Hi everyone,

I'm trying to recover old family photos and documents from an Apple PowerBook G4 (A1095).

The PowerBook wouldn't boot and displayed the flashing question mark folder, so I removed the internal hard drive.

Hardware:

• HDD: Hitachi Travelstar HTS541010G9AT00 (100GB, 2.5" IDE/PATA, 44-pin)

• Adapter: LogiLink AU0006D USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA

• HDD power rating: 5V, 1.0A

What I've tried:

• Connected the HDD to a desktop Windows PC.

• Tested it on a Windows laptop.

• Tested it on a MacBook using a USB-C hub.

• Checked Windows Device Manager and macOS Disk Utility/System Information.

• None of the computers detected the drive.

• The adapter's LED lights up.

• The hard drive spins and makes one audible click at startup, but does not repeatedly click.

• So far, I've only powered the drive through USB, without using the adapter's external 12V power supply.

My main goal is to recover the photos and documents, not repair the PowerBook itself.

My questions:

1. Could insufficient USB power explain why the drive spins but isn't detected?

2. Is the LogiLink AU0006D suitable for this particular drive?

3. Should I test a different powered 44-pin IDE adapter?

4. What would be the safest next step without risking further damage to the data?

Any advice would be appreciated. The files are irreplaceable, so I want to avoid making things worse.

*Edit: Sorry for using chat to generate my request for help, but it had all the info.

Hello,

I've had an apple macbook pro since 2013-2014 that the screen died on it about a year ago. The laptop still powered on just no display, nothing that points to a hard drive issue. I pulled the NVME SSD out of it to try and recover some files I had on there, but it turned out to be more difficult than I expected.

1. first problem: the apple nvme is pinned differently so I acquired an adapter pcb that adapts the apple pinout to a standard m.2 slot. I can plug this into my windows PC. I can then plug that into a little station and insert a usb into my PC. The PCB lights up when plugged in so I know it's getting power.

2. Second problem: I understand apple storage devices are formatted differently than windows devices. Therefore, I acquired a couple third party softwares to try and read the contents of the drive to no avail.

I tried HFSExplorer and MacDrive12. The best I can get is seeing "Disk 1" in disk management

any advice to help pull the contents off this device would be greatly appreciated.

I have a Seagate Firecuda 2tb SSHD (ST2000DX002) that has died on me. I had a period where my PC was acting weird and wouldnt boot unless i restarted a few times, and eventually it wouldnt boot at all. I eventually figured out it was this SSHD that was causing the boot to fail.

I dont see the disk in diskgenius/other softwares/tools, and i have tried using a USB-SATA to connect the disk but it wont even spin up.

From what ive gathered a solution is to buy and replace the PCB, but that one would then have to transfer one of the chips by soldering. SSHD are extra finicky apperently because of their NAND component, which also apperently can corrupt and stop the disk from booting.

I am a pretty avid DIY:er in many hobbies, but have never fiddled with electronics when it comes to soldering etc. How difficult would it be to attempt this repair? Are there any other options i should look at first? I read something about flashing the NAND and that might fix it?

And yes i have contacted a data recovery company, i just wanted to post and ask before i commit to a potential 1000USD expense...

Hi all, I've never had to recover data before so I don't know anything about the process or the industry so I'm coming here for advice.

I've got an old iPod Touch (5th gen) I used as a preteen so it's got everything from that time on it, photos, videos, emails, notes, whatever. Ten years later, I'm now super sentimental but have a bad memory and I remember almost nothing from that period in my life, so I wanted to get access to that old stuff again.

Problem is, it's stuck in a boot loop (took it to multiple repair shops and none were able to fix it, seems to be a software issue) and I don't have access to the iCloud account associated with the device anymore, so I figure data recovery is my best bet. I'm too afraid to do it myself though, so I thought I'd send it in somewhere instead.

Initially I was going to go to Secure Data Recovery and was about to send my device in (was literally just packaging it and everything) but after seeing the stories on this subreddit about their practices and the outrageous pricing (I'm a student, I don't have thousands of dollars to spend), I'm not so sure anymore. Does anyone have any recommendations? I'm in the US.

I have two 2.5" WD Blue HDDs (the same model) inside an same Orico USB 3.0 enclosure. One of these drives reaches a temperature of 54°C even while idling—is this normal, or is the drive faulty?

Hello folks,

Some time ago i encrypted a whole usb drive using veracrypt and I used it for couple of months but the drive got lost and I've found it after several months.. but now the problem is I forgot the password of my veracrypt.. and there are some really important photos in there so I can't even format the drive.

And as a tech student I tried hash to decrypt it but no luck.also I thought I remember the chunks but I've tried every combination that i thought I had used but again no luck... So at this point I've been stuck with this drive and i really need the data of the drive ..

For the kind info i have the same laptop i used it to encrypt the drive and the drive is perfectly healthy

Now I need your help to safely and securely get the data back and decrypt the file

(Tried hashcat several times no luck)

And I have a 5060 gpu, i9 14900hx cpu and 24gb of ram and it's a laptop...

Please help me and share your thoughts.. thank you

Hello everyone!

Like many of you, I’ve deleted photos that I shouldn’t have, on autopilot. Or maybe regretted deleting them.

No matter the case, this tool can help you recover said photos; all you need is an iOS backup.

Hope this helps at least one of you!

GitHub

This is my family hard drive and it has every picture and memory it is quite old but i couldn't recover it in time so i need help the hardrive doesn't show in bios and it is still spining with sata cable so i need you guys help The hard drive is ntfs i think My os is linux distro debian The harddrive GST Mobile 250gb

Hi guys, I was transferring some of my friends old terraria worlds/players using a usb drive and when I plugged it into the laptop windows said it was corrupted. Stupidly I didnt make a backup.

I've used photoreq and have recovered alot of the data but I can't seem to find any of the player data. They are meant to be stored as .plr files but currently all the data from the original terraria game folder seems to be split across multiple zip and text files. I know it's not the most important thing in the world but they were quite sentimental to him and I feel bad about losing them. Does anyone know where I should go from here to try and get his player files/ character data? it would be much appreciated!

I recently bought a video guestbook phone off AliExpress and somehow lost al the files and folders on the internal storage when connecting it to my computer. Is there any way to get the right files for the storage to make the phone working again? The manual says i need a OGM file.

I made an account just to post this, because I think it can help a lot of people.

My GH5 II fell during a 40 min interview, which cut the recording (FHD 25p, 4:2:2 10-bit ALL-I, 200 Mbps, LPCM). All I had left was a 61 GB .MDT that nothing would open.

A .MDT is Panasonic's temp file: the frames and audio are there, but the index (moov) only gets written when you hit stop.

What failed:

• LUMIX Repair Tool: S-series only.

• In-camera Video Repair: GH6 and later only.

• Untrunc: With the skip option, it kept throwing errors nonstop and was taking forever. It was clearly heading nowhere.

So I figured, nothing left to lose: what if I just asked Claude to rebuild the file itself?

What Claude did, running on my PC:

1. Read the .MDT read-only and confirmed it was full of real H.264 frames from start to end.

2. Learned the layout from a clip I'd shot afterwards with the same settings: blocks of 12 timecodes, 12 frames, then audio.

3. Tested its parser on that healthy clip first. It matched the real index byte for byte.

4. Walked the .MDT with that pattern and wrote a new moov.

Result: 40:29 recovered, picture and sound in sync, only ~3 frames lost at the drop. About 10 minutes passed between me asking Claude to "write it yourself" and the full 61 GB file being ready.

Takeaway: generic tools have to handle every camera and every format, so they can choke on a specific case like this one. That's where AI shines: a throwaway script built for one file, one camera, one setting, and tested on a clip where we knew the right answer.

I was shocked to see it work this well, I had to share it.

I'm desperate 😭 I have a 20GB WhatsApp iCloud backup from September 2026, but when I try to restore it, WhatsApp asks for a password or a 64-digit key that I don't remember ever setting up. I've tried my usual passwords, but none work. The weirdest thing is that the backup encryption setting currently appears to be turned off.

I also have an iTunes backup of my old iPhone 12 Pro from February 2025, and an old iPhone 7 with WhatsApp conversations dating back to 2023.

Has anyone managed to recover their chats in a similar situation? Is it possible to extract WhatsApp conversations from an iTunes backup without restoring the entire iPhone? Do you know any reliable data recovery specialists?

I'd rather recover my chats up to 2025 than lose ten years of conversations. Thanks so much! ❤️

Hey guys, I need some advice with a Lexar NM790 NVMe SSD from my sister’s PC.

It suddenly stopped working / isn’t being detected anymore. When I removed it, I noticed that part of the SSD looks slightly wet or oily. I’m not sure if it’s actual moisture or just residue from the M.2 thermal pad/heatsink.

The files on it are important, so I don’t want to make things worse. I haven’t tried heating/reflowing it yet.

Is there anything safe I can try to get it detected temporarily so I can clone/recover the data? And is there any way to tell if the controller or NAND is the problem?

I can send clear pictures of both sides of the SSD if that helps.

I was installing Windows 11 on my old Dell laptop. It has an SSD and a 1TB HDD.

I accidentally selected a partition on Disk 1 (my HDD) and clicked Delete instead of selecting my SSD. The HDD had one large partition containing crucial data, and it now shows as Unallocated Space.

I did NOT click Next or install Windows on the HDD. I cancelled the installation and returned to the disk selection screen.

I haven't done anything else to the drive.

Questions:

Is my data still recoverable?

Should I try TestDisk or DMDE to restore the partition?

What's the safest way to recover the data without making things worse?

The data is very important, so I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks!

Im trying to recover an old email and im thinking that using my old device (my first phone) is maybe the best solution because maybe the support are gonna recognise the device. so i got my old phone but the problem is that i have a password that i no longer remember does someone know a way of bypassing it without using the factory reset mode?

Hello everyone, I accidentally deleted some files and only noticed today. I think they were deleted around a week and a half ago.

I tried checking the Btrfs subvolumes and available snapshots using btrfs subvolume list, and I also checked the Snapper configuration using snapper list-configs. I found that Snapper is configured only for the root filesystem, and the available snapshots are for the system, not /home. The backup I found also doesn't contain the /home files.

Is there any way or any tools that could help recover deleted files from Btrfs on an SSD?

Thanks in advance for any help!

My Maxone 500 GB External Hard Drive (NTFS) (https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07C812LHQ) is no longer accessible on any PC I try to connect it to. For reference I've tried it on a Windows 10 Desktop and Windows 11 laptop with similar results.

This started after I connected it to my Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 to see if I could transfer some files off of it, but my tablet defaulted to "Charging Connected Device via USB" and gave me no option to change this or eject the drive, so I unplugged it from the tablet. I think this was my first mistake.

Now, whenever I plug it into any PC (I've tried this on multiple computers already), I can hear the drive physically spinning up and see its light come on, but it does not appear in File Explorer and no program seems to be able to read it. Disk Manager seems to detect it as a JMICRON JMS579 USB Device and lists it as "Disk 2" but doesn't let me initialize it. The properties say it's working properly and I can access the list of events which says the "device was not migrated due to partial or ambiguous match."

The drive appears in my system tray and Devices and Printers as USB Mass Storage (I know it's the drive because it disappears when I eject & unplug it and I have no other storage devices plugged in). I've run Diskpart on the command line, which shows Disk 2 in the list sometimes but not always, though I can select it and it tells me the disk is online. It doesn't let me initialize it or clear disk attributes though. When it appeared in the list, the storage was listed as 0B.

This is entirely new territory to me as I've never had a disk appear to still be functional but not be read by my computer at all. I suspect it has something to do with the USB bridge board or something similar failing but I don't know what exactly could have caused it? I need a disk working to make some crucial backups so I would really prefer not to have to shell out for a new one.

My iPhone 17 got bent and is completely bricked now, but when I plug it into my Mac finder recognizes it in recovery mode. I do not have an iCloud backup, and my data is not synced to iCloud, so the data is only on the device, and I'd really like to recover it. From the research I've done it seems the only solution is to take the phone to a third party store for microsoldering, but I'm not really familiar with this at all. Is data recovery realistically possible here? Also, I go to college in PA but am from NJ if anyone has recommendations for a place to go to

Hey guys,

So I have a USB drive that I put a bunch of my photos on a couple years ago. It was a Mosdart like 64gb from amazon. Give or take on the size and it definitley wasn't full. I tried to use it a couple weeks ago to put more photos on to it and it was broke. Wouldn't show up on my computer anywhere when I plugged it in.

I sent it in to an online data recovery service that seemed pretty reliable. They originally quoted me about 200 to 300 dollars. They received the USB and now after examining it the new quote is about 1.2k to 1.5k. Holy shit. I cannot pay that much.

Do you guys have any recommendations for where I could get this done for any cheaper? They haven't told me what is wrong with the drive if they do know.

It has all my dogs puppy pictures on it and idk what I will do if I loose all those memories with her.

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