high speed cloning. And it is fast, maxes out most any drive. Plus if you want to be able to use it on IDE drives you can use this adapter...

If you take a nice high resolution picture of the chips near the USB port, I may be able to tell you which USB bridge to use. I have a pile of them here that I've collected.

You'll have to deal with the encryption either way. I find that transferring the ROM is far easier than trying to solder on a SATA port (don't think I ever successfully did that). If you had PC-3000 we could walk you through digitally reading/writing the ROM using a terminal connection. I...

I totally agree with PCLab, you will likely find that the drive is much more stable over SATA. For drives that occasionally come ready you can often hot start them by disabling all the heads except for either 0 or 1 (whichever seems to be reading the SA better) and then soft reset, set the map...

I need LDR (and other FW resources too) for the following model: Family: Everest V Model: WD3200BEKT-75PVMT1 ROM Version: 00040027 If anyone has this I'd really appreciate it.

I think I will start to add families to the list. Might come in handy. Anyone else who has been keeping track, please feel free to share.

I just got in yet another WD Passport drive that isn't encrypted. WD10TMVW-11ZSMS0 PC-3000 found an encryption key (which scrambled the data when I tried to use it to decrypt). Turns out it wasn't encrypted. This is about the third one like this that I've seen one that never got encrypted...

Have you tried partitioning & formatting it in Linux, and then see if you can install Windows to it? I know the Windows installer might not allow GPT partitioning, but it may still recognize it if it's already done...

Have you tried the trick of pressing enter in terminal right when you power it on, to see if you can get it ready? If you can then perhaps just writing the original CP back might make it work again. If you can't get it ready that way, PM me and I'll share another trick that might work.

I'm looking to hire someone to do guest blogging for me on my site. The person would have to be knowledgeable of data recovery and able to create unique articles on a variety of subjects related to the business. No re-spun existing articles or Google translated articles will be accepted. I'd...

I'll let you work on that part. :D I was starting to keep track of that for a bit, but gave up on it after I saw how much crossover there is with different families using the same PCB and even different PCBs within the same family. Personally in don't think I have half of these, but I...

Here's a list that I've compiled of every PCB number from Western Digital that I've heard of. Thought it might be handy for anyone who's trying to collect them all. 2060-001003 2060-001047 2060-001062 2060-001076 2060-001092 2060-001100 2060-001102 2060-001113 2060-001127 2060-001128...

As a last resort just use Gparted and a Linux live distro to partition and format it.

No, we are saying that without UEFI you can format to GPT without any issue. I've got at least 7-8 computers here that aren't UEFI and I've used large drives on all of them.

Perhaps you should try what this tutorial says: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/convert-mbr-to-gpt-disk

Yes, same here. I only have one computer here that actually is UEFI (cuz UEFI drives me crazy) and I've never had an issue formatting to GPT and creating large partitions. Could it be just a limitation of your motherboard? Perhaps it just isn't recognizing large drives correctly.

I've never had an issue with it. Just have to be sure it's GPT partitioned.

Wow. Some people just don't know how to take a good lesson learned.

I don't think you can without unlocking it first... which to do that you'd have to replace the digitizer.

Update, I completely disabled head 3, and now I can read sectors on the other three heads. Seems that the drive is just going unresponsive whenever it tries to use that head. Unfortunately there wasn't much data on this drive and head 3 was the first ~35Gb, so without it, all the data is gone...

I've got a Samsung 2.5" ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB drive that comes ready (most of the time) and correctly ID's shows capacity, can even read modules. However whenever I try to access a sector it goes into an endless loop with the following readout with the AP Cnt steadily rising: S_0SR:0 AP:1...

Looks like Seagate is releasing an ST...AS series 8Tb SMR drive. http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_ar ... review_8tb This time the SMR is fully drive managed so it can be used in any OS. They are selling it as an archive drive, so obviously the performance will suck. I'm betting these are...

Hmm...I didn't realize that they added that. I haven't looked at it in a while. I guess I'm just not keen on the idea of relying entirely on a database I have no control of. And one they might just decide to discontinue if it isn't working out for what they want (not that I'd expect DeepSpar...

Well, not so much that you can't enter the specs. But you can't search just your own inventory. Finding my own drives faster is ultimately what I'm hoping to accomplish. Plus I want to be able to keep notes about things like bad sectors, etc.

Is it an IDE drive? If so make sure its jumpered to master.

I thought about that. But it doesn't keep track of some of the specs I'd like to be able to search by. I've got a friend who's an SQL guru and app developer, and is currently unemployed. I'm gonna see if we can work up a solution.

Cool, will update the list.

It's always worked fine for me... Anyone else had this issue? What browser are you using?

Three questions: 1. Does anyone know of any good software to do this? 2. If I hire a database guy to build an app, would anyone be interested in paying a few bucks for a copy? 3. If you answered yes to question #2, what specifics specifics would you want to see in the database? My stock has...

Technical information like this when posted to the web is generally considered public information and is very commonly re-shared for easy access on other forums. It's not exactly the same as a custom written article to which copyrights might possibly apply. Call it plagiarism if you want, but...

I've got a Toshiba drive here that's clicking. Normally I'd assume bad heads, but I decided to first try backing up the CP so I can later program a new PCB (don't have this one apparently). I used the normal trick of pressing enter in terminal after powering on, but this one never goes ready...

Just noticed this article: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases ... 37378.html Looks like they are about to start shipping 3Tb SSD drives to North America from Japan. Looks like the end of traditional hard drives may be coming quickly. Fortunately their 1Tb version is $990 so the 3Tb will...

I don't think he actually mentioned it. I just assumed based on the section it was posted in.

I'm not sure if they can with Toshiba drives. I've honestly never tried to do that...

Are those crickets I hear??? I don't know the answer to that, so I can't help.

No.

I'm curious to hear how other people first got into doing data recovery work as a profession. So let me start with my story, and then perhaps you'd like to share yours. About 7 or 8 years ago I was working as an electrician for a company that also did quite a bit of networking and IT work for...

Thank you for posting an update. And congrats on your first real data recovery project being a success. Pretty soon you may have friends coming to you to recover their data too. I know that's how I got roped into this business in the first place

You can likely still read the NV-RAM (needed to reprogram another PCB) by removing the PCB from the hard drive and connecting it to PC-3000. Just be sure to check the box that says "PCB only" when loading the utility. That way you can try programming a new PCB to rule out any issues there...

If the drive is clicking it most likely needs new read write heads. Does it ever stop clicking and come ready? (DRD & DSC lights on)

Classic movie.

Anyone had any of these new M.2 SSD drives come in for recovery yet? I'd imagine that even PC-3000 SSD can't interface with them given the PCI-Express format used.

Yeah, unfortunately most email programs try to shrink pictures to make the message smaller and in the process they lose all the metadata. If you could get the originals you'd be able to get a lot more information.

In that case I'd guess that they aren't the original digital camera pictures. Were they emailed or anything like that before being put on the thumbdrive? Probably the file was converted losing the metadata.

Have you tried Attribute Magic Pro? I know that can read metadata of just about any common file type.

Anyone else been reading about this concept: http://m.channel3000.com/technology/why ... e/31469414 My thought is that even if they figure out how to write DNA data, retrieving it will be nearly impossible. Perhaps we should start saving up for some gene sequencing equipment now. :roll:

I must be retarded today or something. I'm going out of my mind trying to figure out why this 1.8" Apple LIF drive is coming ready, but I can't hear it spinning up at all. So finally I get the bright idea to remove the metal cover that's concealing the PCB board (or so I thought). And what do...

Yes after looking again, it does have that feature. However it won't work. Seems that the drive hangs whenever it tries to switch levels in terminal and times out. Perhaps this would be one to try the m0,,.... fix on, but I've already got 99.99% of the data without fixing it. So at this...

I guess there was a previous video where he was explaining why not to put it in the freezer. But all I heard was: "we tried putting this in the freezer already" Which is where they lost me.

No I haven't tried that. But it seems that its an issue where the hardware just can't read any data. I know its not a copy protection issue, which I am pretty sure any DVD is used for(at least that's what I used to use it for) With one drive of mine ISO Buster does see a track, but every...

PC-3000 seems to only show features for each model that are relavent & work on that specific family. I've seen features like that for other families but I don't see it on this one. In any event, given that its half way through cloning now, I'm not too worried about it.

So here's a strange Seagate case I've never seen. Seems this drive gets stuck busy whenever it tries to access it's S.M.A.R.T. data. I can't even access or clear it because the drive just gets stuck busy. And every time it hits a bad sector it becomes busy and completely stops responding...

Here's a good laugh for you guys. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flom4k7lPUo#t=313 :lol:

Nice. This is sort of like my Donor Drives Search Engine: http://www.data-medics.com/donor-drives---search.html

Anyone ever tried this system? http://www.epos.ua/view.php/products_epos_flashreader

What do you guys who do this flash stuff think about using this programmer to get dumps: http://www.ebay.com/itm/TNM5000-USB-Uni ... 4897.l4275 Which can then be uploaded to someone with the software to reconstruct?

So really just a Passport in a new shell. Nice.

Thought this was interesting so I figure I'd share. Recently for the first time I had a customer bring in an HP Simplesave external hard drive. The USB bridge was cooked, the drive had some bad sectors and was encrypted. The bridge had a 4061 number on it but a lot of the numbers were just...

Does anyone know good software to recover data from a Verizon Galaxy Note III that is running Android 4.4.4? I normally use Wondershare Dr. Fone but it just isn't working for this model. You guys know any other good options?

I've added a section for phones, tablets, cameras, digital photo frames, and other similar devices. I don't personally do much of this work, so don't expect much help from me, but some others who use this forum might be more experienced with that stuff.

Ah, you're right. I misread it, thinking the 25 was the date..LOL... I gotta go home I must be getting tired.

Here's an interesting glitch: "Most users ever online was 25 on Tue Feb 24, 2015 12:48 am" It's still Monday the 24th, apparently the forum is now clairvoyant and knows how many users will be online tomorrow. :lol:

Just stumbled across this: http://storj.io It's another peer to peer cloud backup service similar to www.symform.com, however this one promises to allow you to rent out your extra storage space for monthly payments. I actually really liked Symform and had hoped to eventually be able to use it...

Does it seem like the actuator was stuck off of the platters or was it clicking and dragging across it? If it crossed the platter even a couple times I'm relatively certain there's catastrophic media damage from what I can see. On an older lower density drive it might be worth trying, but...

Forget about it. If the head was ripped off like that and it was running even for a second, it's a lost cause. Don't waste a perfectly good donor.

Oh yes, I forgot this one. www.weebly.com/blog/ Amazing SEO quality links (actually my top 3 link juice producing), especially if you post a comment early on new blog posts so they aren't too far down on the page.

No, the two or three that I ever did get working turned out to be lost causes in the end. Now I just quote that family really high and hope they just decline the quote.

That, and get 5 or 6 of them because they probably won't work anyway. :D I don't think anyone has figured out the trick to this, although I know Luke has spent a whole lot of time trying on these drives (with a little success). Personally I've yet to have a DM drive work for more than a few...

Just rig up a separate power supply so after you start the process you can disconnect them from your station and just leave em running.

Are these WD drives we're talking about? If so have you tried self scan? I know it takes a while, but usually fixes these issues.

I think I usually use hot air at around 360-375° C to rework them. I really wouldn't recommend trying to remove it using an iron and desolder braid. They use very high temp, lead free solder that doesn't wick easily. You're more likely to rip a pin off that way. A big heat gun will certainly...

Yep, I just counted and it's definitely 24 pin. Ordered one on ebay so I guess I'll just wait for it to come in now. Good to know they have standard adapters for these now. I know some guys in the past had to custom solder onto these, but I'd rather not have to.

I think this might be what I need: http://www.amazon.com/SATA-Macbook-22pi ... B00JOXFMWA I'm pretty sure these are the 24 pin ones used only by Apple, and not the standard 22 pin LIF ones.

No, it's not ZIF. I've got adapters for those. It's this stupid little LIF snap in connector. Looks like this picture: Except the one I have here isn't an SSD.

Just be careful not to overheat it. A hot air SMD rework station works best (rather than a heat gun or soldering iron). Just put some soldering flux across the 8 contacts so they heat faster than the other components around. Heat it gently until you can remove it without any force using...

Has anyone ever found an adapter for these 1.8" Macbook Air LIF hard drives? Or at least knows the pinout to build a SATA connection? I know this has come up in other threads, but I never paid that much attention before.

I'm relatively certain that the 8 pin chip labeled IC602 is the ROM you need to transfer. I've circled it in the picture below. Perhaps someone else can confirm this as well....

Actually I get the sense that a lot of people on this forum really like your software. Despite the occasional reference to it as "USFExploder".

No, the translator regeneration worked perfectly so I didn't have to try anything else.

That "G" number I mentioned is on the other side. It's not on a sticker but rather is printed right in the circuitry in blue. Possibly on USB models it doesn't start with the letter G. I'll have to check one when I get into the lab. Can you provide a closeup shot of just the one PCB so I can...

I do have to say, all this bad weather is great for business. I'm absolutely swamped right now. Haven't had a free channel on my PC-3000 in weeks, got a stack of jobs I haven't started yet, a few I haven't quoted yet, and three in the clean hood waiting for me to do head swaps. This keeps up...

When matching a Toshiba PCB you have to match the full model number, as well as the number printed in blue on the PCB which usually starts with the letter G. Then you have to transfer the ROM chip which has the configuration pages. Can you post here a picture of the PCB board so we can point...

Given how competitive data recovery is I know a lot of us have been forced to become SEO guru's as well as data recovery pros. I know I'm constantly on the prowl for places to drop the occasional link to a page for SEO. So I just thought I'd share some of the places I've been able to get good...

That's hilarious because when I first did that, they called me a SPAMMER and stripped my signature. Though I later put it back in.

OK, this is the stuff that drives me crazy about a lot of forums. Anandtech is supposed to be a tech forum, which I constantly get flagged for "spamming" when all I'm doing is trying to help people who are hopelessly lost with their data recovery issues. Now I get a 3 day ban for this post...

Never seen snow! That's so sad. If you want you can come here and shovel mine so you get the full experience.

Actually I take that back. I don't think it can, must have been a post somewhere that I misread. Though I have heard of someone who could do this...

Supposedly F.L.A.M.E. can do it. You'd have to ask Luca (aka irs) about this one since he's the only one I know that has the tool right now.

Section 10 of this article seems to have some clues: http://25zbkz3k00wn2tp5092n6di7b5k.wpen ... nswers.pdf Looks like it starts as a virus capable of sending vendor specific ATA commands to different drives where it can implant its self.

Some of you may have read this article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/ ... ce=twitter In which Kaspersky claims to have identified hidden SA code in common hard drives used to gain remote access to computers. So here's my thought, let's make this into a business opportunity. I know a...

We should all keep tweeting, facebook sharing, and +1ing this page until it's the number one picture when people search that phrase. :D

Hahaha. Now when you Google Image Search "Seagate's New Logo" this comes up:

So this forum is now incorporated with Tapatalk (as mentioned already in another thread). The name of the forum in the Tapatalk directory if you already have the app installed is "Data Recovery Forum". This will allow you to get push notifications of topics you are following.

OK, I added the necessary code to the forum database so it now can be used in Tapatalk. New users who browse to the forum on a mobile device will now be prompted to install the app (should only pop up once). This is my first post from within the app! So I know it works. If anyone has any...

Yeah, we're getting pounded here just about as bad as Boston.

I'm just thinking that some users might want push notifications of topics they are actively involved in. Might improve the response rates so it's only a few minutes between people responding, instead of a few hours.

This is a really strange case... all the file starts appear to be where they should be, but the sizes are all set to 16Kb rendering them all useless. It's like it was a chkdisk process gone wrong or something. Though the customer swears it was a virus. I can find all the files in RAW it...

Oh yes, forgot to mention that... post edited.

Yeah, I don't care for that kind of heat much either. I really don't mind the cold, but this snow just won't stop. It's snowing here again today for crying out loud! Enough is enough.

I'm considering releasing a mobile app version of the forum, perhaps using Tapatalk plugin. That way you can get push notifications of threads you follow, etc. Is this something anyone would be interested in? Opposed to for any reason?

I'm happy to announce that Elena has made available a full unlimited trial of the software that will work until June for all of our forum members. You can download it here: http://www.reclaime-pro.com/data-medics.aspx And please do post your feedback and suggestions regarding the software here...

Anyone ever seen this before. It seems that a virus went and adjusted all the file sizes in the file table to be the same exact size: And do you know of an easy way to fix it without manually setting the values or having to resort to RAW recovery?

Just had two more show up this morning. One was broken in half (though i still could have done it) but they declined the $450 quote, and the other is just a logical recovery.

Saw a new error message that I hadn't seen before today. Had a Seagate ST9750420AS come in that properly shows model, serial, FW, but no capacity. All system resources backed up without any major issues (couple read errors on head 1 - no biggie). But I noticed the error: Media Cache...

Won't be cheap to buy though, so hopefully we won't see too many: http://www.eweek.com/blogs/storage-stat ... drive.html

Looks like these will be Toshiba Branded: So it might be more than just a novelty item only a few people buy.

When requesting firmware or Ldr's please first check the firmware server. If it isn't there, then post a request and be sure to provide the following information: 1. Full model of drive (Including after the dash) 2. Consolidated ROM version 3. Drive Family 4. System you are using (PC-3000...

Is anyone else here sick of the snow? We've had about a foot a week show up for the last month. My back hurts from shoveling, and I'm flat out of places to put the stuff. Looks like we're in for another storm this upcoming weekend too. :evil:

Looks like Seagate is finally getting serious about getting into the SSD market. http://www.maximumpc.com/micron_and_sea ... space_2015 I wonder what new and creative ways to fail they'll come up with. My guess, exploding SSDs. :lol:

Yep, the three clones process is standard practice here too.

I think this is one that will vary by country. Here I think standard practice is that the MD5 hash of the copy needs to match the original (which generally is expected to be write blocked). So changing any bits would throw that off. However if you did the AA BB adjustment while working and...

If you write smaller ROM you just have to add 256 Kb worth of zeros at the end of the ROM image file. I've done it before and it worked beautifully.

Are you able to read the ROM from the original PCB through terminal or boot ROM? It could be that it's not spinning because of a shorted read/write head. If you place a piece of paper between the PCB and HDA you should be able to read ROM through terminal.

Or if you just check the box "Modify MBR" when creating the task in DE, it does that automatically.

Good to know that. I had heard your name mentioned once regarding rebuilding lost Seagate ROM. Now I know why.

IRS, consider me impressed!!! That is by far the most informative post on this subject ever. Thank you so much, you are awesome.

Not to try and insinuate anything here, but one of the first screens reminds me too much of the HDD doctor interface. Does it seem at all like they recycled some of that software when they put this together?

Yes Ace DE has the ability to mount the task, and will clone the read sectors at the same time as you access them.

Hi, yes the drive is otherwise working fine. No translator issues or anything like that. It's only a few areas that have some clusters of ECC issues. It seems that even PC-3000 is reading them fairly well (definitely not just junk data). But I did spot some English words in a few sectors...

Cool. If it sweetens the deal, I'll also post a permanent article about it on my homepage in the articles section. Two months is all I'd really need to do a thorough evaluation, so even just a temporary license key would work.

If you're looking to have any others beta test it, I'd certainly be willing and I'll do a detailed write up on this forum.

Nice analogy Luke. I realize what I said was perhaps a hyperbole, but to get good amount of data recovery work you have to be viewed as a specialist. Sure you may get some people just looking for their family photos back who will go to the local repair shop. But, businesses and people who...

Certainly. Thanks!

The old link, in the other post still should work. I just iframed it in this post. The direct server link is still: http://www.file-medics.com Certain browsers may take issue because the server forces SSL but the forum isn't encrypted. Firefox doesn't seem to care though, and Chrome just...

User Name: firmware Password: Contact Admin Both username and pass are case sensitive. https://www.file-medics.com If you have problems viewing it, you can use the direct link: https://www.file-medics.com

So I've got a nice old classic 40GB Maxtor drive that ID's and reads fairly well in DE but is getting quite a few ECC error sectors. I know DDI (which I don't have currently) has a feature to read such sectors multiple times and build a composite sector. Have you guys ever found this feature...

Yeah, it is funny how people equate the price of the media and the cost of recovery. Like there is any relationship between the two. You sometimes have to explain to them that they aren't paying the cost of a mass produced Chinese product now, they are paying for someone in a developed nation...

Yeah, it was fully wiped and passed right before it was used. Which is what annoys me the most. Must have failed during the two solid days of imaging to it.

I charged $400 for this one. Which is close to $500 CAD. But the fact is I don't really want to be doing a lot of thumb drives. So I quote high on purpose, to weed out the people who aren't really serious about getting their data back. Personally I'd rather just work on hard drives.

I am a licensed electrician you know, so I'm used to working with big wire.

Believe it or not, I use nothing but an actual magnifying glass for these. But then my vision is still 20/20 so far. For even smaller stuff I use a cheap USB microscope.

Yeah, that's actually the approach I already took. I told him I'm not optimistic about it, but he wants to try anyway. There is quite a bit of space between the platters, so I could inspect all but the underside of the bottom one. I haven't checked the heads under the microscope yet, but...

Usually yes, but all 4 contact points were ripped out of the PCB and it took a bit to figure out where the positive power channel could be connected since the trace went under. Then even when it was right it still wasn't working until I switched to higher guage wire (not sure why, but it...

Took about 3 hours of struggling with it but I finally got the last thumb drive on my bench to read. Hopefully the coming weeks bring more hard drives instead. I'm getting sick of breathing in solder smoke. :o

Not if it's full formatted. If it's quick formatted, then it can be recovered in RAW.

I don't know, I don't actually use DDI. I do know that you need a technician license of R-Studio, and the network add on. So I assume that it does interface with DRE. Perhaps Luke could weigh in, I know he uses it that way.

Do you have R-Studio linked with DeepSpar? If so it should be easy enough to copy just the good files and not the bad ones. Nice thing about mp3's is they are fairly tolerant to a bad sector or two. Sometimes they still play just fine, or just have a slight hiccup.

Personally I don't know that there is an acceptable number or percentage every case is different. I always just aim to get as much as possible, and then let them decide to take or leave it. You can't help bad sectors, or fix them for that matter. What I do is put all the good files in one...

ARRRRGGGGGG!!!! I just hate when I get bad sectors in one of my target drives after a difficult clone. This 2TB was wiped and passed right before being used, and now after cloning in Data Extractor, R-Studio gets stuck at the 14GB mark every time I try to scan the clone. I'm gonna have to...

I like my little cloner/wiper because it gets them off my workstations and can handle it all completely disconnected from a computer. Its also handy when logical recoveries come in because it can clone a healthy drive at speeds up to 6GB/min. I'm actually considering buying a couple more of...

It's a lot cheaper on this website: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

I use this: http://www.startech.com/HDD/Duplicators ... ATDUP11IMG It can zero fill two drives at the same time, and can clone good drives at UDMA 7. Or you can use ddrescue to do it I know too. Another free option is Active Killdisk, which can zero fill even in the demo version.

What do you guys think... I've got a 500GB WD SPider family drive model WD5000AACS-00ZUB0. It clicks, somewhat randomly (not a real steady click) and eventually spins down. Inside the platters look good from what I can see, the heads all look fine (even took them out and inspected). However I...

I just pretend I didn't see the crap and give it back to them. Maybe it'll cue the parents in to what their kids are doing. Or help a wife know what her husband is doing when she's not home. Either way, it's not your job to cover up for them.

Yep, I've learned that when I need to check some files, I try to be wise in my selection. A folder like "Christmas 2012" is usually safe to do a quick data check. In raw recoveries, I generally check a few higher resolution pictures as the filth usually comes from the Internet and has been...

Yes I'm quite sure that's what he means. If you Google the expression you'll see.

I just pretend I didn't see it. Not my business what data they are storing, and I try not to look too closely. Unless it's the illegal sort. Then you gotta report it.

OK, I've separated the General hard drive forum as Larry suggested. Please keep the suggestions coming.

I've honestly never used the GUI version. Do you know if it's still GNU ddrescue under the hood? I had seen a previous one but it was using dd instead.

That's not a bad idea, breaking down by brand. Any other thoughts?

This is a subject that comes up often on the various forums, so I figure I'll just create a tutorial about it and when the subject arises we can just point people here. Introduction: When a hard drive is known, or assumed, to have bad sectors the first thing that you should ever do before...

In an effort to streamline the forum and make it less cluttered, I've made several of the forums into sub-forums of other main categories. For example the PC-3000, Deepspar, & Atola sections are now sub categories of the Data Recovery Tools forum. I've also added some sections such as new sub...

I just don't get why you'd want to advertise something you actually can't do. If Sandforce uses encryption no one has beaten, why would you even want those showing up.

What's even funnier is that when I +1'ed it, google picked the trashbin picture to use for the post.

I had to Google +1 that comment Larry. :lol:

Did you guys notice that Seagate now has a new logo? I'm guessing the old one reminded too many people of the rings in their platters. :lol:

Anyone ever get to open one of these and see what's inside? I'm just happy they are being sold in Britain and not here: http://www.istorage-uk.com/diskashurdt.php

Maybe Ace Data Group will notice thus thread and come on here to defend themselves if its true. But I have my doubts.

Stumbled upon this article claiming that Ace Data Group in Texas, USA has partnered with Sandforce to be able to recover data from their encrypted SSDs. http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2015/02 ... based-ssds I wonder if it's true or just some preemptive SPAM advertising hoping it'll come true...

Was a total PITA to figure it out. Seems no one else has yet to figure this out on phpBB 3.1.2 and newer.

I just wanted to point out that I've added google +1 buttons to all the posts. So if you like a certain thread or post, be sure to +1 somewhere on the page. This will help others find the thread, and supports the overall growth of this forum. Thanks Guys!

Oh yeah, and don't forget to purge the cache in the admin panel after you upload the files back to your site.

I know this has nothing to do with data recovery, but since I seem to be the first person to have figured this out I though I'd share. Might be good to generate some traffic to the forum. :D So as you see all the posts now have a Google +1 button. Here's how I did it: 1. In the folder...

Holy cow!!! I got it to actually work.... seems I'm the first person to sucessfully do this in phpbb 3.1.2 Guess I'm not so dumb afterall.

I'm trying to add Google +1 buttons to each post, so if you like some post or thread, you can help others find it. Hoping to stick it next to the buttons up top or under the contact button on the right hand side. But it's not easy given that I'm using a version of phpbb that's so new no one...

I'm just testing some adjustments to the forum layout here, so just ignore all the useless posts.

It's been less than one month since this forum launched and we just hit the 100 member mark. I realize half of these accounts are likely just spammers but it's still a great start. Many thanks to all of you for joining, and to our moderators for diligently keeping out the spam. If you know...

They said they will provide a trial to all users of this forum that want it but can't do that until later this month. I'll keep you posted if I hear back.

Yes, allowing someone well known (perhaps even a scheptic like Luke) to try out your tool for 1-2 months and review it will definitely go a long way toward building credibility. You'll notice that's the approach ReclaiMe Pro software took. They gave a few of us a 60 day license key so we could...

No it's definitely scratched. If you look closely you can see the actual slider is bent out to the right.

Yeah, I suppose I could just extract the modules from tracks in PC-3000. Just that I'm not quite sure where they were saved, so it'll take a few tries. I was hoping to just search the right track file in hex for the serial number I want.

I'm loving this feature. It's great when I just want to read the ROM but I don't want to spin up the drive. So far it's worked on every WD drive I've tried, even the bricked PCB's I've been putting back into use.

Does anyone know how to figure out what ABA ranges are in which tracks on a drive? Here's my situation. I've got a WD Europa drive that I know for a fact that I managed to read the tracks and modules. The modules are in the profile folder, but the tracks are strangely missing. I'm guessing...

Anyway, that issue aside. Can you perhaps post on here some screenshots of the program in use so we can get some actual idea of it's functions??? Seems like the company is shrouded in mystery which doesn't give any of us that warm fuzzy feeling of making a secure $10,000 purchase.

I just wonder how in good conscience you can sell SD tools when you know what real tools should work like. The first and last set I sold was the set I bought for myself and pitched onto ebay. (at least the person who bought them got a deal and won't lose much when they throw em back on there)

You gotta see this article: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/12 ... -their-way Pay special attention to the first picture. I think it gives a more accurate description of where their technology is going than the article does.

Explains the RVS technology.

Actually on further investigation I see they've been using this on their enterprise drives since 2Tb (which never seem to fail). Its a set of vibration sensors mounted on the PCB used to anticipate vibration. So I wonder then if these are filled with helium as previously announced

So I see the HGST has finally caught back up to the others with a 6Tb model. http://www.storagereview.com/hgst_desks ... hdd_review I notice they mentioned a new technology called RVS (Rotational Vibration Safeguard). I wonder if they opted to do this instead of taking the helium route for now...

Found this article interesting as well: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-dri ... it-matter/ Yet further statistical proof that HDD coolers are a complete waste of money.

Yes I think a few of us are wondering about this. I also find it strange that the only user on hddguru forum who claimed to have used your tool is a user named IRS. This username also appeared here the same day as this post, making me wonder if its actually someone from your company.

Nice to have another official representative join our forum. I've lifted your restrictions so you can post announcements, stickies, etc. on this forum in the EDR section. I don't think many of us have ever tried your tools, so the more you can tell us about its features the better.

That is true. But let's face it, most PC repair shops aren't going to buy a tech license when the network edition does everything except interface with DDI (how they force real data recovery guys to buy it). I just think that perhaps they should have a few different versions at different...

There we go, I added a word censor to replace that other word we can't type now with "thumbdrives"

I've tried changing the thread title to correct the misspelling but the replies keep reverting even after I edit them. Sorry, but the forum will do well for the keyword "tumbdrives" now. LOL

That's why I'm just gonna hire you to remotely handle that stuff when the need arises. Then I can go play golf and still be making money off your sweat labor. :D

Pretty sure these stats are based on percentages, not just raw numbers. And it's this companies own inventory of 25,000 drives all being used for backups, so the usage is the same. I'll be honest, here we are seeing a ton of failed Seagate drives. And they suck to work on as we all know.

So recently I was contacted by Elena at ReclaiMe data recovery software to try out their new Pro version. So here's what I found: Right off I liked the feature that you can tell it what drives and drive types to scan before it goes and checks all the volumes on the system. This can be handy...

This is the most useful thing I've found online so far:

Edit: I've consolidated the list of Seagate Terminal Commands collected and put it into this sticky thread: viewtopic.php?f=26&t=901 <<<<<<--------------------- Click Here! So Please Visit There Instead

Looks like the 3Tb ones (most likely DM I'd guess) are the real culprits.

I found this article: http://lifehacker.com/the-most-and-leas ... 1505797966 Which had an interesting statistic of hard drive failure rates according to BackBlaze I'd say this is a pretty accurate portrayal of Seagate's quality these days.

So I've got a DVD-RW disk here that I was initially told wasn't working due to a 'region' issue and they just wanted it re-burned so they can play it in their DVD player. However on further investigation it seems that nothing will recognize the DVD, not Windows/Linux, not any data recovery...

Now I get a guy who tells the front desk "there's some really bad stuff on here, so don't look at it whatever you do!" when he drops off a hard drive. Why do people say stupid stuff like this. Now I dare not look at the data for fear of accidentally seeing someone's gay porn or home pics of...

Hmm... this is strange. The disk isn't being recognized in any drive I put it into. Keeps showing 0 capacity. Anyone know if region code could do this? I really haven't dealt with this international DVD stuff much.

60Mb/sec with MRT? Didn't think it was so fast.

It's an older friend, who's not into computers. He just really wants to be able to watch in on his TV which only has an older DVD player.

$45 bucks! Yikes. Its just a deep sea fishing video shot (and burned to DVD) in Japan. Any less expensive options anyone's tried?

+1 that. If you can read through terminal you should be able to scan the file system MFT and can at least nab some key files. Unless of course there's bad sectors there, or if the drive capacity is still wrong (can you access higher LBA's?)

Not that it's data recovery related or anything, but can anyone recommend a good program to do this? Free would be nice, but even if it costs a few bucks is OK too. Just a little favor for a friend I'm trying to do.

The last time I regenerated a Seagate translator there were quite a few sequential bad sectors. Then it would jump ahead quite a ways and hit another area of sequential bad sectors. But after it finally finished the data was perfectly fine. I'd just say make sure you have everything backed up...

I think you just gotta let the forking finish. Last time I did one it ran overnight to get through a bad area, but then worked perfectly the next day.

Not that I'm even considering buying one, but just out of curiosity. Has anyone actually tried these new tablet integrated looking data recovery tools from Salvation Data?

Didn't feel like spending the time to set up a SATA board .

Yeah, even I tried fixing that link but it won't take. Seems phpBB won't accept the e with the diacritic as a valid character in a link. If you copy/paste the whole link it works.

With this one I just spun the platters gently and moved it back to the ramp. But it didn't have far to go.

It was over 70% and still going strong when I finally left the office. Even if it craps out now, it's enough data to get paid. Chicken = Counted :)

I just had the most amazing thing happen today. Had a WD Passport drive come in with heads stuck to the platters. I freed it up which went very smoothly. Plugged it in via USB (just to see what it would do) and the the thing just outright works! I'm about 20% cloned now just through the USB...

All I do is post links to articles on my site there. Then when they get +1'ed it counts toward that article on my site giving it a small boost. But a lot of small boosts to different pages can have a big effect on overall SEO.

Agreed, I don't handle warranty issues for customers. Far too time consuming to deal with. Even for my own drives, I never collect warranty because I never buy new (except in my NAS). I usually just buy externals (such as My Books, Free Agent, etc.) and remove the drives, list them on ebay as...

Yes it was. And to think, a couple months ago I was looking into buying a programmer so I could manually re-write the code to the ROMs of these bricked PCBs. Glad I waited.

So I've been reading up and it seems that getting a good number of +1's on Google Plus is really good for SEO. Why don't we all post our G+ page links here and whenever we are board we can spend a minute giving each other some SEO props. I'll start it off. Here's my G+ page...

Ok, I've just confirmed that it also works on the 2.5" models. Same two center pins. Here's a photo of the connection: I'm quite surprised how quickly it reads/writes the ROM code. Much faster than Seagate boot ROM utility. Un-bricked two PCB's already today using it. This is great, now...

Thought this benchmark on Tom's Hardware was interesting: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb ... 037-2.html Looks like the 3.1 revision will give quite a nice speed boost. Might actually make it as fast as direct SATA connection for target drives when imaging.

Fixing my first bricked PCB to restore an old donor right now and loving this new feature. I'm gonna try on a 2.5" drive after. Just got to figure out the pin configuration.

I just know that sometimes you need to get several dumps of the same chip to get a good read, so I thought it might be more convenient to have direct USB control of the reader. Uploading the dumps would work too. I'm really just thinking about doing this as a temporary option to handle them in...

It's well over 99% total. Just that all the bad sectors are in the beginning. The reference to the Root folder is completely lost to unreadable sectors.

Right now I'm attempting to analyze it using Data Extractor to see what it can piece back together. But if I have to scan the whole drive, I'd rather just do it once rather than two or three times.

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. Fortunately they are only looking to get their documents folder back. So if I can at least find that folder in tact, I'll be happy.

What have you guys found to be the best software for handling Ext 4 file systems with a ton (and I mean a ton) of bad sectors in the file table? My gut is to just go with R-Studio, but I've never had one this filesystem with so many bad sectors at the beginning. Strangely the latter 99% of the...

I would guess its the day right before "data backup" day. Otherwise it wouldn't be necessary. LOL!

Anyone else hear about this? http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/ha ... ne-n295196 Apparently they've created a holiday in honor of data privacy. Guess there's a holiday for just about everything these days. Which day is "Data Recovery" day?

I've never owned any Atola products and I'm curious. Already owning PC-3000 is there any useful purpose to buy Atola? As in, does it offer any features Ace doesn't already have? I just can't see how they justify the cost otherwise.

I've had good success with them. Right now I just have the Seagate set. I know it's not as refined a tool as HDDSurgery is, but still works at lifting the heads and safely pulling over the platters without touching. I was quite surprised how well they hold in place. Only thing I'm not...

Went to er-tools.com the other day and was greeted by this message on their homepage I hope they get more soon. I actually liked these tools, and the price was fair.

I've added a section which only global moderators will have access to. If you notice a user who isn't an outright spammer, but might need to be banned/restricted please post a discussion of their behavior there. Thanks Guys!

Ok, I think I figured out what's going on. When I set the new users group permissions, I set "post without moderator permission" to "no" however it needed to be set to "never" or they can still get the posts through somehow. Hopefully this resolves it finally.

Yeah, it looks like somehow the "new users" feature which forces their posts to be moderated is turned off again. I know I had enabled it, but then the other day it was off, so I turned it back on. Now it's turned off again (I just tested it too). We'll eventually figure this out.

They must be using an exploit. Which surprises me, it's the latest version of PHPBB. These user accounts are brand new, and shouldn't be able to post without moderation.

Cool, thanks for the actual picture. Is it the same middle pins for 2.5" models?

So I decided to add a specific section for this instead of just including it in the off topic section. Given how competitive this business can be (especially online) it's a topic I expect to come up often.

Something strange has been going on with Tom's hardware. Over the last 4 days dozens of posts of mine answering questions were all marked as "best answer". One night within an hour about 8 of my posts were selected. I think I have a secret admirer or something. That or someone is trying to...

Facebook.... I don't know. Tried that and didn't see much results. Google adwords work, but the effect is only good until the money runs out (which doesn't take long). Personally I've found that the biggest things that get the data recovery work is: 1. Mailing out a small pack of brochures...

Hey Guys. I've just added a new logo for my re-sellers/partners to put on their homepage. What do you think? You can see it on one of my partner's site here: http://www.tech911inc.com (I adjusted the color to match his site better which I'll do for all my partners)

Oh yeah. I've been amazed how many parts drives I've bought on ebay that were full of tax paperwork, banking info, passwords and everything found with nothing more than a 1min scan with R-Studio. Fortunate for them we just break the drive and use the parts, but could just as easily been bought...

My apologies, looks like I had accidentally tweaked a setting that allowed new users to post without any moderator approval. Also looks like DP is back at it, this time posting pictures of naked boys (though it might not have been him this time since there was no angry threats about shutting...

Due to some spammers slipping through, I've had to adjust to have the first three posts of new users approved by a moderator. Hopefully this will prevent anymore from slipping through. Moderators please be careful what new posts you approve and thank you for keeping any eye when I'm offline...

Just a though. Some of us, myself included, haven't had the time/resources ($$$) to invest heavily into flash recovery yet. However, when the occasion arises would like to be able to handle it "in-house" rather than mailing out. So my concept is, were I to purchase a USB NAND reader such as...

Just some Russian lingerie site links being spammed on here. I don't mind a little spam if it's somehow related to data recovery, but the sexy panties is a bit of a stretch. Unless that's how some of you guys like to work on hard drives... (Luke you dirty boy)

It's just strange to me that using the exact same PCB (which works on both drives) the NV-RAM works when physically transferred but not when digitally transferred. The only explanation is the actual NV-RAM chip is somehow different and makes it in-compatible. It's making me think that you...

Yes, welcome. We are very glad to have you join us. The more professionals we have here the better the discussions will be.

Wow, there's a mental image I'd hoped to never see.

Alright, who approved this post?

Is that why everyone censors out the serial number of their hard drive when the post pictures of it online.

I did try that, but it didn't seem to work no matter what combination I tried. Perhaps my connection wasn't good when I had it right.

Cool, never would have thought to try that one. I'm assuming that you just used the grn/blk tail coming off of it to connect to get terminal.

Just want to say a big thank you to Simon for uploading so many HDD resources for DDL and MRT. I've created separate sections on the server for those file types. If anyone else would like to share their resources please feel free to do so.

I'm not sure I have a Maxtor adapter. I know I use the Samsung one to get terminal access on Passports. But it isn't working on these 2.5" SATA drives. I've just got a stack of old PCB's I'd love to be able to re-use if I could just write a new ROM code to them. Unless you're referring to...

Has anyone successfully used this feature? I'm assuming it's similar to the Seagate ROM boot code utility for writing the ROM and possibly could be used to fix bricked PCB's with bad ROM codes. But I can't seem to get it to work ever. Has anyone figured this feature out yet?

Perhaps. I even tried writing a half dozen other NV-RAM codes from the same model to it, and none would spin up except the one from the original patient drive.

Update: I managed to find the original NV-RAM. Soldered it back on, and it's working like a charm. How strange that the other NV-RAM chip worked to read the original drive with this PCB, but wouldn't even try to spin up with the other NV-RAM code. I guess you can't assume that these chips...

Edit: I actually just realized that it's not even spinning up after I write the original NV-RAM to it. So it must be that I either didn't get a good read (either time) or that the code is somehow not compatible with the NV-RAM chip. How strange.

Ran into a strange event today that doesn't make sense to me. Had a HTS547575A9E384 come in that had a burnt out PCB. I wasn't able to read the NV-RAM through the utility as it wouldn't come ready, so I physically moved the chip. The recovery went perfectly, read every last sector. Now I...

+1 that. If you beat Ace Lab to that feature you'll make a believer out of me.

By the way, welcome Jono! I'm happy you accepted the invite. Having your expertise here will really round out the group of experts here.

I don't know if it would have met the legal definition of CP as it was pictures of naked kids at the beach. But close enough to really piss everyone here off. If I had a legitimate IP address to go on I would still report it, but it was posted through a tor proxy which to my knowledge even the...

I think to a large extent it comes down to identifying yourself as a specialty service and getting away from the PC repair shop image. Only then will you actually be able to get enough data recovery work to make the investment worthwhile. If your main business is fixing computers and you just...

It can fly? :o I guess I haven't found that menu yet.

I've decided to make a sticky of this topic. Whenever a file type arises that R-Studio can't find in RAW scan and I build a custom search I'll post it here. If you'd like to contribute yours just post the xml file below and I'll add them into the archive. And if you need a custom search built...

If you can afford it PC-3000 is the gold standard. I think that's been pretty well established in every discussion I've ever read. But MRT is much more affordable and appears to have many of the same basic features. It's when you get to the more advanced cases that PC-3000 shines with some...

Thanks for accepting my invite to join our forum. I think you'll find the level of expertise here to be well above what you'll find on most forums. These guys are pretty much all professionals. Do you have any tools for working on hard drive firmware such as PC-3000 or MRT PRO?

Nice to have some official representation on here. Welcome!

OK, thanks to someone posting porn there I've had to change the password. PM me if you want it.

Yes, we should all chime in. The registration is wide open and you can post right away. Let's give him some fun filtering all the spam for a change.

Thanks to the steady supply of abhorrent pornography posted by the HDDGURU user DataPlanet, I've had to implement the new user feature. From now on everyone's first post will need to be approved by a moderator. Moderators, please be careful who's posts you approve. Check their user name and...

Oh, resources are copying to my Synology right now. Should finish within a couple hours. Access instructions are on this sticky thread: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=28

The firmware server is down for now, as I just sold all my lab equipment, including the NAS that was hosting all my firmware resources. I'll put it back up somewhere else in the near future. I'm just busy with other things right now.

It can be installed, but it's not a one click install. Takes a lot of work in terminal to set it up. I think I might just do the synology login thing. I already have it iframed into a page on my site. Just need to create a shared account with designated upload folders.

It's only $3000 USD for the whole system including the data extractor part. Definitely looks like they ripped off PC-3000's look, but a familiar interface will actually make it more useful. Here's the link where they show the price: http://en.mrtlab.com/mrt-pro I invited their sales team to...

Yeah, I'm hoping after a day or two he gets board and just moves on and it won't come to that. I'd rather not over moderate the forum and discourage new members from joining.

I just banned a couple more user accounts created by this idiot. At least this time I saw the account before he had time to post anything.

How well does it work for just the basic stuff. ROM transfers, adjust headmap in RAM, SA backup, WD slow resp. fix, imaging around bad sectors, etc. when compared? That's all I'm really looking for in a second workstation.

I'm wondering if someone (maybe Brian) who actually owns MRT along with other tools like PC-3000 could give a basic breakdown of the good and bad of MRT compared with other tools. I know it's not as good as PC-3000, but at the price I've considered getting one as just a fallback when both...

Yeah, unless they are Salvation Data tools. :shock: I know as SSDs grow in popularity I'll have to get more into flash recovery, but for now I'm with PClab. Its just easier to outsource it and stick to the hard drives. Besides, by the time that SSD recoveries are our main business better...

Not a bad idea. I'll have to consider that. Thou I'd imagine the size will grow quickly if a lot of users upload, and not everyone will want to download the whole nut. Possibly I'll just create an account on my Synology for approved users to have access to download whatever resources they want.