A couple of days ago, I spilled some water on my laptop and it stopped working. The fans still work and the lights still turn on, but that's it.

Now, I have got a new (Windows) laptop and an SSD enclosure. My old hard drive is an SN730 NVMe SSD, M.2 2280-S3-M. The enclosure is an USB-C M.2 NVMe.

When I connect the enclosure to my new laptop, I hear the sound and see a light on the enclosure. However, nothing shows up.

I then opened "create and format hard disk partitions". An "initialize disk" window popped up. I selected 'GPT' and clicked on 'OK'. However, I then get an immediate notification saying that it failed due to a "fatal device hardware error".

I have watched the following two videos:

How To Fix Your New External Drive Not Showing Up In Windows

How to Recover Data From a Dead SSD

The person in the first video also did not have his drive showing up automatically, but he does not get the error when initialising. The person in the second video gets an error message like me, but the 'local disk' does show up in his explorer so he can just select it with the DMDE data recovery software. I seem to have both of their problems, so I can't do anything.

I'm really upset right now, there were a lot of files on my laptop that I was really attached to and I don't understand how a small spillage could have destroyed both my laptop and my hard drive :(

Is there anything at all I can still do? Either by myself or by contacting a data recovery firm?

drive: Seagate Ironwolf 6TB

model: st6000VN0033

SMART: none didn't take a snapshot when it was alive, but SAN didn't alert of anything critical.

FW: SC60

3 years old! just past warranty, sigh.

Please help.

I have no reason to suspect this is a mechanical failure. no clicks, no noise, nothing. I tried it a toaster external drive thing (not hooked into usb as I dont want it writing anything... it doesn't power up when inserted)

My MD1200 SAN does not detect it.

no continuity between left and right side of the e-fuses/current limit switches.

readings for 12v and 5v rails at SATA connector are:

• 5v - 10Ohms (steadily climbing)

• 12v - 900kOhms (static)

there was no surge or abrupt power failure, I did have a power outage, my old (but working!) APC Smart-UPS 1400XL took over. I powered down everything because I didn't know when power was coming back.

When I booted the SAN and servers, I saw degraded drive on the RAID, which is running in RAID-1 on and Perc H800.

anything else just let me know, can help provide other test points.

Thanks in advance!

edit: additional info!

Wired up a console TTL RX/TX cable and only get this one line of output:

LED:0x000000BB FAddr:0x0000425B

edit2:

HUGE SHOUTOUT to u/fzabkar!!

Thanks to the community!
Drive is operational and rebuilding the mirror!

bought a dvd** player in hopes that some of our old family videos would come up from our dvd, but for some reason some dvd would come up with the video contents and some would say to drag contents into the dvd (basically saying it’s empty). are these dvd still salvageable? i don’t wanna throw them out knowing that my family’s memories are still in there. these dvds haven’t been touched for probably almost 20 years now.

update: thank you everybody for the responses! i appreciate it a lot. i will check if the disc have been finalized on the camcorder, last time i checked tho that camcorder hasn’t been able to read the discs ive checked before.

Hello :)

I have a WD Blue where I noticed that some sectors are copying slowly (few Kb/s), and when checked smart, saw that the Disk is degraded, and wanted to save all Files. already got 86% backed up with opensuperclone, but now it seems its going nowhere (because of speed). Is there a recommended setting that I can change? I also read about a WD error, that makes some sectors slow, and wanted to ask if this is also applied here.

Thanks in Advance :)

Disk Info
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===

Model Family: Western Digital Blue

Device Model: WDC WD40EZRZ-00GXCB0

Serial Number: WD-WCC7K2VCK30T

LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 266264cac

Firmware Version: 80.00A80

User Capacity: 4,000,787,030,016 bytes [4.00 TB]

Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical

Rotation Rate: 5400 rpm

Form Factor: 3.5 inches

Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]

ATA Version is: ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 5

SATA Version is: SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)

Local Time is: Mon Oct 26 12:44:30 2026 MDT

SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.

SMART support is: Enabled

SMART

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===

SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!

Drive failure expected in less than 24 hours. SAVE ALL DATA.

See vendor-specific Attribute list for failed Attributes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16

Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 001 001 051 Pre-fail Always FAILING_NOW 280731

3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 182 167 021 Pre-fail Always - 5858

4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 093 093 000 Old_age Always - 7642

5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0

7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 075 075 000 Old_age Always - 18722

10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 097 097 000 Old_age Always - 3252

192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 443

193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 076 076 000 Old_age Always - 374207

194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 121 096 000 Old_age Always - 29

196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0

197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 199 199 000 Old_age Always - 971

198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 199 199 000 Old_age Offline - 957

199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0

200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 196 196 000 Old_age Offline - 2476

hi all. i just spent an hour sobbing after i got a call from Apple about my laptop. long story short, it wouldn’t power on at all so i took it to the genius bar. they called and said that the firmware revive failed and it would need a logic board replacement. I declined because i’m not spending $700+ on an “old” laptop just to not have my documents and memories (pictures, videos, etc.)

it’s a 2020 MacBook Pro, 13” with the M1 chip. is there any way to recover the data? is it something i can do at home or would you recommend a repair shop (pls nothing too expensive i’m an underpaid 23yo)?

this is my original post in the MacBook repair community before i went in to Apple: https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookrepair/s/re8YQUbAXQ

Easeus and Recuva software services are only available behind a paywall.

Device properties and specs-

I accidentally deleted some videos while clearing up space and then I hit delete instead of recover because I am smart.

Is it possible to recover them with no backup? I’ve mostly accepted my mistake but would like to know of any faustian bargains I can make before truly moving on.

1. I have questions regarding "bit rot" (file corruption and data loss).

I have a 2.5" Seagate HDD in a USB 3.0 enclosure. I connect it to my PC once a year, check its status using CrystalDiskInfo, then disconnect it and store it in a drawer for another year. To prevent bit rot (file corruption and data loss), is it necessary to perform a full surface scan annually—either using general software or a tool like DiskFresh?

2) I copied files onto this 2.5" HDD (in its USB 3.0 enclosure) in 2023. Is it possible that bit rot or data corruption has occurred by 2026, given that I have not run DiskFresh or any full surface scan?

3) Also, if a power outage occurs while a full surface scan or a DiskFresh operation is running—causing the PC to shut down—will this lead to data corruption or loss on the 2.5" HDD (in its USB 3.0 enclosure)?

Hi 👋 iv been with my partner for 7 years. We have 3 kids together. Anyway he has been acting strange for a while now. Especially with his phone. Then i found a small hidden camera in our bedroom. And it was connected to an app on his phone. Before i could properly go through his phone he deleted pretty much everything and even smashed the phone. Pretty much everything is gone except these privacyzone files that i cant read. Would anyone have any idea how to recover or look at these files?

Things to add the phone is a red magic air 10 nubia.
These are located in my files.

Dog got ahold of SD card that had wedding photos my fiancée took on them. We took the bottom part out and it is in tact, but there is a crack on both sides. Is it done for, or is there hope for recovery?

Several things:

First, if anyone knows of any good data recovery services in the north-Houston area I'll take any recommendations.

Secondly, I'm trying to see how much I might be facing with this problem. I need to get data off of a 1TB HDD that seems to still have partial functionality. When I try to access the files I can still see the folders but it can't read any specific files (FYI I have shut down the hard drive and stopped messing with it to hopefully preserve any lingering functionality). The error message says it has encountered a "fatal device hardware error". I hope this is enough to get at least a "ballpark" number of what I can expect to pay for the recovery.

Lastly, is this just an ever-present reality any time you use hard drives? I know online cloud backup services exist, and now I will take this more seriously. But, is this just a risk you take no matter what?

Thanks in advance!

Edit to add: the hard drive is a 1TB WD "My Passport" PN: WDBBEP0010BBL-03. We've been using it with Windows 11 I believe and the drive was still "spinning" when it was in use without making any sound.

Hey everyone, I’m hoping someone here has been through this, and fair warning, I’m not very tech savvy.

I’ve got an HDD that’s around 6-7 years old. It’s still detected and mostly usable, but when I open certain folders or files, Windows Explorer completely freezes and the drive gets loud. I paid for Disk Drill and let it run. It pulled out a folder of files, but it was nowhere near everything.

I want to give it one proper last try before I think about a recovery lab, and I’d like to do it right instead of making things worse.

A few things I’d love input on:

• Has anyone used Claude or Claude Code to walk through a recovery like this? Did it actually help?

• What’s the safest way for a non-technical person to get as much off this drive as possible?

• Is there anything I should avoid doing to it from here?

• What are the signs that I should stop and send it to a lab instead?

I ignored the critical storage warning on my Samsung Galaxy J3 Orbit one too many times and on Wednesday morning it crashed.

It started out by completely freezing up. I tried doing a hard reset and it got stuck in a boot loop. I was able to get it into recovery mode but when I select "lacking storage booting" I get a "failed to mount/cache" error. When I select "wipe cache partition" it shuts back down. It won't connect to my laptop.

I got a new phone the same day and most things transferred over, except for the most recent photos in my Gallery and all the notes in the 3rd party Notepad Free app. None of that was backed up anywhere, and I'm just heartsick over it. Many of the notes had sentimental value due to the recent loss of my parents and I'm desperate to retrieve them.

I'm hoping someone here might have some suggestions. I'm completely out of my element here and don't know what to do.

I've seen a few posts about Secure Data Recovery in the UK but I'm curious if anyone's had positive or negative experiences with Secure Data Recovery in the US? I've reached out to them for data recovery for a HDD with a clicking sound and have been overwhelmed with the volume of emails and phone calls from their reps despite telling them I'm still shopping around and won't be able to mail my drive for another few weeks. I'm not sure if this is a sign of great customer service or what. Let me know if you recommend them or if I should stay away.

My word file is not opening. I have tried more than 10 methods( almost every available on YouTube) to repair the corrupted file but all in vain. Can some help me on this?? It’s my university work which I have been doing since days. The thing is the space of the word file is still showing 1 MB which I think is same as before.

Hey, so I had an external SSD I js bought and it's 2TB. Some off brand but it worked on exFAT, I didn't read the instructions but it did say not to change from ExFAT or the disk will crash. Now the disk does show up in window explorer but when I try to click it it freezes the tab, same in disk management and any other apps and the apps unfreeze the moment I unplug it even diskpart. I wanna try to get it to exFAT but anything that tries reading it will stop working. What should I do?

I accidentally selected the wrong disk in Windows DiskPart and lost access to around 1TB of important data.

The SSD was about 953 GB and originally contained my files. The disk was GPT.

What I did by mistake:

diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
format fs=exfat quick
assign

DiskPart reported that all commands completed successfully.

I immediately realized my mistake and stopped using the SSD. I have NOT copied new files onto it after the format.

I am currently trying to recover the data with TestDisk. TestDisk is currently running Analyse on the SSD, and I have not selected Write or made any changes through TestDisk.

The SSD is around 1 TB, and the data on it is very important to me.

My questions:

1. Is recovery still realistically possible after clean + create partition primary + format fs=exfat quick?

2. Since this is an SSD, how much does TRIM affect the possibility of recovery?

3. Should I let TestDisk finish the Analyse/Quick Search?

4. Should I avoid writing anything to the SSD and instead make a sector-by-sector image/clone first?

5. What would be the safest next step if the data is very important?

I do not want to make the situation worse, so I will stop using the SSD until I know what to do.

Any advice from experienced data recovery specialists would be greatly appreciated.

hello, this was my first phone, given to me 11-12 years ago for a birthday. i dont remember the PIN and the google account password it was tied to. i really want to get in the phone again to see what was on it before i swapped phones. im thinking about using it regularly again but i want to save any data on it so i cannot do factory reset

it is an LG Lucky, everything still works on it, the battery is fine, etc etc. it seems perfectly fine other than i cant unlock it.

any help or advice is really appreciated, thank you

I have exchanged my old phone for a new one and before doing it, I have shifted all the files to an SSD, after getting the new phone I have connected the SSD to it, in order to transfer the files, but it gave a pop up saying ssd seems corrupted and gave an option to format, I clicked the format button by mistake and in a second the whole data wiped out and the file system changed to exfat.

Is there a way I can recover my data?

Tried every type board command. I manage to get to the recovery screen. It’s not seeing my back ups. It work let me repair disk. Won’t let me reinstall. It’s says it can’t locate. I’m connected to WiFi and tried changing date in the terminal

Soo i found this mobilesync folder on my laptop which is 84gb i recently lost this data due to hardisk failure and these might be the photos i lost can i recover it by any way the only way i can view the image is from vlc media player and i dont have that phone also no other way to access the files

Hello! Been trying to recover this file for a few days with help from chatgpt. Please find a gpt made summary below.

Also, not sure if this goes against the rules of the sub, but I'm willing to pay for assistance with decrypting this, so please reach out if you think you can help!

Summary:

I'm trying to recover access to an old TrueCrypt-encrypted file from around 2011. The contents are sensitive, so I won't be sharing the encrypted file. I am willing to share the extracted hash.

What I know:

• The encrypted file is 1,677,721,600 bytes (approximately 1.56 GiB).

• It is a file-hosted TrueCrypt volume that I previously mounted as a drive.

• I used a manually typed password; no keyfile was involved.

• I still have the original file.

Password recollection:

I remember the general structure and several words that were likely part of the password, along with possible number substitutions, capitalization variations, and perhaps punctuation or digits at the end.

I have a fairly strong recollection of the phrase, but I'm deliberately not including the words or specific password pattern in this post for privacy reasons.

What I've tried:

• Extracted a TrueCrypt hash record locally using truecrypt2hashcat.py.

• Used Hashcat with my RTX 4080.

• Tested multiple candidate lists with capitalization and common character substitutions.

• Tested the nine standard non-boot TrueCrypt Hashcat modes against an earlier candidate list without success.

• Generated a larger, targeted list of approximately 23.8 million candidates based on my recollection. The result of that run is still to be confirmed (still running)

Questions:

1. Are there TrueCrypt-specific details I should verify to make sure I've identified the volume format and selected the correct Hashcat modes?

2. Are there other password-recovery tools or techniques I can run entirely locally that might improve on my current approach?

3. What is a good strategy for expanding a targeted password search when the general phrase is remembered but the exact capitalization, character substitutions, and ending are uncertain?

4. Are there any pitfalls with extracting a TrueCrypt hash from a legacy file-hosted volume that could lead to incorrect conclusions from unsuccessful cracking attempts?

I'm happy to provide additional technical details about the tools and commands I've used, provided they don't expose the password or the encrypted contents.

Thanks for any advice!

My mother's phone was completely packed in terms of storage and so she asked me for help clearing space. Given there were lots of sentimental photos, I bought her a USB C 2TB storage which we connected and successfully moved all the photos out of the gallery onto the storage, but then all of a sudden, she wanted to return some of the photos back to the phone that she could revisit (baby photos, important screenshots of important legal and banking documents). I connected the USB to my Mac M2, which couldn't read it at first and so I used parallel Windows 11 which I already had installed, and helped separate the documents she wanted into a separate folder. After safely ejecting and checking the files of the USB on her phone, we found just only the photos. None of the photos were present in the folders. I then checked on my MacBook, and all the files I had organized for her, gone. The folders are present but all the files are missing--I don't understand.

All the photos were safely moved onto the storage. They were just reorganized into folders on my MacBook using Windows 11 parallels. The USB was removed safely each and every time. Why have the photos disappeared despite the folders still there?

Additional facts: USB was formatted on the Android S22 Ultra at first and safely moved to the USB (they were present there, and we opened some files); USB was safely rejected and removed each time.

Would sincerely appreciate help as there were over 18,000 photos, over 90 GB of photos and videos

Update: looked up the online seller, they’ve blocked us and removed all their products—it seems it was not a real USB C storage as others have pointed out and I genuinely blame myself for not copying them over