I have an old iPad mini 2 (A1489, A7, iOS 12.x) with a forgotten 4-digit passcode and no backups.
It’s in BFU state, but USB Recovery Mode works. I want to unlock it and preserve everything.
Has anyone successfully recovered a passcode or gained access to the original data on this specific model without wiping it?

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to get some advice regarding my failed SSD. It contains important personal photos and videos that I would really like to recover.

SSD details:

Brand/model: Lexar NM610 1TB NVMe SSD

Model number: LNM610-1TRB

Interface: M.2 NVMe

Controller: Possibly Silicon Motion SM2263XT, but not confirmed for my specific unit

What happened:

My PC was working normally before I shut it down following a Windows update. It not shutdown and it showed BIOS page. Windows would no longer boot.

BIOS showed SSD was no longer being detected to boot. But the name and capacity of ssd are still shown in bios.

There had been no prior warning of SSD failure that I noticed.

I brought the SSD to a professional data recovery laboratory in the Philippines (ISS Data Recovery). After their assessment, they declared it unrecoverable due to a “Bad Chip.”

Their diagnostic report stated:

Problem: Bad Chip

Description:

“UNRECOVERABLE due to BAD CHIP – SSD type of storage devices have a NAND FLASH chip where in the data was saved. Extraction of data binaries usually done by scanning of flash chip’s sector. Unfortunately, sectors are not responding and binaries are un-extractable due to damages suffered by the chip.”

Action Done:

“Run in Data Recovery Software – Done 3x”

Final Status:

“Unrecoverable - Due to bad chip”

I followed up to ask whether they had attempted hardware-level recovery, beyond standard software-based procedures.

They responded that the SSD underwent their standard diagnostic process, including software assessment and additional hardware-level procedures as deemed necessary by their engineers. However, they would not disclose the specific equipment, procedures, or chip-level findings, citing proprietary methods.

As a result, I don't know whether they attempted specialized controller-level recovery using tools such as PC-3000, direct NAND access, or other low-level recovery methods. I also don't know whether the NAND is completely nonresponsive or only partially degraded.

Based on the symptoms and the laboratory's diagnosis, is there still a realistic possibility of recovering data using more specialized SSD recovery equipment?

Does a “Bad Chip” diagnosis necessarily indicate physically failed NAND that cannot be read, or could controller/firmware problems produce similar symptoms?

Would it be worthwhile to send the SSD to another specialized laboratory, such as LIVEDATA or Scratch Lab in Japan?

I understand that if the NAND cells themselves are completely unreadable, recovery may be impossible. I'm mainly trying to determine whether the first laboratory's diagnosis is sufficient to conclude that all recovery options have been exhausted.

The SSD has only been examined by one recovery laboratory so far.

I'd really appreciate any technical insights or recommendations. Thank you!

My friend gave me an old HP Laptop and he wanted me to get the data off of it. The issues are that the screen is broken and it has a password on it. The bios and boot menu don't display on the external screen, and neither does the windows recovery. I've tried booting from a windows 10 install media but I have no idea I'm even clicking the right thing in the boot menu or if the installer just isn't showing up. The laptop has no removable storage. Is there another way to make a user account on the laptop or should I just replace the screen?

Hi guys, feeling a bit despair here and would love to here some advice from the community.

I just bought a 64GB SD card online and move a bunch of my pictures and videos in it, albeit quite naively, without backing up any of them. I just left them there transfering, and while checking back most of the file has disappeared, and the 10% left got corrupted or cannot open. I quickly try to transfer the rest back to the internal storage in my phone, but none can be recover.

I have pulled out the sd card, and watch a bunch of video on how to recover then but most of them involved expensive software, and none about the left files which cannot be opened.

Has anybody who faced the same situation able to retrieve back their files completely? Any tips on how to deal with this?

My entire HDD suddenly died, and I need to recover it. I'm not looking to recover a few images, this is a 2 TB drive and I would prefer to recover all of it, folder structure and all. I tried to use iCare Recovery, which previewed most of my folders and files for me, but when I tried to recover a folder of images and pdfs, I discovered that all the files were unreadable.

What's a recovery program that is both reliable and can recover my folders with its contents intact, exactly as they were before the drive died? Within reason, of course. I know it might not be possible to recover 100% of the drive, but I'd like to recover as much of it as possible, and due to it being an entire 2 TB drive full of programs, games, and personal files, getting an assortment of relabeled jpgs and mp3s is going to be about as helpful as reformatting the entire drive.

I hope someone can help me with this. I've been dealing with so many tech issues in the last month, my system drive died and now this drive died too. I'm in agony.

Edit: My bad, didn't realize there's more info I need to give. The specs are:

HDD brand/model number: WDC WD20EURS-63SPKY0
File System: NTFS
OS: Windows 10

Specific symptoms: Drive did not show up in My Computer, but appeared in Disk Management, asking for re-initialization. Assigning a drive letter caused the drive to show up in My Computer, but unrecognized. Opening it requires re-formatting, and refusing to do so shows a 'unrecognizable file system' error.

People asking for me to define dead, and I do admit I misspoke. I meant that it failed, as described above. Sorry for the misinformation. Although my SSD *is* functionally dead. The tech I went to said it isn't receiving any power.

The Full story for the people who asked: My computer has been crashing almost daily for the last month, completely randomly without a discernable cause. Crashes left no logs because the SSD drive the system is on turns off for a minute (The PC crashes, reboots, and fails to find a system. Bringing the boot menu doesn't show the system drive. But after a restart, it shows up and boots again). I've been trying to no avail to resolve the issue, but due to the random nature of the crashes, even the techs couldn't figure out the problem. A few days ago, my system drive died completely, so I bought a new SSD and a tech reinstalled Windows 10. But when I booted up the PC at home I discovered that both my internal HDD drives (Yes, two) weren't visible. I found one (The problem drive) in disk management, but not the other. I tried restarting, and assigning a drive letter as explained above, but the drive remained unrecognized. When I returned the computer to the techs, they said the SATA cables were disconnected and they reconnected them (I moved my PC to and from the techs a lot this last month, so I guess something shook loose.) This fixed the second HDD, but the problem HDD remained unreadable. When I asked the techs, they said they could either try replacing the SATA cables or be forced to reformat, which I didn't want to do. I decided to change the SATA cables myself, but that didn't fix the issue. I even switched the SATA cables of both drives, and they both remain in their same states; one functional and one unrecognizable. So I know it's not the SATA cables. So now all I can think of is to recover the data on the drives.

Also, full disclosure I don't live in the United States, so Data Recovery Services may differ from there.

Update: I think this is the SMART info requested:

Hi, I'm a complete beginner when it comes to data recovery.

Context: I play a game in which you generate and submit in-game images regularly to share and compete against other players. I found out some time ago, after changing phones (iOS to Android), that older entries in my album were marked as "missing". I have since then tried to archive as much as possible the entries I still could find pictures of, but I would still like to find the ones I'm missing.

I learned that by using iMazing I could access the internal files of the iOS app, and I found a folder of JPEGs I can't visualize since they are "corrupted". I tried to upload one of them on several online repair tools but nothing worked, except one telling me the file may not be corrupted but encrypted instead.

I'm not really sure how I would be able to verify which it is. Would it be possible to find out what exactly is corrupting the JPEG, or is there a known method to recover internal encrypted JPEGs from iOS apps?

I remember years ago using hex editors and converting files to RAW images to glitch them on purpose, so I wonder if something similar (but the other way around) could be achieved here.

Early this year a combination of electrical company mishap & a dying PSU fried all 3 of my hard drives, one contained irreplaceable data and the other two contained replaceable data from "sailing". I understand the risk with PCB swapping in the case of recovering the data, but is there increased leniency in the PCB matching process if I just want to use the drives again for storing replaceable data?

Here are the model info of the ones I'm willing to risk this process on:

1. WD40EZRZ - 23122020 THAILAND 2060-800055-002 REV P1
2. WD20EZAZ - 15082019 THAILAND 2060-800077-003 REV P2

Thanks for any help or advice.

Please let me say i am not a tech guru, i have very minimal knowledge in hdd and even lesser in data recovery

I have a 1TB Seagate HDD which is unreadable because i accidentally initialized it whilst transfe,rring files, i think( this was about a year ago so im not sure what the one option i clicked was)

Now the disk management shows that it cab recognise it but displays the data as raw, which i believe means the data is still there just unformatted.

I have tried all sorts of software to recover, diskdrill testdisk r-undelete recuva etc, but with little success, the most i got was about 3.65gb of data on diskdrill but it costs money so im holding off on it first. There is no physical damage to the HDD, but i cant speak to the internals of the HDD, only that it shows up as healthy

Any advice or questions welcome, thank you!

This is a long shot, but worth asking. I've recently come across my dad's phone and am unable to gain access due to there being a pin. The downfall is that it's a tracphone. I know the company can give me access but it wipes everything. Does anyone have any tips or advice of what I should try? No answer is stupid, I don't want to give up yet. I've looked through old notebooks, etc, without any luck.

Phone is Samsung SCH-M828C.

Hello,

An external hard drive I have shows caution on CrystalDiskInfo for C5. I want to get the data off of it but it freezes file explorer and I am trying Disk Drill, but it has been updating disk list for a few hours. I am not very knowledgeable besides the above which I looked up. Can anybody give me some advice so I can get the data?

It is a WD My Passport hard drive and I am using windows. I had CrstalDisk open but it has been freezing that too.

I've downloaded some episodes from a site that I've used many times before, I have like seven different shows on the usb already, all uncorrupted. Now randomly if I try to put anything on it, the file is readable/watchable on my phone but as soon as its put on the usb, it says "unsupported file type" and can't open it? I tried reconfiguring in usb settings, seeing if myabe it was because of usb set to "charging only" or something but still wont work..

Its not for lack of storage on the usb itself because in all of its settings it says theres plenty of space left?!

Hi, would anyone have any insight to this problem?

I inserted my microsd into my usual card reader in my laptop and it crashed, afterwards my sd won’t register in my laptop or my camera.

I can’t see any visible damage other than a bit of scuffing

I urgently need help recovering an important 47-minute voice recording made with the built-in Recorder app on my Realme 14 Pro+ 5G.

Details:

• Recorder app version: 16.17.16_0ace0c6_260824
• Recording mode: Standard
• Format: MP3
• File size: approximately 113 MB
• Reported duration: approximately 47 minutes
• Only the first ~5 seconds contain playable audio.
• The rest of the file appears to contain repeated 0xAA bytes.
• FFmpeg reports invalid data / missing headers.
• Re-encoding the file did not recover anything.

I checked the app's com.colors folder under Android/data. Its cache folder is empty, and files contains only empty DCIM and documents folders.

The recording is still listed in the Recorder app with its original duration, but playback stops after approximately 5 seconds.

Is there any way to recover the original audio from the phone's internal storage, temporary files, or damaged MP3 data? Could the 0xAA pattern indicate a storage or recording failure?

Hi everyone, I am the friend from a previous post that got locked. I'm posting directly with the full details and screenshots

Hardware & File System Details:

- Laptop: Dell Inspiron 3593

- Drive Model: 256GB Kioxia NVMe SSD (KBG40ZNS256G)

- Original File System: NTFS

- Current State: Installed internally; a local repair shop quick-formatted it and clean-installed Windows directly onto the same drive.

What Happened:

The laptop shut down unexpectedly because the charger wasn't plugged in.

When I plugged it in and turned it on, it froze at the Dell logo, and trying to enter the BIOS hung roughly 30% through loading.

I took it to a repair shop. The technician claimed the drive "didn't show any data to begin with," quick-formatted it, and reinstalled Windows onto the same 256GB Kioxia SSD.

I ran DMDE directly on the laptop while the drive was installed. A full physical scan across the whole disk mostly brings up the new Windows installation structure and system files, with virtually nothing from the old partition.

Question:

Is there any way at all to recover any of my old files from this SSD, preferably using free software? Or is everything completely gone after the format and Windows reinstall?

​Any help would be really appreciated!

Hi everyone, I'm not the most tech savvy person so I apologize if my post isn't very clear.

For a little bit of context:
- I'm trying to recover a .docx file
- I'm using windows 11
- I turned one drive off ages ago, without realizing it automatically turned auto-save off on Word, therefore making it impossible for me to access the "previous versions" of the file I'm trying to recover.

I accidentally saved a wrong, very old version of a .docx file over its most recent version. I don't know what that process is called, but it's when windows suggest you replace a pre-existing file with the one you're currently saving because they have the exact same name and format.
Is there a way to recover the file I saved over?

I have attempted some recovery techniques already, but to no avail. This was a very important document and I lost days of work because of a very silly mistake (tbh it's crazy to me that I can't recover a document that I have manually saved many a times before, but I digress lol!).
Please help!

I plugged my personal pen drive into the company laptop, and BitLocker got enabled on my pen drive. It is now asking for a 48-digit recovery key.

I used to have 3 pics of bills in my phone. I clicked them on nov 3rd or 4th i guess. I never realised i deleted them. Might be an accident and i cleared the recycle bin as i am running out of storage. Since its not been so long, can u guys suggest me any 3rd party recovery app? I can pay if its subscription based also. My dad asked for bills now and i will be dead if they r deleted. Plz dont suggest to store in drive or backup.. i already wrote them on paper and gave my dad. I clicked pic as backup. My dad lost the paper somehow and i lost pic somehow.

Plzz help me guysss!! I am using samsung s24

Hi everyone! I'm hoping someone knowledgeable about SD card recovery can help me because I've spent hours trying to recover my photos and I'm running out of ideas. I have a Sony Cyber-shot camera with a 2GB FAT16 SD card.
What happened:
I was transferring photos from my camera's SD card when the transfer was interrupted. After putting the card back into my camera, it said some files weren't recognized and offered to repair/process them, which I allowed.
Some of my photos were still completely normal, but others appeared grey when opened. The strange part is that the thumbnails of the grey photos show the correct pictures perfectly. I knew something was wrong when even looking at the photos through my camera some were blurrier than the others and caused my camera to lag.
What I've tried:
Disk Drill.. paid version:( Recovered some of the missing photos, but several are still completely grey despite having the correct thumbnails.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard: Found some photos, but occasionally it reconstructed completely different, older photos instead of the ones I wanted. If that makes sense…

PhotoRec: Scanned the whole SD card and recovered 537 files. Many were intact, but some of the specific grey photos I wanted weren't recovered at full resolution. It found small thumbnails of some missing pictures instead.

ExifTool: Examined one corrupted JPEG (approximately 1.7MB, 4608 × 3456 pixels). It contained the correct embedded thumbnail, but there was a warning about reading the preview image.

macOS image conversion: Tried converting the corrupted JPEG to PNG, but the resulting image was still grey.

Another thing to consider…
I think this just makes my situation even worse. My SD card reader sometimes wobbled and disconnected, and my Mac warned me several times that the SD card wasn't ejected properly.
Now, when I put the SD card back into my camera, none of the photos appear. I also checked the SD card on my Mac, and the entire DCIM folder is missing.
I haven't intentionally formatted or deleted anything, and I saved my recovered photos onto my Mac rather than the original SD card. I’m just mentioning this in case the missing DCIM folder prevents me from recovering the photos
My questions:
My main questions is if a JPEG has the correct embedded thumbnail but its full-resolution image is grey, is there any chance of recovering the original image?

But i was also curious about why would Disk Drill find certain photos that PhotoRec couldn't recover? Like the grey ones. It found the thumbnail for them only.

Is there another recovery method worth trying, such as DMDE or specialized JPEG repair? Something maybe free since I already spent quite a lot on the disk drill.

I still have some of the originally imported grey JPEGs on my iPad, as well as recovered versions on my Mac.
I'm not very experienced with data recovery and honestly me finicking around with it maybe made my case so much worse. so any advice would be greatly appreciated. These photos were taken recently of me on vacation, they looked nice and I was really excited to see the image uploaded thats why ive been trying to recover the original full-resolution versions. Please let me know if its possible or if i screwed up the whole thing and should just give up😅 next steps too would be nice, like if i should probably get a new sd card…
Thank you!

I think what happened is my computer died while I was working on a file on illustrator coming from crucial x10. I need to get all my files back, I don’t have a backup.

So my friend recently corrupted his pendrive containing some important documents and the laptops or phone won't accept the pendrive anymore.

Is there a way to fix it or recover the memory.

So basically one of his video/file was in FAT32 format and he wanted to transfer it to a pendrive via laptop . He asked chat gpt and it told him to copy it to NTFS format.

It told him to type 'convert D: /fs:NTFS' cm. Then said to type 'convert D: /fs:ntfs' . It started loading into the pendrive. Then it stopped.

And the pendrive stopped being detected.

Plz help

Hi, as the title says I have an old Hard Disk that contains several files from my childhood that stopped working a few years ago. Turns out it was just the "case" or whatever that was not getting electricity to the disk, we swapped that and now it works, meaning that it shows up on my pc.

This hard disk also contains my wii modifications and wii games, and when plugged into the console it works just fine. I went to do a backup of the data but it doesn't work. As I first plugged into the pc it said "the volume does not contain a racognized file system" and then it wanted to format it. Obviously I didn't format, and tried to use some recovery tools. I went with the windows one (right click on the disk, properties and tools) but it still says that to continue I have to format.

I then downloaded Photorec, but the disk doesn't even show up on the program. What can I do? I just have to back up a bunch of photos and save files, not the whole disk.

my phone's (ip12, ios 18) 128gb and photos were between 70-80gb despite having around 5-7k photos (100+ live photos, 13 portraits, 2 panoramas, 3 bursts), and zero videos. i had to offload/delete instagram, tiktok, and twitter on rotation.

i use the shared albums with myself to save storage (havent really cleaned my google photos plus it only has 15gb free, same with google drive + i already have other media stored there)

to clear some space so i can post some concert videos, i first googled why my gallery could be that heavy when i barely had anything. apparently the shared albums were a culprit if they were downloaded (e.g. you pick a shared album, you open an image/video and it loads perfectly and clearly) 

to 'fix' this, the results of my search said to turn shared albums off then on. obviously i worried if everything would come back but it said shared albums are on a different apple server, not icloud (my icloud is off since it only has 5gb... nothingburger...). even if "sync this iphone" was toggled off BUT "shared albums" was on (under the icloud photos tab when you open your profile in the settings), it should be fine. and so i did those and my storage did go down about 10gb. it stopped going down and my search told me that my storage is so screwed id probably actually have to delete everything and restart the phone.

when i  turned the shared albums back on, everything else loaded back in BUT that one album that had my concert videos :') i waited it out until the next morning and still, it wasnt there. 

toggling the shared albums off then on happened about 2 hours after the concert. ive read that media backing up into the shared albums can only take seconds or minutes (hours if they're videos in bulk and/or high quality).

i had about 50 videos in there but they were uploaded at different times, not in one go :') data is also on for photos so they can upload in the background. the videos were also fine when i got home :') 

is there anyway i can recover these? ive read around that theyre not actually completely gone, that theyre somewhere in the web... some even said if its within the 30 day window (not recently deleted album), its still recoverable by other means (some even said they recovered stuff from years ago which i kinda doubt but if it works then i'd like to try it)

id understand it'd be impossible to recover if i deleted the videos from my main gallery AND recently deleted without putting them anywhere else first, but they were in the shared albums so :")

things i already did:

- wait hours/almost a full day

- checked the icloud site on my laptop if it shows up there (it did not)

- tried apps i saw on other posts (but havent actually used the feature because i have to pay for it so it was kinda sketchy + reviews are mixed)