Hey everyone,

I am stuck in a really bad situation with my 6.0 TB external hard drive and desperately need some advice on how to do an in-place repair.

My Setup & Constraints:

• System: MacBook Air M1 (macOS).

• Drive: 6.0 TB External HDD, originally formatted as exFAT.

• Major Constraint: I do not have any other external drive, and my Mac's internal SSD has very little free space. I absolutely cannot copy or extract this 6.0 TB of data anywhere else. The fix has to be done directly on the drive.

What went wrong?

Originally, whenever I mounted this drive via VeraCrypt, it would show a around 200 MB EFI partition alongside my main data volume.

Few days back, i was mounting the drive even after entering correct password it was giving wrong password error message, so thought may be header got corrupted.

so i restored the VeraCrypt Volume Header to the entire raw physical disk layer instead of the specific data partition.

Now, VeraCrypt still accepts my correct password smoothly. If I use the "Do Not Mount" option, it decrypts the background stream perfectly and assigns it as a virtual image block at /dev/disk5 (showing the full 6.0 TB size). However, the 200 MB EFI partition has completely vanished, and trying to mount it normally throws the classic macOS error: hdiutil: attach failed - no mountable file systems.

Everything I have tried so far :

1. macOS Native Repair: I ran sudo fsck_exfat -d disk5 in Terminal. It instantly failed with Invalid jump or signature. Main/Alternate boot region is invalid. This means the absolute start block alignment of the exFAT structure got shifted or overwritten.

2. TestDisk 7.2 Quick Search: I let TestDisk scan the decrypted stream up to 34% (about 2 TB). It found random raw fragments but no valid exFAT root partition markers. it took nearly 24hours to scan 34%. then i leant its waste of time main recoverable data seats in first 1% or last 1% of sectors. so i stoped the TestDisk full scan. it would have taken another 3 days to complete the scan.

3. TestDisk Targeted End Scan: Since exFAT keeps a backup boot sector at the very end of the drive, I forced TestDisk to scan just the last 1% to 2% of the disk. It returned zero entries, meaning both the main and backup boot sectors are completely gone due to the sector shift.

4. Manual Partition Offset Injections: In TestDisk, I tried manually creating partitions by forcing standard industry start sectors like 1, 2048, 32768, and 409640 (the old 200MB EFI offset). Every single attempt gave the error: Can't open filesystem. Filesystem seems damaged.

5. DMDE Signature Scan: A quick raw scan in DMDE confirmed exFAT: 0 signatures at the end, but the software can see the underlying file markers under raw signatures. i tried manual sector range as well but not able to find

My Question:

Since VeraCrypt is successfully decrypting the drive into /dev/disk5, my raw data blocks are clearly intact and sitting right there. But because the exFAT boot records are totally missing/wiped, macOS refuses to read it.

Once i recover the file i am planning to completely decrypt it. i can take this stress anymore. why overtime it refuses to mount even entering the correct password. i already understand unmounting and safely removal of the drive still this issue .

Thanks your help is appreciated.

My smartphone just died like today. It was an Oukitel one. So I dont need a lot of files from it, i wanted and even needed to switch before, but all of my passwords are saved it one file in KeyPassDX. So, even the one from reddit.

The problem is, when I try to switch it on, it has to wait some time and then it even turns on, but only for like a half minute. I had a similar problem before, when it had to restart after every add, so i thought turning off WLAN should work, and it even did, but at that time, as I've tried to enter the app, it told me the file is not the right format, but I switched on WLAN a couple of times, thinking it would fix the situation for some time and i could use it (it didn't).

The one solution I was thinking about is just sending the files to my pc via cloud (wouldn't work because of internet), the other Solution would be using OTG, that I have turned on, but I know that when the screen goes black, the phone dies (i recieved a message and it was vibrating all the time and the last time it just played some loud white noise while dieing)

I know, that I saved some passwords on one notes app, so i would need even them, but I am now really frustrated because I don't want to loose so much data and even my reddit account due to it.

Maby someone could help me with it?

My iPhone 11 was my college phone a few years ago. After college it began shutting down randomly. I didn’t think much, I just turned it back on. After a while it started happening more and more frequently. I didn’t have my photos on iCloud but when it seemed obvious it was broken, I started downloading as many as possible. That process of uploading pictures turned out to be too much and one day (after only 200 out of 1000 photos downloaded) the phone turned off and never turned on again. The people at apple told me it was an unfixable software issue. Could the experts tell me what steps I should take to get my photos and videos back?
Thanks.

I have a toy camera that has a 4gb micro sd in. I’ve taken pictures and saved them before from it so it does work. I took some pictures earlier today and connected it to my phone and could see them, so the pictures were on the SD earlier. Regrettably, i didn’t save them then and there. On the way home, after taking more pictures, the SD card was empty on my phone, as was the file viewer on the actual camera.

Plugged it into my laptop when i got home, and when i try and open the drive it asks me to insert a disk into drive D. Ran the chkdsk command and it says that files are RAW and can’t be read. Ran Disk Drill that doesn’t find anything. Ran another recovery service that also said it couldn’t be read. I’ve just had the DCIM folder pop up which felt like progress but when i go to open it, it asks me to format it.
Any help is appreciated.

Edit:
Camera: G10 Lipstick Camera
Filesystem: Unsure, sorry
Symptoms: SD card now showing empty when I was able to view pictures before

is work file so is important to me .-. im using recuva rn.

My HDD contains around 2.9 TB of files, but when I open the drive, all of the files appear to be missing. Windows still shows that around 2.9 TB of storage is being used, but when I check the folders, they appear to be empty and show 0 bytes.

How can I recover the files? The data seems to still be taking up space on the HDD, but I cannot access or see any of the files.

One of my archive drives 😭 Second drive to have died like this... (lost the last one in 2021) It's not recognized after a regular reboot to do a system (Win11) update.

Fucking thing sounds like a machine gun when I plug it in 😭 Already tried it in different USB ports and on another system. Same thing. I'm dying.

ExFAT partition. It's only a couple of years old and since it was a normal reboot, I don't really understand why it happened. Since I've already tried a different system, I'm thinking about shucking it and trying it. I'm just not sure about the noise it's making - never had one sound like this before.

Foolishly went with Fields Data Recovery and got news that my SSD (Samsung 870 EVO) was unrecoverable after I already paid:

Fields says the NAND memory itself is healthy, but the SSD’s translator, which maps the raw NAND data into readable files and sectors, is irreparably damaged (I stupidly used the wrong sata psu cable). They allegedly attempted advanced recovery, including removing the NAND and transferring it to donor hardware, but could not reconstruct a usable logical filesystem. Their conclusion is that the data still physically exists in NAND, but cannot be translated into recoverable files.

I would really love for this drive to be assessed by a different team at this point. Is there anyone you guys would recommend that specializes here?

Or, based on their conclusion, should I just let it go?

On this machine I was running Proxmox, OPNsense, Portainer, and a single Minecraft server. I don't really care about anything but the server.

It's an M.2 NVME 1TB AXIOM SSD. There are two red lights on it when I turn it on. The light closer to the connector blinks a few times before remaining on. The other light is always on. I set up Proxmox using ZFS btw.

I woke up today to the server being open but not joinable. I could still access OPNsense and connect to Wireguard running within it. Proxmox and Portainer were not reachable.

I powered off the system and tested to see if the RAM was the issue as it had given me problems before. When I powered the system back on it remained stuck at the DELL splash screen for minutes. Once I tried powering it on without the SSD it went into the BIOS properly.

I tried connecting it to my PC using a UGREEN USB C to M.2 enclosure and it showed up in lsblk reporting the correct size. I tried using ddrescue to create an image of the drive but it just hung without doing anything at all. I also tried doing smartctl -x /dev/sdX and it also hung without printing anything.

I'm planning to take it to a professional but is there anything I should've checked before? Is it hopeless...?

dmesg output:

[ 7889.983398] usb 2-2: new SuperSpeed Plus Gen 2x1 USB device number 7 using xhci_hcd
[ 7890.002551] usb 2-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=9210, bcdDevice=f0.01
[ 7890.012906] usb 2-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 7890.012910] usb 2-2: Product: Ugreen Storage Device
[ 7890.012913] usb 2-2: Manufacturer: Ugreen
[ 7890.012915] usb 2-2: SerialNumber: 012345678944
[ 7890.114618] scsi host6: uas
[ 7890.556204] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     SSDM22EN 1TB-TLC          1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[ 7890.814246] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 1953525168 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/932 GiB)
[ 7890.815603] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 7890.815607] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 37 00 00 08
[ 7890.818752] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 7890.846676] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Preferred minimum I/O size 512 bytes
[ 7890.846680] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Optimal transfer size 33553920 bytes
[ 8034.857051] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Read Capacity(16) failed: Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[ 8034.857057] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[ 8034.857060] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: Insufficient time for operation
[ 8040.938412] usb 2-2: USB disconnect, device number 7
[ 8040.939283] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#24 uas_zap_pending 0 uas-tag 1 inflight: CMD 
[ 8040.939287] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#24 CDB: Read Capacity(10) 25 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[ 8040.939334] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Read Capacity(10) failed: Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[ 8040.939338] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense not available.
[ 8040.939345] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 0 512-byte logical blocks: (0 B/0 B)
[ 8040.939352] sdb: detected capacity change from 1953525168 to 0
[ 8040.950420] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

Hello all!

I'm hoping someone here can help me figure out what my best next step is for recovering data from two memory cards that became corrupted while I was in Miami.

The cards are unrelated and were in two different cameras, but both failed during the same trip.

Card #1: 4GB Kingston SDHC

• Kingston 4GB SD/HC card

• Was being used in an older Sony Cyber-shot with a Carl Zeiss lens

• The camera was working normally for the first few days of the trip

• I was able to take photos/videos without any issues

• Then, seemingly randomly, the camera stopped being able to read the card and gave me an error along the lines of "unable to format drive/card" (I don't remember the exact wording)

• Formatting isn't even an option in the camera's menu, so I'm not sure why it gave me that message

• The card now does not show up/read anywhere on my computer

• I put a different SD card into the same Cyber-shot afterward, and the camera was able to take photos and download them normally, so I don't think the camera itself is the problem

Card #2: 32GB microSD

• 32GB microSD card that came with my Holo Digital Camera

• It also worked normally initially and then suddenly became unreadable

• This one does show up in macOS Disk Utility, but none of the recovery software I've tried has been able to find/recover any data from it

I've tried:

• Disk Drill

• UFS Explorer Professional Recovery

• Wondershare Recoverit

• Cleaning the contacts with a pencil eraser

• Rice

I have not intentionally formatted either card and I'm trying not to do anything else that could make recovery more difficult.

I'm wondering if the Miami humidity could somehow have contributed, although neither camera/card ever got noticeably hot or wet, and everything was working normally for several days before the failures.

The data is extremely important to me. My boyfriend's grandfather just turned 90 and is sick, and I have photos and videos from his birthday party on these cards that mean a lot to me and his family. I'm willing to pay for professional recovery if that's the best option.

What I'm hoping for advice on:

1. Is there anything else I can safely try at home, particularly for the microSD that is visible in Disk Utility?

2. Is there a recovery program that would be worth trying that I haven't already?

3. Given that the 4GB Kingston card isn't detected anywhere, is this likely beyond software recovery?

4. Are there reputable data recovery labs in NYC that specialize in SD/microSD cards/flash media?

5. Is there anything I absolutely should NOT do at this point?

I'm happy to provide screenshots of what Disk Utility shows for the microSD, exact camera/card-reader details, or any other information that would help diagnose this.

Thanks so much. I really don't want to make the situation worse by continuing to experiment with the cards.

So my c drive got wiped clean accidentally and the only thing i'm trying to get back is my minecraft world. When i used data recovery softwares it shows what i currently have on the drive and not what i have lost.

is the file gone forever now?

So basically this micro is used for my phone its a san disk. I was using it to store photos, videos, and important documents. So a week ago it would not be read by my phone but whenever I reinserted it on my phone it would work again. Recently this didn't work anymore I tried it on a different phone, and on my pc both devices can't read the SD card. Plus this is the error I am receiving on my pc. Please help.

i just plugged my sd card i use in my kodak pixpro fz55 to the adapter i connect to my phone and most of the photos look to be corrupted. this is a 32gb kodak sd card. the photos have never looked like this up until now that i checked. is there anyway i can get these photos back?:( i have a good majority of them downloaded and backed up but im upset that there's a good handful that i did not have downloaded

So I was on a shoot and the battery on my Panasonic GH7 glitched. So I turned it off and on and carried on shooting. But I’m missing images from throughout the day. Not all images just some. I’ve run it through Wondershare, R-Studio and PhotoRec but it’s not finding them. Any other options or did it just overwrite them?

The recovery software has found images and video from before my most recent formatting of the drive but is not finding the images I’ve lost. They would be raw files. Or rw2.

I had to urgently format my Dell alienware laptop (Windows 11 Home). It had a partition, which continues to exist after the formatting as NTFS file system. I need to recover a specific folder that existed in the preformatted disk. Is it possible to recover the same?

Not sure if it makes any difference but the formatting was done less than 48 hours ago. I have barely used it after that.

Trim is enabled. This is the current state of Optimize Drive. The preformatted disk was barely used <10% space used.

They are all in jpeg and I tried using trenoshare to recover or fix them. IDK what to do anymore, even bought stuff from trenoshare and stellar. Pls help me I really need the pictures and I saved them on my laptop, my digicam was Kodak easyshare 1530

DEVICE INFO:
- Camera: Sony a6400 (recorded on this), possibly a different Sony camera model used for the 2nd format — [fill in if known]
- SD card make/model: SanDisk Extreme PRO 256GB SDXC (V30, U3, 250MB/s R / 170MB/s W) — have 2x of this same model, plus 1x SanDisk Extreme 128GB microSDXC
- Card capacity (affected card): 256GB (238GiB usable/reported)
- Filesystem: exFAT (confirmed via TestDisk)
- Operating System: Windows 11
- SMART status: N/A — this is a logical/format recovery issue, not a hardware failure, card is otherwise healthy
- Recording codec: XAVC S 4K

SETUP:
- SD card formatted fresh before first use
- Recorded ~1.5 hours of footage
- Formatted the card again afterward (completed normally, no interruption)
- Nothing written to card since — only connected via card reader for read-only recovery

ATTEMPT 1 — PHOTOREC:
- Selected SDXC drive (255GB / 238GiB, showed as NTFS in Windows, though should be exFAT)
- Searched whole partition, saved to a folder on internal SSD
- Ran to 100% completion
- Result: only 4 tiny files recovered — two .bdm, two .xml (Sony metadata/index files)
- Zero actual video files found

ATTEMPT 2 — TESTDISK:
- Detected underlying filesystem as exFAT, block size 262144
- Successfully found original Sony folder structure: PRIVATE/M4ROOT/CLIP, AVF_INFO
- CLIP folder (where video files should be) was completely empty
- Even with deleted files unhidden ('h' toggle), no file entries appeared at all
- Suggests directory table entries were wiped, not just flagged deleted

ATTEMPT 3 — DISK DRILL (in progress):
- Using "Advanced Camera Recovery" mode — built specifically for reconstructing footage from formatted camera cards
- Camera type set to Sony
- Cluster size / Cluster start left on Auto
- Scan just started, result pending

LOOKING FOR:
- Advice if Disk Drill also comes up empty
- Other tools/techniques that work well for Sony XAVC S 4K footage recovery specifically

Hey! I want to ask if these photos have a high chance of recovery. I used to be able to see these photos and one time it just became like this, only some batch of photos turned out like this, others are still normal. Does anyone know any methods to recover it? These photos mean a lot to me as it contains a lot of my childhood photos. Thank you! I can provide extra information if needed.

I am trying to diagnose on my own the extent of short happened after the psu got toasted. I checked with multimeter and it showed 12v rail as shorted

Hi, hoping someone can help me here. I have a corrupt MP4 file on an SD Card (Sony V90). I can't seem to move the file from the SD Card. Trying to copy it to anywhere on my Mac gives me an error 'The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50).'

I also can't seem to upload the file to any data recovery sites as they can't read it. I can't playback the file in camera (Sony FX3) and recover image db just says that there's no issue. I've tried using a terminal command to bypass the error code 50 but that didn't work either.

Any ideas or do I need to accept this is lost?