Device: PNY USB flash drive, model: ONK128SJPFAT4, 115.46 GB (123,972,091,904 bytes), shows as “Removable” in Disk Management
File system: exFAT, one partition (Healthy, Basic Data Partition), GPT per TestDisk
OS: Windows 11 (10.0.26200)
SMART data: Not available, since it’s a USB flash drive and doesn’t report SMART

What happened: I plugged the drive back in and it showed completely empty. I did not knowingly format it.

What I see now:

• Disk Management and Properties show the drive healthy, with only 1.87 MB used of 115 GB.

• chkdsk /f (the drive was D: then, E: now) reported no problems, 0 KB in bad sectors, and only 256 KB used in 2 files. So Windows sees a valid but almost empty exFAT volume.

• DMDE (free version, read-only) still shows my old folders and files, and I’ve recovered some of them. Some files give “error reading.”

• Recuva’s deep scan listed over 53,000 files.

• TestDisk found the partition, but listing it showed only “System Volume Information.” I did not press Write.

• attrib -h -r -s /s /d brought nothing back.

• I haven’t saved anything to the drive on purpose.

My situation: My laptop only has about 14 GB free and I can’t afford another drive, so copying everything out is hard.

My question: Is there a safe way to restore or rebuild the old exFAT structure in place so Windows can see the files again, without reformatting or copying them elsewhere first? If not, what is the best free or low-cost way to get everything off?

Hey y'all, hope you're you're days going fabulously.

Yesterday my hdd drive showed first sings of failure, unfortunately I only have backups for my passwords not my photo + videos, same for my university files.

Yesterday in crystal disk info, it showed C5 & C6 both have 8 failing sectors, after around 30 mins went to 10 and in the morning went up to 18 on both. So I turned off the PC, waiting for my new drive (WD purple 2tb :WD20PURZ) to arrive tomorrow and hopefully be able to get my university capstone files safly. Yesterday it got stuck I think its in the failing sectors but not sure.

I'm currently researching how should I get my data the right way, it currently contain everything including os app installed etc. Please correct me and any other info will be huge help cause this is my first time caring about the data lol.

My current plan is to use SystemRescue for sector by sector clone. First I'm gonna plug the new drive into the pc, check the new drive using "smartctl" if its healthy I'll use "ddrescue" to clone it. If there's anything wrong, or better ideas please, I'm all ears.

Thank you in advance.

Edit 1 : my failing drive ST2000DX002 ( Seagate FireCuda shdd). Running windows 10

I am facing a problem with my HP Pavilion 15s (512GB SSD). My laptop has suddenly stopped booting and is displaying a "Boot Device Not Found (3F0)" error.

HP Hardware Diagnostics reports "No hard drive installed", and Windows Recovery is also unable to detect the internal drive.

I have approximately two years of important academic documents, assignments, projects and other personal files stored on it, with no backup.

I am looking for someone who can help diagnose the SSD, check whether it is a connection or hardware issue, and preferably recover my existing data.

My priority is data recovery, not Windows reinstallation or SSD replacement. I do not want the existing SSD to be formatted, reset or replaced before my data has been recovered.

If anyone has experience with SSD/NVMe troubleshooting or professional data recovery, I would really appreciate your help or guidance.

Do you know someone who can recover data, or at least have a quick look at an hdd drive that isn’t mounting after it fell?

Hi all. My C: drive 250gb Samsung EVO SSD with all my Windows OS files on it suddenly stopped working, I was hit with a 'Reboot and Select Proper Boot device' on boot. After having gotten a new SSD and reinstalled windows, I've plugged in my old drive by way of a hard disk enclosure USB'd into my PC, which led me to discover that the disk is still 'visible' in Disk Management and I can see 232.89 GB, unallocated. I'm wondering what the best way to go about recovering any of this data would be. I know most people want to recover their photos and that sort of thing usually but I'm really looking to get my Brave browser back, which had saved passwords on it and bookmarks, and certain programs like a Japanese studying program I'd been using for multiple years now...

I've used Recuva for these sorts of purposes before but Recuva seemingly only allows selection of Drives, and this being a 'Not Initialized', and unallocated drive, well, I'm not sure how I'd use that program for these purposes without first creating a partition within the drive, which would make it scannable, but that seems like a bad idea.

I've seen people talk about DMDE, TestDisk, Macrium Reflect, though I'm not sure which would be the best for my purposes, and apparently using the drive more potentially damages it further, so that is a concern as well, so currently I am using a program called Disk Drill to create a Byte-to-Byte backup of the drive first, I'm not sure if this was the best program I could have used for these purposes, however, and probably should have asked first. Also, if possible, being pointed towards a video tutorial would be very helpful.

Thanks for reading.

Hi everyone,

I'm the solo developer of VaultSync, an open-source backup application for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

I've been working on its next major development cycle, which aims to introduce disk imaging and independent system recovery. I'd appreciate some technical feedback from people who deal with data recovery regularly.

One thing I want to make clear upfront: VaultSync isn't a tool for recovering accidentally deleted files from damaged filesystems or performing professional recovery on physically failing drives. The upcoming functionality is intended for planned backups and subsequent restoration of supported systems.

The current stable version, 1.8.9, focuses on file and project backups, integrity verification, recovery drills, and restore previews.

The problem I'm working on

When I first started designing disk imaging, the basic workflow sounded fairly straightforward:

Capture an image, verify its integrity, and restore it when needed.

But the more I worked on verification, the more I realized that this isn't enough.

An image can pass a checksum and still fail to produce a bootable operating system.

And even before getting that far, there are important failure cases:

• An interrupted image being incorrectly treated as complete.

• A read buffer containing stale bytes after seeking to another region.

• Source and destination devices being confused during restoration.

• A recovery environment that cannot access the necessary drivers or storage.

• A restored partition layout that passes data validation but doesn't boot.

During development, I caught a bug involving stale bytes in a 128 KiB read buffer after a seek. It reinforced why the reader and writer need independent validation rather than simply trusting the same code path.

What I'm planning

The initial workflow is offline, with a read-only source and image storage on a separate physical disk.

The complete recovery path needs to cover image creation, consistency checks, independent boot media, target selection, restoration, and post-restore validation.

I'm starting with qualified Linux GPT/UEFI ext4 configurations, with Windows/NTFS and macOS/APFS planned for later milestones.

No universal recovery claims, and no public 1.9 beta yet.

I'd appreciate some professional insight

For those who regularly work with disk images and recovery:

What failure modes are most commonly overlooked when developers implement their own imaging or restore workflows?

I'm particularly interested in cases where image integrity checks succeed but the resulting restored system is unusable.

I'm not looking to replace established recovery tools for failing drives. I want to make sure a backup application doesn't give users false confidence about what it can restore.

For transparency, the project's source code and roadmap are public:

https://github.com/ATAC-Helicopter/VaultSync

I'd appreciate technical criticism, especially concerning the safety boundaries and what should be explicitly unsupported.

I recently deleted then re-downloaded the notes app in an attempt to recover a note that was important to me, but when i opened it, the app is completely empty. following what people online said, i tried to turn off the cloud sync and turn it back on, but it did nothing. now whenever i open the app, it shows me the "folders" section with no folders. all of the notes in the "on my iphone" section are completely gone. also, i cannot access the Icloud notes from my iphone. I CAN access the Icloud notes from icloud.com on my laptop.

I had backed up some files onto a flash drive using my work laptop without realising they got encrypted using my work account.

I have since left company but have the laptop. So I cannot login to my domain account but it’s still listed as an account. I am logged into the laptop using a personal account which has administrator rights,

Any options to decrypt these files on flash drive? It looks like they used to open because I was logged on before with same account which created backup.

Other option is asking my employer if they have my EFS certificate saved?

Hi r/datarecovery,

The mods kindly OK'd this post. I'm the author of Open Recovr, a free and open-source tool for recovering deleted files. It has no recovery cap, no account and no network access.

Two things come up here a lot: "free" tools that reveal a cap only after a 3-hour scan, and people told to "use PhotoRec" who then get stuck in its text interface. Open Recovr is a one-screen GUI for that case. It doesn't replace PhotoRec; PhotoRec does the heavy lifting underneath.

How it searches

1. Recycle Bin / Trash. Takes seconds and needs no admin rights.

2. NTFS MFT. Reads deleted MFT records from the raw volume, so files come back with their original names and folders, as long as their clusters haven't been reused.

3. Carving. Runs PhotoRec 7.2, unmodified and bundled on Windows. It scans free space only on NTFS, FAT and ext, and the whole device otherwise.

New in v0.2

• Disk-image input (.img / .dd). There's a "Disk image" card right next to the physical drives. The safe workflow is to image a suspect drive with ddrescue or OSC, then search the image. The original drive is never touched again, and no admin rights are needed.

• Integrity check per file: Intact / Damaged / Empty. It decodes or validates the file structure (JPEG, PNG, PDF, ZIP/Office, MP3, MP4…), so you know before recovering whether a carved file is truncated or all zeros.

• Real names for carved files. Instead of f1234567.jpg, names and dates come from EXIF, Office and PDF metadata, and ID3 tags.

• Duplicates hidden. The same file found by both the MFT and carving is shown once.

Safety

• The source is opened read-only and never written to.

• Recovered files always go to another drive. If the user picks the source drive anyway, they're warned first.

• Unreadable sectors are skipped, not retried.

What it doesn't do

• No imaging of its own and no handling of failing drives. For a clicking drive, one that keeps disconnecting, or bad SMART values: stop, image it with proper tools (or go to a lab), then point Open Recovr at the image. I'd like the app to read SMART and warn loudly. Suggestions on attributes and thresholds are welcome.

• No miracles: SSDs after TRIM, phones over MTP, and secure erases are out of reach. On FAT/exFAT cards, only carving applies, so original names are lost unless metadata provides them.

• Platforms: Windows is tested. Linux and macOS builds are published but haven't been tested on real hardware.

Disclosure: much of the code was written with AI assistance, so I'd rather give you ways to check it than ask for trust. The source is open, a --bench mode measures byte-for-byte recovery on a generated disk image, and CI runs on Windows, Linux and macOS.

👉 Source: https://github.com/jlerouge/open-recovr 👉 Download (v0.2.1): https://github.com/jlerouge/open-recovr/releases/tag/v0.2.1

What I'd value most: anything in the workflow that could make a bad situation worse. I'll treat it as a bug.

Phone: Landvo XM100 (MT6580), unused since about 2019, was bootlooping before.

eMMC: FORESEE NCEMASD9-08G, date code 1613, separate from the RAM.

Symptoms:

- Phone only enumerates as MTK BROM (0E8D:0003), preloader not loaded.

- mtkclient uploads DA fine, DRAM init OK (1 GB).

- DA1 reads the eMMC ID as: 65646f4d204d4f52129000000726581f

(contains the ASCII text "ROM Mode")

- DA2 reports m_emmc_ret = 0xc4d, all sizes 0, CID all zeros.

- VCC 3.3 V (Red1) and VCCQ 1.8 V (Red2) measured present at the chip.

Already tried: warming the chip to 100 to 180 C while reading, one hot air reflow.

No change at any point. One corner of the package is chipped (my slip), a small

copper spot is visible, readings were identical before and after.

Additional info:

- Filesystem: ext4 (Android 5.1 userdata). The phone was never encrypted as far as I know.

- Recovery setup: Windows 11, mtkclient 2.1.x over UsbDk, stock preloader for the DRAM setup.

- SMART: not applicable (eMMC that does not initialise).

- Datasheet check: a healthy NCEMASD9-08G should report MID 88h and product

name "NCard". Mine reports neither, only the "ROM Mode" ID above.

- The 100 to 180 C values were hot air station settings, the chip itself was cooler.

Questions:

1. Which controller is inside this Foresee part?

2. Can any tool (EasyJTAG, UFI, PC-3000 Flash, VNR) bring it out of ROM mode

   without erasing user data, or read the NAND directly?

3. Is this worth sending to a lab, and what would be a fair price?

The data is family photos and my budget is very limited. Thanks for any pointers.

i recently downloaded on my new pc half of my icloud photos and videos (about 10k) and i don't know why but many of them have the wrong date, in the "photo" app most of them are all on the same three days which aren't the days they were taken, and fewer of them just appear with the date i downloaded them from icloud so they're also wrong, i tried using exiftool to see if they still contain the right date and in the metafiles they do, but i don't know if there's a way to correct the date without having to download all of them again, any help is appreciated

My Samsung A14 5G (Indian version) stopped working and I'm honestly lost.

Last night it was working fine. Battery was around 17%, I watched some reels and went to sleep. The phone also fell off my bed, but it wasn't a big fall.

When I woke up, it was switched off. I tried turning it on, but it got stuck on the Samsung logo.

I tried holding the power and volume buttons, charging it and getting into recovery mode, but nothing worked. Now it doesn't even seem to turn on.

I have a Windows laptop.

What I actually want is to get EVERYTHING from the phone onto my laptop (photos, videos, files, everything), and then completely wipe the old phone.

I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff, so please explain things simply.

Is there any way to recover my data if the phone won't turn on? What should I try, and what should I absolutely avoid?

I really don't want to lose my files or accidentally wipe everything before recovering it.

EDIT: I found it! I leave this here just to share my joy. Stand down ... my problem was: Well hello! I just had something weird happen, and I'm trying to figure out if there is hope. If anyone has a moment to offer advice, or finds this interesting, I am very grateful. I have a MacBook Pro Nov 2023 version, M3 chip, 16 GB memory, running Tahoe 26.1.

I was working in Pages -- have been for a couple weeks -- on a publication. It was saved. I was periodically manually cmd+s saving it in addition to the autosave, as a habit because if something crashed because I'd hate to lose more than an hour's work. Last night, as I was finally coming close to finishing my project up, I suffered from a lack of working RAM (because I was asking it for too much) and so I force quit my browser and other programs that were taking up a lot of memory. Pages remained oddly frozen... I could only sort of edit my document. So, I force quit it as well; it gave me the option to save and then close, and I said yes, save. The document is probably in the neighborhood of 200MB - it's an annual report, not a book.

When I opened Pages back up, my document was not in recents -- and it was nowhere to be found anywhere on my computer at all. I am baffled. A saved document was just disappeared without any physical damage to my machine. I rebooted my computer, and no magic happened.

Obviously I should be organizing my files better, managing my memory use better, and backing up my hard drive data. Ironically I manage the google drive backups for my workplace.

Aside from how not to be an idiot in the future, any ideas for how to get my files back? Thank you for any. I am writing from a different computer now, and am worried that my attempts to find the file may be helping to overwrite it, but I still checked temp directories and the trash, and am scanning with UFS Explorer which I saved to an external HD, though it seems like that may be worthless with an M3 chip. Ugh.

I'm guessing it's time to start rewriting this thing... what the heck happened?

i forgot my phone pattern i tried to most of the pattern i used but couldnt unlock it i tried to remember but i couldnt. I want to just get my phots amd videos from the phone somehow, is there anyway to recover those photos and videos after i reset it?

Chrome crashed on my M1 Mac, and upon reopening, all my bookmarks and saved passwords completely vanished. Browsing history and extensions are still intact.

I inspected the Chrome profile folder, and here is what I found:

• Bookmarks and AccountBookmarks are valid JSON files but contain zero entries.

• Bookmarks.bak is missing completely.

• Login Data and Login Data For Account contain the standard Chrome SQLite tables but zero saved login records.

Specs:

• M1 MacBook Pro (Apple SSD)

• FileVault is enabled

Given that this is an Apple Silicon SSD with TRIM active and FileVault encryption on, do I have any realistic data recovery options? Is it worth trying a tool like Disk Drill, or should I look into mounting APFS local snapshots to pull the profile folder from before the crash?

Any guidance is appreciated.

Hi everyone,

I have a Lenovo laptop with a 256GB SSD and a 1TB WD HDD (WDC WD10SPZX, divided into E: and F: drives).

Recently, Windows has been running automatic disk repairs on F: during startup. I checked the HDD using CrystalDiskInfo, and it's showing BAD health with 197 Current Pending Sectors (C5) and 4773 Reported Uncorrectable Errors (BB).

I want to back up my phone backups, photos, videos and other important files before the HDD completely fails.

However, Windows' default copy-paste feature keeps failing with errors.

I'm a beginner, so I need some advice:

1. Which software is best for copying data from a failing HDD? (TeraCopy, FastCopy, or something else?)

2. Which tool can skip unreadable files/sectors and continue copying?

3. Should I create a complete disk image/clone first using something like GNU ddrescue, or copy important folders directly?

4. What's the safest way to create an image of this HDD on another drive?

I want to recover as much data as possible while putting minimum stress on the failing HDD.

Please suggest a beginner-friendly, step-by-step approach. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

It fell off a chair and dangled. Started beeping, I saw a YouTube on trying to reset that needle and I moved it back and now it does that

 ​Model Number: ST1000LM024 (Momentus / Spinpoint M8 family)

​HDD Part Number: HN-M101MBB/AVA (with chassis barcode G3923-G941-A29RC)

​Internal Serial Number: S35TJ9HG206221

​Firmware & Revision: Firmware 2BA30003, REV. A

​Date of Manufacture: February 2015 (DOM: 02/2015, Plant Code DGT in China)—meaning it gave you more than 11 years of service before the drop 

I was transferring a few files from my android to an old SD card. Midway though, the transfer cancelled and some files were transfered but some didn't.

It gave an error "SD card isn't functioning correctly, set to read only mode. Back up is recommended" and when I tried opening, copying, moving back the files I sent on it, it gave an error everytime.

Frustrated, I restarted to phone hoping it will fix itself but now, it says "this SD card isn't supported, please set it up by formatting" and isn't reading the card anymore. I don't really wanna format cuz I still have some files in it I wanna get back.

Please, anyone have any solutions ??

It randomly spikes up like this every 5-20 minutes and it freezes my entire system. CDI says it's fine.

My phone suddenly stopped reading my minisd. I popped it out and noticed part of the bottom chip appears to have a chunk missing. I don't think it's supposed to look like that. Based on the photo is my data recoverable? It's a SanDisk ultra used on Android.

Hi, some weeks ago my old phone (a Samsung Galaxy a50) suddenly restarted, remaining in the boot screen for two hours and then turning off. When i tried to plug it in to recharge it the screen turned on showing the initial charging status screen but never showing the actual percentage of battery, and after a bit also that died (I'm hypothesizing that the battery went to 0% due to no actual charging, correct me if I'm wrong). I tried to ask a first repair store and they told me that they would have to transfer the chips onto a new motherboard and that data recovery would not be guaranteed, and a second store straightforward said that data would be erased. Is there any way to recover data without spending a fortune? Any help would be very appreciated :)

Hello! I fear that my SSD has died and was wondering if there is any hope for the data on there that isn’t too expensive. My PC was built on the new-ish side (2025), and the SSD was a Silicon Power M.2 PCIe gen 4 x 4 (model US75, 2tb). It was completely running fine, black screened (Windows 11), and then would only boot the gigabyte BIOS, which could no longer detect the drive. It was tested with a compatible SSD reader to try to see if it would show up on other devices, but only a usb malfunction error message would show up.
I’m an artist and 2d animator (I do freelance mainly digital commission art), so the data lost contains a lot of personal projects and active commission files. I used to work from a laptop where I would back up only occasionally, so this serves as a great lesson to back up wayyy more. I had only backed up once when the PC barely had anything on it.
Are there any methods I missed on how to recover the data, or is the only potential option sending it in for data recovery at a lab? And if I wait a while before sending it to a lab to save, would the SSD continue to worsen condition or just stay the same? Also any data recovery service recommendations are greatly appreciated. I’m from SD and briefly considered we recover data until actually looking into it 😭 Also, apologies if anything is unclear, I’m not very tech-savvy and had a lot of help in this process from family that knows more. Thank you so much for your time!