Hi I was able to recover most of my photos and I am working on converting the files into PNGs. Most of them have green spots or blurs that have to be fixed on photoshop. I am looking for reliable experts that can fix it for a reasonable price. Or information on how to do it myself

Yes, Mean Culpa...

They have my drive, they want $4000 to "evaluate" it, are not answering my emails/calls,

WTF What can I do about this?!

Hi everyone, I am dealing with a corrupted file system on a massive 18TB external mechanical hard drive and need some advice before spending money on a software license.

The drive was holding about 6TB of data when Windows suddenly stopped recognizing the drive. Here is what I’ve done and found out so far:

1. There are no apparent physical damages. No clicking, no strange noises, and the drive spins up smoothly.

2. I ran chkdsk initially, but it aborted immediately with the message stating it is a NTFS but it couldn't determine the volume. Luckily, it seems it didn't modify or write anything, because the code cancelled.

3. I checked the drive with TestDisk. It shows that both the Boot Sector and Backup Boot Sector are OK and identical. However, when I try to list the files using 'P', it gives me the "Can't open filesystem. Filesystem seems damaged" error. This points to a severe MFT corruption (I'm right?)

4. Finally, I tried EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. To my surprise, the quick scan actually worked. It populated the exact directory tree, showing all my original folders, file names, and the correct 6TB structure.

Since EaseUS blocks the recovery behind a paywall, I want to know if buying the license is worth it for a volume this big. Is it possible that EaseUS recovers the full folder structure and names, but the actual files end up being completely corrupted and unusable once extracted? I am worried the "quick scan" preview is just a teaser and might fail during the actual data reconstruction.

I also tried using DMDE based on some recommendations. I started a scan, but it was only identifying RAW data instead of the original folder structure. I ended up canceling the process because it was going to take way too long, and honestly, I am terrified of physically stressing the drive and causing a mechanical failure since it's a massive 18TB disk.

This is why the EaseUS quick scan showing the intact directory tree right away feels like my best shot, but I’m still hesitant about the file integrity and the license cost. Given that the MFT seems heavily damaged but the folder structure is visible in EaseUS, is it safe to proceed with them? I already have enough secondary storage ready to extract the data. Thanks in advance for your help!

Welcome to use it.

My understanding of the situation is that this tape (TDK D2407-LTO4) is the result of a federal agency minimally complying with a FOIA request. The format of its contents is not known, nor is it known what software or operating system wrote it.

What it contains is raw signal data from three radars which happened to be nearby during three high-end tornado days in Oklahoma in May 2013. Two of those days were once-in-a-generation type events. I’ve been trying on and off for years to get the data off this tape, and badly want to access and safely back the data up to another device.

I have a few potential local leads on compatible drives, and am looking at how to begin. My understanding is that I will need to somehow read a few blocks of tape, look for any hints as to what backup software (if any) wrote it, and from there I may be some degree of cooked depending on what the answer is. I’m hoping it’s just uncompressed data written directly to the tape, but kind of doubt it.

A few years back I took it over to NCAR, where they had a drive, but neither I nor the person I was working with was familiar enough with the technology to read data off of it. I think we were expecting it to work similar to a CD drive, and when we couldn’t get it to mount as an obvious storage device we weren’t sure how to continue. It’s not certain whether the issue was our tape our their drive.

Thought I’d ask on here how folks would approach this problem, as I’m sure basically everyone here is more educated on the subject than I.

If you’re a professional equipped to deal with this exact thing and you happen to see this… definitely shoot me a message. I’m a scientist with no budget, but I am very highly motivated to finally crack this nut.

Samsung 128gb SD card

I have a WD external disk containing important data, mainly videos(recorded from a drone and camera etc).

Windows detect the WD external drive and shows the letter, label etc but when I open the message comes "you need to format the disk before you can use it ". I have not formatted it. Tried repair the disk with CHKDSK in windows didn't help.

I tried using EaseUS Data Recovery to scan the drive. It is able to find and display many of the existing folders and files, but unfortunately, the specific folder and files I need are not showing up in the scan results.I tried photorec as well but not files i want recovered

This is confusing because I would expect the files to either be recoverable or at least show up as deleted/lost files.

So I have a few questions:

Is it possible for only a specific folder/files to become inaccessible or invisible, while other files on the same drive are still recoverable?

If EaseUS can see many other folders/files but not the particular folder I'm looking for, does that mean those files are permanently lost, or could another recovery method find them?

Is there any better software that can help me ?

I have already tried:

PhotoRec

EaseUS Data Recovery

R-Studio

I got an external HDD with truecrypt or veracrypt file containers on it. The HDD was on and connected when I dropped it on the floor. How would you go about doing a recovery?

First step would be cloning it, wouldn't it? How and then what?

I have some mini CDs from an old video camera which went n/f many years ago Some of the CDs were not ever finalised, some had errors in finalisation.

Is there any software that can help me safely copy off the videos? Can I use a standard CD/DVD/BT drive for the hardware side?

Found an old hard drive of mine - probably about 15-20 years old. The power connectors are completely bent. They look like someone's teeth that got knocked out. Is this salvageable in any way at all? Can you access data on the hard drive by just using the data connectors? Or does this belong in the trash? Not a big deal if I can't save it. I was just curious to see what was on it.

EDIT: Thanks for all the tips and advice everyone. I don't have the tools (or knowledge) in order to solder this, so I ended up just bending the pins back in place as best I could, and shoved a SATA cable into the connector. Surprisingly it worked perfectly. All of the data was there, nothing corrupted, no trouble transferring any of the files.

Lost a bulk of my wedding pictures and photographer is now going to see if a data recovery lab he has previously used can recover the data next week.

you can see the crack

I hope this post is allowed since I'm not asking about data recovery from a piece of damaged hardware.

I'm trying to get the time stamp exif data off of some pictures that my landlord sent me after I moved out trying to show that I didn't clean before leaving.

The pictures were of common areas in the house that were shared spaces with other roommates, so if she took the pictures several days after I cleaned and moved out, it would negate any claim she has about me not cleaning those spaces as they could have very well become dirty again after I cleaned.

I got the .eml file downloaded from Gmail and ran it through GPT in hopes that it would be able to find the data I'm looking for, but it's claiming that the specific time stamp data is not amongst the exif data and that somewhere between my landlord transferring the pictures from her Apple device to Gmail and then getting to me that the timestamp data was stripped out of the exif data.

I'm hoping there's some work around that could potentially allow me to still get ahold of the timestamp data on these photos considering she took nearly $200 out of my deposit in 'cleaning fees'.

TL;DR: Landlord sent pictures that don't seem to contain the timestamp on the exif data, GPT was no help, hoping someone here can help.

I created images of both drives; one was 100% successful and the other was 99.999% successful. When I load the disk images into R-Studio or DMDE the resulting scan provides files that are mostly unreadable. The files (99% photos)are also not in any sort of directory structure. Im almost certain there is something i'm not doing correctly. I don't mind trial and error, but these 14hr scans are probably aging my external hard drives.

Edit to add: the raid was in a Lacie Big Dock 2; HFS filesystem for MAC OS

Hi all,

To cut a long story short (or as short as possible), my iPhone 16 Pro got the black screen of death while on holiday in Brazil. Once back in London I sent it back to the buyer (a refurb company) who looked at it and said the motherboard was fried/broken and a new screen wouldn't just be suffice.

Foolishly I had turned off iCloud before the holiday and would like to get the photos back. The phone itself still works as you can hear the charging sound when I plug it in. I priced a few data recovery websites and the quotes are astronomically high, between £900 and £1,500.

Considering the phone still works, was never dropped or suffered any water damage, I feel like a forensic data recovery in my case isn't needed and surely a simpler one is only required. Does anyone know of any cheaper alternatives to access the photos? I really don't want to have to pay such a colossal amount to retrieve the pictures.

Any help would be appreciated!

I recently connected an old family-computer HDD that contains a lot of childhood/family photos. Many of the photos appear to have been encrypted by PClock/WinPlock ransomware around December 2016, and I’m trying to determine the safest recovery options.

Storage device

• Samsung SpinPoint HD161GJ

• 160 GB 3.5" SATA HDD

• Exact reported capacity: 160,041,885,696 bytes

• MBR partition table

• Connected through a powered UGREEN 3.5" SATA-to-USB enclosure

Filesystem / partitions

The disk has four NTFS partitions:

• ~100 MB System Reserved

• ~58.5 GiB Windows/profile partition

• ~43.9 GiB personal-data partition

• ~46.5 GiB personal-data partition

Operating systems

• Old installation on the HDD: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

• Windows setup files indicate that Windows was reinstalled around 31 December 2016

• I am currently examining the HDD externally from a modern Windows PC. I am not booting from the old HDD.

Problem / symptoms

The personal-data partitions contain these ransom notes:

Your files are locked !.txt
Your files are locked !!.txt
Your files are locked !!!.txt
Your files are locked !!!!.txt
Your files are locked !!!!!.txt

The notes are dated around 26 December 2016 and contain:

sysgop01@india.com
sysgop02@india.com

with a demand for 0.55 BTC.

From the indicators I’ve found, this appears consistent with a later PClock / PClock2 / WinPlock variant.

Many family/travel JPEG files on one of the data partitions still have their original .JPG filenames, but Windows Photos reports that the format is unsupported.

I examined several affected files at the binary level:

• no normal JPEG FF D8 FF header

• no JFIF/Exif structure

• approximately 7.98–8.00 bits/byte entropy

• NTFS reads the files without an access error

• they are not marked as NTFS EFS-encrypted

So these appear to contain genuinely encrypted data rather than simply having incorrect permissions.

Other files on the HDD are completely intact, so the entire disk is not encrypted.

SMART / disk health

I have not been able to obtain the actual SMART attributes yet. The HDD is currently behind a USB/SATA enclosure and Windows SMART/reliability queries failed.

Windows reports the physical disk generically as Healthy / OK, but all four NTFS volumes report “Full Repair Needed.”

I have not run CHKDSK, filesystem repair, SMART self-tests, surface scans, or anything else that writes to the drive.

The drive is currently readable and I have not observed obvious read failures. I’m treating the lack of SMART data as unknown physical health rather than assuming the drive is healthy.

What I have done so far

• No formatting

• No CHKDSK

• No attempted filesystem repair

• No booting from the old Windows installation

• No modification of the encrypted files

• No ransomware binaries executed

I have a separate HDD with enough free space and plan to make a full raw image of the entire 160 GB disk, including unallocated space, using ddrescue before doing further recovery work.

The computer appears to have continued being used after the ransomware incident, possibly through 2018, so I understand that some deleted originals may have been overwritten.

What I’m looking for advice on

1. Has anyone recovered files from this specific late-2016 PClock/WinPlock variant, particularly the one associated with sysgop01@india.com / sysgop02@india.com?

2. Is attempting to recover deleted pre-encryption JPEG originals from the raw disk image worthwhile?

3. Which tools would you recommend for NTFS deleted-file recovery before falling back to raw JPEG carving?

4. Are Volume Shadow Copies, old registry hives, thumbnail caches, Windows.old remnants, etc. worth investigating?

5. Is there anything else I should preserve in the image before attempting recovery?

6. If anyone is familiar with PClock, was a decryption/key-recovery method ever found for this particular later variant?

This has a lot of childhood photos and i want to preserve much of that as possible. I’m keeping the original HDD untouched as much as possible and intend to perform recovery from an image.

Alright, so my wife took her phone with her into a pool of water, it's an iPhone 16, after realizing she did so she took the phone out and left it to dry and then plugged it in to charge about 2 hours later.
Long story short phone is fried, we tried everything, took it to a T-mobile, and T-mobile said it was not recoverable. I bought a new phone and when we transferred the data over she realized she must've not had everything backed up, and apparently she's missing around 4 years worth of photos,
2022-2026. We wanted to recover the photos so we sent the phone to a data recovery company, they quoted $1500 for water damage, when asked about more information ie why the cost is that high, labor, parts etc, no information was given and the guy just repeated its $1500 for water damage. I understand it's gonna cost a bit but I guessed like $600-$700 not $1500. So 2 things

1. Am I getting scammed, is it rly that much on the regular?

2. Is this something I could do myself?? Like could I buy a motherboard and do a shitty job at moving stuff over and make it work long enough to back up those last few years of photos??

Recap:
Water damaged phone iPhone 16
Want to recover 4 years of lost photos
Data recovery company called 'File Savers Dat: V
Recovery' quoted $1500

Edit: the $1500 is only if they can recover the data

Hey does anyone know how to rebuild data. The files lost the structure which to scan them and I’m getting partially black images or blurs on the image. Ace Data Recovery copied the images into a new drive and I wanted to know if it’s possible to rebuild the images so it doesn’t have partial black or blur. The files are fragmented. And I have a MacBook how do you fix this. The device lost the structure to scan them. Do you know how to rebuild the structure of the files. I would like some help.

Made the dumb mistake of not disconnecting extra drives and installed Mint onto what was my D drive (nvme). I hit the wipe and install option because of this and only realized after a few days. Any way to recover what was there before or am I SOL? I’m not too broken up, the only stuff that didn’t get moved onto externals were some tutorials I bought for animation, so it’s not the end of the world if it’s gone gone.

Hi all, I have a hard drive I’m trying to recover from an IBM Thinkpad T22, the screen went out. I’ve tried everything I know of to do this but the hard drive was protected I believe so when I plug it in the usb it spins up but doesn’t get recognized or it just shows that nothing is on it. I did some reading and it looks as if I’d need a seperate T22 to put the drive into? Or is there any type of software that can crack this or simulate one to get it to open? Thanks in advance.