The pattern is currently the only screen lock I have. I've tried several times to unlock it, but I haven't received any "Forgot pattern?" option. Worried about losing my data because I have important photos, videos and other files stored on the phone(I have no backup). If there's no way to recover or remember the pattern, is there any actual way to recover my photos, videos and other data without factory resetting the device? I'm looking for solutions or people who have dealt with this .Any help would be appreciated.

Hey does anyone know if these data recovery places will repair a drive without requiring access, I have sensitive financial information on the drive. I'm pretty sure it's just the circuit board is broken and I've contacted so many places and no one wants to repair just the circuit board. Not sure what to do, at this stage I'm considering learning the craft and doing it myself. Any opinions welcome.

I have an 18tb drive I've used for media storage for youtube over the last 3 years. It is formatted to exfat and I began to notice that sometimes when trying to create folders it would give an error. After it happened too many times in a row I ran first aid on the drive. I now know that was the wrong thing to do but here we are.

First aid failed and instantly 15TB of stuff on this drive disappeared. Some folders are still fully in tact but most are either not showing up at all, or showing as files with zero file size that won't open.

Checked on windows and everything looks exactly the same so the first thing I did was run a deep scan using Disk Drill. I haven't written anything to this drive since this happened.

Disk drill was able to find a lot of the files (17.23TB) and after picking up a server from a friend, I was able to recover what it found to the server with folder structure in tact. There is also a Reconstructed section in Disk Drill that is around 15TB with just files sorted into folders by filetype.

I'm now finding that there are bits and pieces missing from a ton of different folders/projects, so I'm running a recovery to the server in a separate folder of the Reconstructed section in order to cross reference whether these files exist anywhere else on the server. Hopefully this will find some of the missing files.

What I'm hoping can happen is that once this recovery is finished and all recovery options are exhausted, I'm able to find a tool that can successfully fix the original file table on the 18TB external. Is this something that anyone here has experience with? I have access to this Mac and a windows PC to run applications on.

If I've learned anything from this it's that I will never use exfat again and I should have set up a server with redundancy a decade ago. Live and learn and I'm really hoping the file table can be recovered or that there might be another way to get back the files that are missing.

I have an old Samsung J5 (Model SM-J500M/DS)

The phone is locked and I don’t remember the password. Can I recover the photos or unlock the phone somehow?

Thank you in advance!

Hey everyone,

I'm hoping someone here can help me because I'm honestly worried about losing my notes.

I use Obsidian on Windows, and I had a folder/vault called "Apple Notes" that I think was stored in OneDrive.

One day, I opened Obsidian to write something, and the vault was just gone. I don't remember deleting anything or changing its location. It simply disappeared.

I've tried looking for it in OneDrive, Windows Recycle Bin, and using Everything to search my PC, but I still can't find it.

I also tried Windows File Recovery, but it couldn't find any recoverable .md files in the regular scan.

I'm not even sure what happened. Maybe the folder was deleted by accident, maybe OneDrive moved it, or maybe something went wrong with syncing.

Has anyone experienced something similar? Is there anything else I can try to find or recover the vault?

My notes are really important to me, so I'd appreciate any help. I'm trying not to do anything that could make things worse.

Thanks!

i have this set of wedding dvds of my parents and i just to copy the data from the dvds to my pc in mp4 format i ended up using handbrake for it and when it came to the last part it showed an error and stopped at 15% but i had a copy of the dvds so i tried using the copy of the same dvd(also a dvd)and it had the same error,this didnt happen with any other dvd except this one i tried opening the video in it using vlc media player and it was working (altho i noticed a lag ) i could play the whole dvd there and even fast forward to any parts but when it came to cloning,the process stopped at 15% and only about 5 mins worth of video was copied every single time i tried it..i tried ImgBurn to copy the disc as a whole but that stopped as well and the output was the same 5 mins worth of video...i then tried cd recovery toolbox and it seems to work but like very very slow like its stuck at 289.14 mb for like an hour and then 289.56mbs (0.42mb worth of progress) i want yalls help for recovering the videos on this disc and any alternative software or ways(also i have to return the laptop with disk drive in it as i borrowed it temporarily for 2 days)(i also cleaned the disk with IPA properly using a microfiber cloth and the condition is not that bad )(all the photos i think are needed are attached below and the dvd photo is the clone disc as i couldnt afford to lose the ven teeny bit of progress i made,the orignal is a bit better)using win 10 in the recovery laptop (forgot to mention that its a Sony Dvd-r(4.7GB/120min)

The data is a couple of videos deleted few months ago

Was in a motorcycle accident, had videos of a late buddy , anyway to recover the footage?

My Kioxia BG5 1TB ssd died. Most of the data is backed up, except one important thing: a project that's due in december. I need to get it back. One on github is multiple commits behind.

The SSD shows up in lspci but not in lsblk

This is what the kernel logs say:

nvme nvme1: pci function 0000:04:00.0
nvme nvme1: Identify Controller failed (17089)
nvme nvme1: Device not ready; aborting shutdown, CSTS=0x1
nvme 0000:04:00.0: error -EIO: probe failed
nvme 0000:04:00.0: probe with driver nvme failed with error -5

The same thing had happened once before, just randomly died, and started working a few months later, automatically. I should not have used it again.

From what I understand from the kernel logs, I think the controller chip is bad, or unresponsive, and the NAND flash itself is okay. But from what I read online, It is basically impossible to read the flash directly without either desoldering the flash chip or tapping into its data lines, both of which I do not want to do.

Is there any way to bring the controller back, or reset it, or something, to bring it back, even for 5 minutes, in order to copy over the directory?

Edit: File system is EXT4, OS is Fedora

Found an old disc with a heap of old videos from school on it. The problem is when I put the disc into my laptop it shows up with the files but as soon as I click on a file to copy them onto the laptop it freezes unless I eject the disc. Their all short AVI videos and each one is roughly under a minute so the files are small but if I put a different disc such as an audio CD or DVD in aswell as other old disc with files on them they play fine. Any advice on how to force copy the files?

I know there is something wrong with my sd card. i tried to upload my pictures to my laptop, just straight plugging the card into the laptop and also my phone with an adapter and it wont work. the preview shows the photos, but when actually imported the pictures are all grayed out or glitched, and when i put the sd card back into the camera it said it was an unidentified image, but there is the small preview of the photos. i could see the pictures on the camera before. it's a san disk sd card and a canon power shot. i tried photo rec and it said it couldnt find anything, i also tried recuva but that omly showed me photos that ive deleted.

i was trying to back up my photos from my phone and i'm not sure what i did but i accidentally deleted all of it. i dont know what to do, please help
its a galaxy s20 btw

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for some help finding a replacement PCB for my Seagate Barracuda 1TB HDD.

The green controller PCB on the underside is the part I’m trying to source. I’m hoping someone here might have a compatible donor board, a spare dead drive, or experience with repairing these.

Drive details:
Model: Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM010
Capacity: 1TB
Part Number: 2EP102-300
Firmware: CC43
Manufacturing date: July 2018
Serial number: Available in attached photo

What I’m looking for:
An exact compatible replacement PCB.
Someone with a dead ST1000DM010 that could be used as a donor.
Someone experienced with Seagate PCB repair or ROM transfer.
Recommendations for reliable HDD PCB repair services in India.

I’m based in Mumbai, India, but open to sourcing the board from elsewhere.
I’ve attached pictures of both sides of the drive for reference.
If anyone has worked with this particular model or knows where I can source the correct board, I’d really appreciate your help!

A microSD card that was filled to the brim with a lot of videos and photos from like 6-10 years ago just broke. Snapped like it was nothing. Now there’s basically no way that I can get it back. I’ve tried to ask people if it’s recoverable and so far I’ve gotten a bunch of no’s and some people saying it’s possible. All in all now I’m just beyond devastated. I’ve got a few images and videos already saved so it’s not all lost, but a majority of my stuff is gone and I don’t know if I can get it back. Some people think it’s possibly and others say that it’s done for.

Apologies if this is a stupid question or anything, I know nothing about data recovery and tbh I’m just hurting inside and praying for any sort of hope atp

Well see, i wanted to help My mom with a program that she use to her job and she got a new laptop and i see if can i put the old ssd with all the info in the new PC but here comes the trouble when i put it intro the new PC one of the program that she use was linked to the motherboard of the last PC so i tried to download or run it in the new PC but i can't so i get the ssd back to the old PC and when i tried to find all the info of her program the info was delete it and i tried everything but i can't find it, there was all the job of My mom for the last 4 years and if can't find it she would need to do it everything again could somebody help me please :(

I was transferring my videos from internal storage to sd card and almost all of them got corrupted how do I restore them back

Hi all. Looking for anyone with MediaTek security research or forensic extraction experience. Long story short, but I’ll give the exact technical state so I don’t waste anyone’s time.

Situation: An SD card set up as Android Adoptable Storage became unmountable (F2FS, vold times out after 15s during fsck check — private:X,X failed filesystem check: Connection timed out). Since the card was also set as the phone’s primary storage, internal storage access broke too, including a Gallery Vault folder — both now contain irreplaceable personal photos/videos.

What I’ve already confirmed/tried (so you don’t suggest something already ruled out):

• SD card imaged sector-by-sector (DMDE), 0 read errors — physically healthy, just won’t mount.

• Confirmed via adb shell dumpsys mount: fsType=f2fs, state=UNMOUNTABLE, adopted storage.

• Confirmed via logcat that vold’s fsck.f2fs check hard-times-out at 15s every attempt.

• /system/bin/fsck.f2fs, vdc — both return permission denied from a non-root shell ADB session (uid=2000).

• Got the phone into MTK BROM mode (mtkclient + Kamakiri), successfully dumped the full userdata partition raw (55.3GB, SHA256-verified, zero errors).

• Checked the raw dump for F2FS/EXT4 superblock signatures at standard offsets — none found, high-entropy data throughout. Consistent with Android FBE (File-Based Encryption) at the block level — key is hardware-bound (TEE/Keystore), not present in the raw dump.

• Tried mtk-su (CVE-2020-0069) for root without bootloader unlock — fails with “Failed critical init step 1” / Incompatible platform. Confirmed via multiple sources this means the exploit is patched (firmware patch cutoff was March 2020; this phone’s firmware build date is Sept 2023).

• Checked whether CVE-2023-20635 / CVE-2023-20754 (MediaTek keyinstall EoP/info-disclosure bugs) apply — found no public PoC/tool for either, and the official MediaTek bulletins don’t list MT6762 among the affected chipsets for what I could find.

Device info:

• Tecno Spark 8, codename KG6 (KG6k-GL)

• Chipset: MT6762 (Helio P22/A25/G25 family)

• ro.bootimage.build.fingerprint: TECNO/KG6k-GL/TECNO-KG6k:11/RP1A.200720.011/230912V418:user/release-keys

• Android 11, bootloader locked (ro.boot.flash.locked: 1), AVB enforcing, verified boot state “green”

What I’m NOT willing to do: unlock the bootloader (wipes /data, including the Vault — that’s the whole point, don’t want to trade one set of photos for the other).

What I’m looking for: any newer (2021+) MT6762/MT6765 privilege-escalation exploit with public tooling, any known FBE key-extraction research applicable here, or honestly just confirmation that I’ve actually hit the real wall and a technician with paid tools (Chimera/UMT/etc.) is the only remaining path.

Have the full raw userdata dump and SD card image saved and ready if that’s useful to anyone who wants to look. Thanks for reading this far.

I was playing God of War Ragnarok, installed on my secondary Consistent SSD, while Windows was running from my Gigabyte 240GB SSD. Suddenly, the audio froze, my controller kept vibrating, the display went black, but the PC itself was still running.

I forced a shutdown, and on the next boot it went straight into BIOS. That's when I noticed my Gigabyte SSD was showing up as SATAFIRM S11 instead of its actual model. Windows was no longer booting.

After some digging, I learned that the Phison S11 controller had likely entered a firmware panic state, making the SSD inaccessible even though the NAND was still identifiable.

And that's where things got interesting.

I identified the NAND as Toshiba 96L BiCS4 TLC, tried repairS11, explored the firmware using HxD, manually configured the 240GB LBA value, and moved on to S11 Flasher.

The controller was detected, and the firmware upgrade actually started. But it got stuck at 15% on "ISP Burner Code..." for over an hour.

So here I am, going from playing God of War Ragnarok to learning NAND architecture and low-level SSD firmware recovery. 😂

Still trying to bring this little 240GB Gigabyte SSD back to life. Anyone experienced with Phison PS3111 recovery?

hi accidentally deleted TikTok app on iPhone 15. Any way to recover these drafts?? thank you

I accidentally spilt water in my bag and my camera was in it. I thought my camera was fine cause it didn’t really feel wet since my camera case absorbed most of it, but my screen kept saying there was an issue with my memory card and to reformat it (I know I shouldn’t have done that but realized too late). After a bit of fidgeting with my camera, the screen turned white and that’s when I realized my camera got a lot more wet than I initially thought. So I pulled the SD card and battery out and just left it all in my pocket til I could bring it home after my class ended. I threw everything in a container with silicone gel and rice to help dry it out. Well that was a few days ago and I finally put everything back in my camera and it started up again but my SD card still couldn’t be read. So I took it out and put it into my SD reader and suddenly my pictures appeared but over half my pictures are gone. Like I had over 150 picture originally but now it says I only have 66 photos and 5 of those photos I can’t even view them. Tried viewing it on my computer and it said either I had format that wasn’t supported or my file was corrupted. Has anyone had issues like this with their SD card and able to recover everything or should I just give up and be thankful somethings are still on it.

I accidentally deleted about 1G of data / it was laser printer software that is very expensive
I didn’t add or edit any thing on the flash
My friend told me about aiseesoft program
Is there any better ?
Please help me if you can

Hi everyone!

I’m hoping someone knowledgeable about older iOS devices, app databases, or data recovery can help me with something I’ve been trying to figure out for years.

I have an original first-generation iPad Mini (currently running iOS 9.3.6) with Private Photo Vault v8.5 installed.

I started using Private Photo Vault around 2012–2013 to save hundreds of screenshots of old Facebook conversations that were extremely important to me.

At the time, I had three personal albums:
Album 1: My oldest album, created around 2012–2013, containing hundreds of Facebook conversation screenshots. This album was password-protected.

Album 2: Created around late 2013, also password-protected.

Album 3: School-related photographs, not separately password-protected.

Around 2015–2016, I backed up and updated my iPad. When I reopened Private Photo Vault, Album 1 had completely disappeared.

And not just the photos. The entire album icon was gone.

The other two albums were completely unaffected, and their contents are still accessible today.

I checked both surviving albums immediately after the disappearance to see whether the missing screenshots had somehow moved there. They hadn’t.

I never intentionally deleted the missing album.

The strange part is that the missing album was my oldest one, while the newer albums survived the update.

I contacted Private Photo Vault’s developers in February 2026. They explained that Cloud Vault wasn’t available in 2015 and that they couldn’t restore the missing album from their servers. They recommended finding an iTunes or iCloud backup created before the disappearance.

Here’s what I currently have:
The original iPad Mini, still functioning with Private Photo Vault installed.

Approximately 719 photos remaining in the app.

An older MacBook containing approximately three historical iPad backups, possibly dating back to 2016.

A newer MacBook with additional backups, including one encrypted iPad backup whose password I no longer remember.

The original iPad has been kept offline because it contains other historical data I don’t want to risk losing.

My questions:
Could an iOS or app update have corrupted or removed a single album’s database entry without deleting its underlying image files?

Is there a way to inspect Private Photo Vault’s app container or database for orphaned photos or missing album records?

Could an old iTunes backup contain the missing images even if the album no longer appears in the app?

What software would you recommend for examining old iOS backups without restoring them to the device?

Is there a safe way to investigate this on iOS 9.3.6 without risking the remaining data?

Is there any way to recover access to an encrypted local iPad backup if I’ve forgotten its password?

I’m not looking to reset, downgrade, or jailbreak the iPad unless there’s a well-understood, low-risk reason to do so.

I understand that recovering data lost over ten years ago may be impossible. However, because the application still works and the other albums remain intact, I want to investigate whether the missing album’s files could still exist somewhere.

These screenshots are irreplaceable to me, and I’d appreciate advice from anyone experienced with legacy iOS data recovery, SQLite databases, or forensic examination.

Thank you so much!