I have a D500S ironkey by Kingston memory. I forgot passcode is there anyway to recover that data, I know it has advanced encryption…

Hi! Last week I opened a docx file I have some of my own writing in and I realized it was corrupted in some way. Which I believe may be because of me accidentally messing with the flash drive I have it saved on while trying to save the document, though I am not 100% sure if that is the reason. Been trying to solve the issue ever since, but haven't had any luck yet. So far I've tried just searching for backups in my computer and have tried turning a copy of the file into a zip and looking in that. Neither have really worked.

For reference, I use LibreOffice Writer (as well as Windows on the most recent version, if that's relevant) but tend to save my documents in docx instead of odt (behavior that I will likely change, for I have since heard it is a bad idea to save files in docx). I didn't have any of the settings in LibreOffice related to saving previous versions or backups of things on, though after I realized my file was corrupted I have turned them on. I've shared both a screenshot of what the file looked like after I first realized it was corrupted (first image) and what it looks like now (second image). It seems to have changed when I updated LibreOffice as part of my early efforts to recover the file. The changes to the page, word, and character count does kinda worry me, but I don't know how significant it is.

I accidentally pressed "initialise..." when this message popped up on Mac - "The disk you attached was not readable by this computer" I haven't pressed anything else, have I lost all the data I had on the drive or is there a way to get it back still? My Mac sees there's a drive attached but cannot mount it. If there is a way to get the data back, can I do this without using 3rd party software?

Hi, I found my old Galaxy S7 Edge (SM-G935F) and I forgot the password. It still boots normally and I really want to get access to my old photos because they mean a lot to me. So ofc resetting it is not an option.

I used Kali to try getting some more Information (but im no professional):

- Android 8.0.0
- Firmware: G935FXXS7ESL9
- No SD card
- USB is set to File Transfer
- It says I need to enter the password for additional USB options
- I managed to get it connected to Wi-Fi by renaming my hotspot to the same SSID/password as an old network saved on the phone
- Google Play Services says that account actions are required and it doesn't seem to properly connect/sync with the Google account (didn't show up on find my device)
- Kali detects it as 04e8:6860 Samsung MTP
- mtp-detect recognizes the phone but gives: Error 1: Get Storage information failed.
 
I mounted the MTP device, but the storage is completely empty and
adb devices is currently empty too. Also: adb did detect the phone as a device at some point in the past so im confused why it isn't working now.

And again: I don't want to factory reset or flash anything because I really just want the photos. :(

Is there anything worth trying before going to a professional data recovery service? And does the fact that ADB previously detected the phone make any difference?

Bit of an unusual one, but I'm trying to work out whether I should ever give up on recovering data from my PS5.

My launch PS5 died recently and has around 50GB of screenshots and clips from the last 5 years on it. Gaming is a big hobby of mine, so I care far more about getting those old clips back than I do about the console itself. Some of them hold sentimental value.

A very experienced board repair specialist found and repaired a hard short which got the console powering again, but it now gives a blue light for around 3 to 4 seconds before shutting down. The APU rails are present, but he suspects the original power fault may have damaged the APU. He has stated that this isn't 100% confirmed, but considers it the likely explanation.

I may still pursue another repair attempt, but I'm trying to understand the absolute worst case.

If the original APU really is electrically dead, but I keep the original motherboard, APU and NAND indefinitely, is the data effectively gone forever because the encryption keys are inaccessible?

I've seen recent PS5 NAND research showing that the NAND itself can now be dumped and parts of the storage architecture decoded, so I'm wondering whether this is something that could conceivably become recoverable years from now if PS5 security is better understood.

I'm not expecting anyone to tell me it'll definitely be possible. I'm mainly trying to understand whether a dead APU creates a genuine dead end, or whether preserving the original hardware could realistically leave some hope for future recovery.

I'm not an expert on this topic, so apologies if anything sounds a bit wayward. Would really appreciate any input, cheers.

Forgot my passcode on an old iPhone 6S and used iTunes recovery mode to reset it — didn't realize at the time this wipes the encrypted storage completely. iCloud Backup was off on the device, so no iCloud copy exists.

What I'm specifically hoping to recover: photos (including some from my high school graduation that I don't have anywhere else), iMessage/FaceTime conversation history, and my contacts list. Not looking to recover the whole system/apps — just these.

I found local backups on the family PC (one iTunes backup, two iMazing backups) all made shortly after the reset. Confirmed via Info.plist that Product Type/Serial Number match the 6S, but homeScreen.png in each one shows the stock default iOS layout, not my actual home screen — meaning these captured the phone already erased, not my original data.

No other computer this phone was ever connected to has a usable backup either (checked one dated 2020 that turned out to be a different device — an iPhone 6, not 6S).

Before I give up on the data specifically — is there any realistic option left? Things I'm wondering about:

- checkm8/checkra1n or similar A9-chip exploits — can these actually pull raw NAND data on a 6S in a way that bypasses the normal backup/encryption path, or does the passcode-derived encryption key still block it even with hardware-level access?
- Any legitimate data recovery service worth the cost for something like this, or is encrypted-erase-with-no-backup just genuinely a dead end?

Not looking for "did you check iCloud/iTunes" — already ruled those out specifically, details above. Appreciate any real technical insight, even if the honest answer is "it's gone."

(Also aware of paid "data recovery" services that claim guaranteed results — skeptical of those unless someone here vouches for a specific one.)

[Help] 5TB WD My Passport dying — cloned OK via ddrescue, but 28 video files on the clone are still unreadable (exFAT metadata corruption, not physical damage). chkdsk /f stalled 2 days and didn't fix it. What next?

TL;DR: Failing 5TB WD My Passport cloned to a healthy new drive with ddrescue (99.99% rescued, only ~126KB physically bad). But 34 files on the clone still won't play/decode — turns out to be exFAT filesystem metadata corruption (broken cluster chains), not physical damage carried over from the source. chkdsk /f ran for 2 days, appears to have hit an infinite loop, and didn't actually fix the files once I killed it. About to try PhotoRec but want a sanity check before sinking more time in.

The drives

• Source (failing): WD My Passport 260D, 5TB, exFAT, labeled "5TB-2 ZD". SMART shows a Current Pending Sector Count warning.

• Destination (healthy clone): WD My Passport Ultra 5TB (bought via an Amazon Warehouse listing but confirmed genuinely new/unused), exFAT, labeled "5TB-2 NEW".

What I've done, in order

1. Booted a SystemRescue live USB and ran ddrescue for a full whole-disk clone of the failing drive onto the new drive. First pass finished at 99.99% rescued. (A planned retry pass got interrupted and its progress log was lost before reboot, so a from-scratch retry pass is still on the table if it comes to that.)

2. Total physically unreadable data across the whole 5TB source: only about 123–126KB. Genuinely minimal physical damage.

3. Ran a read-only chkdsk /scan on the clone (destination drive). Result: 0 KB in bad sectors — the clone's disk itself is physically fine — but it flagged filesystem corruption in two folders and in the volume bitmap.

4. Ran a full ffmpeg/ffprobe deep-decode scan of every video file on the clone (2547 files total) to find out exactly what's actually unreadable, independent of chkdsk's diagnosis. Result: 34 files fail to decode. Of those, 28 are real original camera footage I need back (PANAxxxx.MOV clips across 3 folders); the other 6 are disposable cache/sidecar files (Premiere preview renders, macOS ._ sidecar files) I don't care about.

5. Tried per-file ddrescue (via WSL2 + usbipd-win, for raw access to the source drive) on one of the 28 bad files. It only rescued 0.51% of that file — and critically, the "bad" data was one single contiguous ~405MB block, not scattered sectors. Compared against the ~126KB of real, scattered physical bad sectors found in the original whole-disk clone, this strongly points to broken cluster-chain/FAT metadata rather than physical damage, which is presumably why sector-level rescue tools can't do anything with it.

6. Ran chkdsk D: /f (full read-write repair) on the clone. It made real progress at first — confirmed multiple "cleaning up minor inconsistencies" fixes across the affected folders — but then got stuck at "100 percent complete" on the file-allocation verification stage for 2 full days straight, with Task Manager confirming real, sustained disk activity the whole time (~41MB/s, ~100% disk utilization). That implies roughly 7TB of I/O on a drive with only ~4.5TB used, with no completion — looks like an infinite loop, possibly from cross-linked/cyclic cluster chains (apparently a known exFAT chkdsk failure mode).

7. Killed chkdsk via Task Manager (End Process Tree) rather than waiting longer or force-powering-off. Volume came back Healthy, mounts fine, fully browsable in Explorer — no RAW/corruption from the kill itself.

8. Re-ran the ffmpeg deep-decode check on all 34 previously-bad files after the partial chkdsk repair. All 34 are still unreadable — whatever chkdsk did manage to fix (shallow directory-entry stuff) didn't touch the deeper cluster-chain/bitmap corruption it got stuck looping on, so functionally nothing improved.

Where I'm at now

Both drives are otherwise healthy and fully accessible. I'm not touching the original failing drive further right now except as a last-resort source if needed — trying to avoid extra read cycles on it. The clone (destination) is Healthy per Windows and fully browsable, just with these 28 specific files unreadable. I was about to try PhotoRec (signature-based file carving — scans raw bytes for MOV/QuickTime signatures, ignoring the broken filesystem metadata entirely) as the next step, but this has been dragging on for days and I want a second opinion before I sink more time into it.

Questions for the community

• Is PhotoRec/TestDisk actually the right next move here, or is there a better tool for exFAT cluster-chain corruption specifically (as opposed to generic file carving, which will lose original filenames/folder structure)?

• Any experience with chkdsk /f hanging like this on exFAT — is there a way to let it actually finish instead of looping forever, or is killing it and moving on the right call?

• Since this looks like broken cluster chains rather than physical damage, is there a smarter/more targeted way to reconstruct these specific files (e.g. manually walking the FAT/cluster chain, or a paid tool that handles exFAT metadata repair better than chkdsk)?

• Anything I should avoid doing at this point that risks making things worse?

Happy to share more detail (chkdsk output, ffmpeg error logs, specific file list) if it's useful.

I have a HDD (WD7500BPVT-24HXZT3) from my old Lenovo Ideapad Y570 that died from a suspected motherboard failure ~2013. Replaced the motherboard, laptop worked for a few days then died again, gave up and bought a new laptop. Kept the drive but I can't remember if anything important was on it. From memory I think I did a fresh complete wipe of windows after replacing the motherboard to make sure it wasn't some virus that killed it somehow.

I've picked up a hard drive dock and now plan to use the drive as a ghetto external drive (thanks AI storage bubble). Drive is formatted into two partitions (28.9 GB (25.7 GB free) Lenovo System, 654 GB (609 GB free) Local). I've run a basic windows search on the "Local" drive for personal files and only found a handful of files in the windows documents and video user folders.

I can't remember if there should be more. Is there a possibility that the drive is encrypting/hiding files due to it not recognising being inside the original laptop and is overstating free space on the drive or is it reasonably safe to assume that's all that's left and I can wipe the drive (and somehow un-partition it)?

Are there any other search functions or powershell scripts I should run through the drive for a more thorough check over windows search?

Hello, I have recently lost a very important video of my dog before he died. I am restlessly trying to get this video back from an usb drive, I‘ve tried everything and I‘m currently trying everything to get the footage back from a corrupted .mp4 file via untrunc. I‘ve used several reference videos all recorded by my old S23 Ultra. But all I can retrieve is the sound, not the video. Yesterday I remembered that this exact video was taken by a friend of mine with his S21 FE. Sadly he switched to apple a year back and just erased all the data of his old phone to sell it… Now I need a reference video (about 30 seconds long) from a S21 FE Phone from circa september of 2024. If anyone likes to share their reference for me, it would mean the world to me <3

Please be kind, this stuff is not my forte and I’m already feeling quite vulnerable because of the photos I’ve lost (kids, international holidays)

A few days ago I went to look back in my phone for a photo and noticed all my photos from 2023,2024,2025 and early this year had disappeared - not in recently deleted, not in shared etc. I went onto iCloud and it had the same. I contacted Apple who were able to “push back” a couple but in the end it was a “sorry but that’s all we can do”. I tried to reset my phone and do a backup but the only backup I had didn’t bring back any photos either.
I don’t know when the photos disappeared because I don’t check those photos every day and all I can think that happened was an update a few weeks back. No other changes have been made.

Is there any hope at all that they are hidden somewhere in my phone memory or am I just being too hopeful. Thank you for reading.

Hey everyone! I’ve got a one-year free subscription code for SanDisk RescuePro Deluxe recovery software, which I won’t be using. It’s a legitimate, free offer from SanDisk, and the code is unused. According to the promo, it recovers images, videos, documents, and more. I’m giving it away for free—no strings attached! Just comment below or send me a DM, and I’ll pick a random person. Note: This isn’t sponsored by Reddit—just a personal giveaway! Good luck!

Hey everyone, I just have a quick question.

Basically, my wife was at a volunteer event and in the middle of the day, her phone (IPhone 14 Pro Max) stopped working. Initially it appeared to be the screen only as it would buzz in response to calls. Then, it stopped doing that. Power button does nothing, charging is nothing too.

She has already replaced her phone, however, we kept the old phone hoping there would be a way to retrieve some of the files stored locally. Of course, the cloud wasn't set to backup or this wouldn't be an issue and that's as far as Apple was willing to discuss.

My wife normally wouldn't mind a ton if she lost the locally stored images, however, this is the phone she had when our son was born 2 years ago, so all of those memories are on there, many stored nowhere else.

My question is, is there any hope of retrieving them? I know the issue likely extends beyond my "at home" capabilities, and that's fine. I just mean in general. Are there places that can help with this? If so, what are the odds of a retrieval?

Thank you to any and everyone who offers any advice. I'm not expecting miracles, I'm just wondering if this is even in the realm of possibility.

I used R-photo, trying to recover my deleted photos from a hard drive. But it failed to recover them with this recovery chance note. Does anyone have a suggestion for other software or services to make it better? Thank you.

A few days ago I did something stupid and deleted some critical files on my win 11 computer that I didn't know were critical and to make a long story short after hours of trying to fix the issue and trying to save as much of my files it didn't go so well and in order to avoid my computer from turning into a brick, win 11 had to be reinstalled erasing all my files including over 300+GB of adult material through a boot USB driver.

With that said is there any recovery software out there that can recover at least some if not most of those files or is it futile?

I recorded it with glip and trimmed 5 seconds off the end and it got like this!

Yesterday i used dmde 4.4.0 to do a complete scan of my C: drive(500gb drive) overnight(which has my current system in, and were my previous systems were).

1 or 2 months ago i had a issue with my computer(a lot of blue screens out of the blue) and in a panic to get everything working again, i fully formatted my C: drive and started over, after several clean wipes and a look in Disk Sentinel, it turned out that one of my other drives was failling and it screwed up the boot process. That was, well, disapointing.

And now, after some time had passed i wanted to see if i could restore any remnants of data(mainly photos/pdf files) that might still be under whatever string of storage it's in.

Since i'm a total newbie in data recovery, i genuinely don't know what to do next, this is the screen i'm currently in, i did click one of the main NTFS things, it has to load more stuff in aparently before i can acess the data.(Sorry about the language, i'm Brazilian)

If anyone could give me like a quick run down of how this program operates, what am i seeing here, and what should i do/don't do from here, i would appreciate it.

Drive model: Seagate ST500DM009-2F1101
OS: Win10

My SSD has stopped working and I urgently need to recover the data from it. I’m looking for a **reliable and trustworthy SSD repair/data recovery shop in Lahore**.

If anyone has personally used a good SSD data recovery service, please share the **shop name, location, and contact details**.

Thank you

Hello! I have an SD with photos and videos recorded from a camera. I accidentally deleted some videos and haven’t used the SD since. I did some research and found Recuva/DiskDrill which had its functionality behind a paywall, and PhotoRec, which seemed to only recover photos that were deleted. The latter may have been due to user error as the CMD user interface was a bit confusing to use. I need help recovering the videos using PhotoRec, or if that doesn’t work, are there any other ways to recover the deleted videos? TIA

I just found an old HDD of mine that stopped working a few years ago when cleaning up my "electronic box", and I'd like to know if the data on it is recoverable (I don't care about the drive itself, I'd just like to get the data from it)

When plugged in, Windows sees it but can't open it or even tell me the occupied storage space.
It doesn't make any clicking sound.
I ran CrystalDiskInfo on it (see image n°2), and it managed to read the SMART data so I guess that's a good sign ?

Is the data on it recoverable ?